#EveryBrilliantThing July Roundup

Hello, and Happy Poetry Friday! I have been traveling this week -- more on this later! -- but I did want to pop in and say hello and invite everyone to visit Keri at Keri Recommends for Roundup where she welcomes us to the farm with a poem from Summer Poetry Swap. :)

This year I am keeping a virtual gratitude list, inspired by the play Every Brilliant Thing. Here's my post about it. 

And here is my list for JULY... most of these did not appear daily on Twitter, as I haven't been online much this summer!

Styrofoam.

Homemade whipped cream.

Spraypaint.

Selfie with Buttercups & Accessories.

Farmers' market with Paul.

Microchip dog ID.

Baking a cake.

Summer Poetry Swap.

Camp Buttercup.

Bandaids.

Jacuzzi tubs.

The scent of basil.

First day of a new job.

Drive-thru pharmacy.

Harry Potter.

Twilight movie marathon with Eric.

Friday Night Lights.

Sisters.

French braids.

Bobbie's old office chair.

90th Pony Penning Week!

My Authur Umlauf sculpture.

Writer-friend phone therapy.

Night storms.

So quiet I can hear the clock ticking.

Audiobooks.

Planning a vacation.

Revision notes.

Poetry Friday community.

Wild ponies of Assateague.

Dancers.

Luxury bed sheets.

Coming home.

The Summer of Harry Potter: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS

I've just finished the final book in my Summer of Harry Potter.  (My friend Pat said I should call this post THE END OF HARRY POTTER, but I just can't do it!) I'm sad that it's over! You can read about my experience so far:

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

One thing I was acutely aware of when reading this final volume in the series was how high my expectations were. And, you know, I do have some memory of when the final book was released, how excited fans were, how curious I was about reader response: did they like it, not like it? I'm still amazed at all the threads J.K. Rowling wove together, and how much I loved how the ending moved us 19 years into the future to meet the offspring of our heroes. The sequence of Snape's memories was my favorite part of the book.

Some favorite scenes:

Harry and Ginny, parting, early in the book:

"I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest."

"There's the silver lining I've been looking for," she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair--

---------------------------------------------

Ron and Harry, after Ron's return:

"I dunno," said Ron. Sometimes I've thought, when I've been a bit hacked off, he [Dumbledore] was having a laugh or -or he just wanted to make it more difficult. But I don't think so, not anymore. He knew what he was doing when he gave me the Deluminator, didn't he? He -- well," Ron's ears turned bright red and he became engrossed in a tuft of grass at his feet, which he prodded with his toe, "He must've known I'd run out on you."

"No," Harry corrected him. "He must've known you'd always want to come back."

----------------------------------------------

At the Shell Cottage:

He [Harry] felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back,wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way.

-----------------------------------------------

With Voldemort in the forest:

Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive and more aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone... or at least, he would be gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were his eyes.

-----------------------------------------------

With Dumbledore:

The realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow.
"I've got t go back, haven't I?"
"that is up to you."
"I've got a choice?"
"Oh, Yes." Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King's Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to... let's say... board a train."
....
"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the present."
...
"Tell me one last thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
--------------------------------------------


Big big sigh. So much truth in these books. I'm so glad I've finally read the series! And now, again, off to Etsy! :)

Also, just sitting here thinking... what's my patronus? (I've written about this before, although with different language.) What's yours??

POP! BAM! YAY!

Hello, and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for Roundup... and for a look at some Louisiana poems she received from me (complete with typo) as part of Summer Poetry Swap. I lived in Folsom, LA, for 5 magical years, so I felt right at home in those poems. Sometimes I miss the bayou!

And now a bit of news, fresh from yesterday's Publisher's Weekly:

“Rebecca Davis at Boyds Mills/Wordsong has acquired Pop! Bam! Boom! by Irene Latham. Explosions start small and grow ever-larger in this collection of poems where popcorn kernels leap, ideas tsunami, fireworks frazzle, racehorses surge, dreams steam, and supernovas radiate. A pub date has not been set; Rosemary Stimola of Stimola Literary Studio negotiated the deal for world rights.


Yay! I sometimes forget to celebrate my writing successes, so I made myself write this blog post. The announcement caught me totally by surprise!

Confession: I stole the header for this post from a congratulatory email sent to my by Greg Pincus. SO clever. Thank you!

It's been such a busy summer, so I haven't shared my own amazing Summer Poem Swap goodies, but I will, very soon. Such a wonderful community we have here... putting it on my #EveryBrilliantThing list. xo

The Summer of Harry Potter: HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

I've just finished book 6 in my Summer of Harry Potter.  You can read about my experience so far:

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

Okay, so on the day I was finishing THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, I read on Twitter that it was the 10 year anniversary of the book's publication (July 16). Ten Years. I can't believe it took me so long to get to this one!

And yet I do know exactly why: I stopped after SORCERER'S STONE because there were too many details, and I just wasn't into it. And sure enough, I really had to push myself through books 2 and 3 -- they were good, I just didn't care. By book 4, I was starting to care, and by book 5, I absolutely DID care.

And now book 6. Wow. I can't believe how invested I am in these characters! I get it now -- the obsessions, the uber-fans, the gazillion homemade products on etsy.com.... I WANT THEM ALL. I think J.K. Rowling is a genius. Her way of writing... the slow build... but oh, oh, the PAYOFF. Brilliant. Truly. What an engaging experience. ORDER OF THE PHOENIX is still my favorite, but I loved THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE and am so excited about DEATHLY HALLOWS. And a little sad, too. I wish I didn't know the Snape twist from the movies. What a joy that would have been to discover in the pages!

Some favorite quotes from this one:

love this description:

"He tumbled through dark nothingness and landed in a sitting room in front of an immensely fat old lady wearing an elaborate ginger wig and a brilliant pink set of robes that flowed all around her, giving her the look of a melting iced cake."
-------------------
Ron cracks me up:

"Ths is Felix Felicis, I suppose?" said Hermione anxiously, holding the bottle to the light. "You haven't got another bottle full of -- I don't know--"
"Essence of Insanity?" suggested Ron, as Harry swung his cloak over his shoulders.
-----------------

I found Professor Slughorn's eulogy pretty perfect:

"Farwell, Aragog, king of arachnids, whose long and faithful friendship those who knew you won't forget! Though your body will decay, your spirit lingers on in the quiet, web-spun places of your forest home. May your many-eyed descendants ever flourish and your human friends find solace for the loss they have sustained."
---------------------------

I loved Dumbledore's whole explanation/conversation with Harry about the Prophecy, and how he had a choice. I will just share here the last little bit when Harry has found some understanding:

"It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew -- and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents -- that there was all the difference in the world."

The Poetry That is Camp Buttercup

Hello, and happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Roundup.

Last week at our house was Camp Buttercup, and annual "camp" I do with my two young nieces and youngest (turning 7 this month) sister. If that's not poetry, I don't know what is!

Also poetic: Camp Buttercup got its name from Buttercup in THE PRINCESS BRIDE. Remember the scene in the movie when the little boy says to his grandfather, "Is this a kissing book?" Well. These little girls get all giggly when the talk/movie/whatever turns to kissing. It's pretty hilarious, actually.

I did a little research, and I found a fitting "buttercup" poem:

The buttercups, bright-eyed and bold,
Held up their chalices of gold
To catch the sunshine and the dew.
        Julia C. R. Dorr—Centennial Poem. L. 165.

Also, follow this link to see an adorable sketch and "buttercup" lines from A. A. Milne.

Here are some pictures:

at Vulcan

walruses

cello lesson

expecting

outside the tea room

selfie

borrowing Aunt Irene's accessories

tubing at Buck Creek

me-n-some "bright-eyed and bold" Buttercups!

The Summer of Harry Potter: HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

I've just finished book 5 in my Summer of Harry Potter.  You can read about my experience so far:

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

I do believe ORDER OF THE PHOENIX is the longest of the novels, and so far, it's my favorite. By this point, I really care about what Harry is going through. Much of the book is a recording of his thoughts and feelings, and I think that's often my favorite part of a book. Even if you strip away Voldemort and Professor Umbridge and all the magical happenings at Hogwarts, this book really shows that tumultuous time of teenagehood, when the struggles are, "where do I fit? who am I, anyway? what's it all for?"

Here are some passages I particularly enjoyed -- and I gotta say, I really like J.K. Rowling as a YA writer. She just nails these scenes- esp. the kissing one. :)

IN WHICH HARRY IS HUMBLE:

"Listen to me!" said Harry, almost angrily, because Ron and Hermione were both smirking now. "Just listen to me, all right: It sounds great when you say it like that, but all that stuff was luck-- I didn't know what I was doing half the time, I didn't plan any of it, I just did whatever I could think of, and I nearly always had help --"
-----------------------------

SOMETHING FUNNY:


"Hold yer hippogriffs, I haven' finsihed me story yet." (Hagrid)
-----------------------------

HARRY'S FIRST KISS:

"You're a r-really good teacher, you know," said Cho, with a watery smile. "I've never been able to Stun anything before."
"Thanks" said Harry awkwardly.
they looked at each other for a long moment. Harry felt a burning desire to run from the room and, at the same time, a complete inability to move his feet.
"Mistletoe," said Cho quietly, pointing at the ceiling over his head.
"yeah," said Harry. His mouth was very dry. "It's probably full of nargles, though."
"What are nargles?"
"No idea," said Harry. She had moved Closer. His brain seemed to have been Stunned. "You have to ask Loony. Luna, i mean.
Cho made a funny noise halfway between a sob and a laugh. She was even nearer him now. He could have counted the freckles on her nose.
"I really like you, Harry."
He could not think. A tingling sensation was spreading throughout him, paralyzing his arms, legs, and brain.
she was much too close. He could see every tear clinging to her eyelashes...
--------------------------------


ON UNDERSTANDING GIRLS' FEELINGS:

"Don't you understand how Cho's feeling at the moment?" she asked
"No," said Harry and Ron Together.
Hermione sighed and laid down her quill.
"Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's an insult ot Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that's all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she's afraid she'd going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so badly."
A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode.
"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.
-----------------------------------


ON DEATH:

"It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black was gone forever. Sirius seemed a million miles away already, even if a part of Harry still believed that if he had only pulled back that veil, he would have found Sirius looking back at him, greeting him, perhaps, with his laugh like a bark."


Yep, this one is my favorite so far! (Favorite movie so far? CHAMBER OF SECRETS, followed by GOBLET OF FIRE)

What Have You Lost? Poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

Hello! I was going to save this post for Poetry Friday, but I can't wait -- and the nieces/little sister are coming in for Camp Buttercup starting tomorrow, so I may not be able to get back here this week! If I don't, and even if I do, Happy (early) Poetry Friday! On Friday be sure to visit Katie at The Logonauts for Roundup.

I'm excited to share with you two poems from one of this year's beach-thrift-store finds:  WHAT HAVE YOU LOST, poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye.



Waking Instructions
by Emma Mellon

Crawl ashore
to the damp beginning of day.

Forget before and after.

Allow yourself
to be spelled differently.

It will feel like falling.

It has waiting attached.

**"Allow yourself to be spelled differently." This one is going on my How To Live Your Poem list! Love!

Simple Song of Being Oneself
by Vittorio Bodini (translated from Italian by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann)

The ivy tells me: you'll never
be ivy. And the wind:
you won't be wind. And the sea:
you won't be sea.

Rags, rivers, bridal dawn
tell me: you won't be rag or river,
you won't be bridal dawn.

The anchor, the four of diamonds, the sofa bed
tell me: you won't be us,
you never have been.

And so say dream, arch, peninsula,
spiderweb, espresso machine.

The mirror says:
how can you be a mirror
if all you give  back is your own image?

Things say: try to be yourself
without us.
Spare us your love.

Delicately I flee from everything,
I try to stay alone. I find
death, fear.

Sneak Peek at My Spring 2016 Poetry Books!

Hello, and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Donna at Mainely Write for Roundup.

On the 3rd of every month I'm honored to blog over at Smack Dab in the Middle, a blog written by a group of amazing middle grade authors. This month's theme is "setting," so I wrote a little something about one of my two poetry books coming next spring:

WHEN THE SUN SHINES ON ANTARCTICA: And Other Poems from the Frozen Continent, with illustrations by Anna Wadham.

This is our follow-up to DEAR WANDERING WILDEBEEST: And Other Poems from the Water Hole. Head on over to Smack Dab to find out what inspired me to write the new collection!

And speaking of inspiring settings... here's the cover of my other spring 2016 book:

FRESH DELICIOUS: Poems from the Farmers' Market, with illustrations by Mique Moriuchi. This one is for a younger audience, and just looking at this cover makes me happy. I love love love fresh fruits and veggies from the farmers' market -- and I had so much fun writing these poems (and recipes!).

Look for both books next spring! Meanwhile, Happy July!!! Bring on the BBQ. :)

The Summer of Harry Potter: HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

I've just finished book 4 in my Summer of Harry Potter.  You can read about my experience so far:
HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN


Funny thing about THE GOBLET OF FIRE: I couldn't remember ANYTHING from the movie! (When I've read the other books, I've been bombarded with movie images. Not so, this time around! Was I SLEEPING? Not sure. I'm excited to watch the movie again here in a day or two.)

So much happens in this book! The Tri-Wizard Tournament broadens the scope of the story to include the whole wide world --- yet, many of Harry's challenges continue to be very personal. This is the book he's aware of girls for the first time. There's a dance. Hermione & Ron become a possibility (which, I noticed, comes earlier in the movie franchise, during PRISONER OF AZKABAN). And of course there are exciting tasks and gloomy Snape and Malfoy and all the regular stuff we've come to expect in Harry Potter's world. We see Harry do more than one decent thing (helping Cedric in the competition), and we see how he struggles to be independent (not asking for help with the tasks).

Some favorite words:

Dumbledore shook his head. "Curiosity is not a sin," he said. "But we should exercise caution with our curiosity... yes, indeed..."

"That is no ordinary scar."  (again from Dumbledore)

"Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery. He needs to now who has put him through the ordeal he has suffered tonight, and why." (more from Dumbledore!)

"No good sittin' worryin' abou' it," he said. "What's comin' will come, an' we'll meet it when it does."  - Hagrid

My two favorite moments both involve Mrs. Weasley stepping into the mother role for Harry -- first at the last (maze) task, and later in the hospital when Mrs. Weasley gives Harry a hug like he's never had:

"It wasn't your fault, Harry," Mrs. Weasley whispered. [about Cedric's death]