Poetry Friday -- Veterans' Day Coincidence

Tricia's Poetry Stretch this week at The Miss Rumphius Effect was to write a rictameter, which is an unrhymed nine line poetry form with a syllable count of 2,4,6,8,10,8,6,4,2 and the first and last lines the same.

Here's my rictameter, and then I'll tell you the rest of the story behind it:

Two books,

both about war,

both read on Veterans Day.

Coincidence. First, MARE'S WAR by

Tanita Davis, then CROSSING STONES by

Helen Frost. War's no solution,

and it's not the only

problem in these

two books.

MARE'S WAR

by Tanita S. Davis

Alfred A. Knopf, 2009

review copy provided by the publisher

Mare's war was WWII. She joined the African American Women's Army Corps at the age of 17 (lying that she was 21) to escape the dead end of 1940's life in rural Alabama, where the best jobs she could hope for as a Black woman who hadn't finished high school were being the house girl for Mrs. Ida Payne and busing tables and cleaning the kitchen of Young's Diner.

In this book, Mare is taking a road trip from California to Alabama with her two teenage granddaughters. The narrative switches between chapters about "then" when Mare is telling her life story to her granddaughters, and "now" as we see the two girls' reluctance about the trip change to interest in their grandmother's experiences and finally appreciation and admiration for her strength and independence.

By listening in on Mare's stories, I learned things about WWII, the WAC, segregation, and Civil Rights that are never included in history books.

Besides the coincidence of finishing this book on Veterans Day, I was tickled to note that Mare's full name is Marey Lee Boylen (closest I've ever come to finding a book character with my name!) and one of the granddaughters is named Talitha, which is the name of one of my great grandmothers.

More reviews at ACPL Mock Newbery, The Miss Rumphius Effect, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Jen Robinson's Book Page, A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, Charlotte's Library...and there are probably more...if I missed yours, leave a link in the comments!

Here's Tanita's blog and here's more about the African American WACs.

CROSSING STONES

by Helen Frost

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009

review copy provided by the publisher

I couldn't believe it when the next book I picked up after finishing MARE'S WAR on the afternoon of Veterans' Day was a book about WWI.

Remember how Frost's amazing diamond poems in DIAMOND WILLOW added so much to the story? (Bill's post at Literate Lives convinced me to read the book, and Tricia's Poetry Makers post featuring Helen Frost elevated her to One Of My Favorites!) Frost describes the poetry forms that she uses in CROSSING STONES this way:

"I've created a formal structure to give the sense of stepping from stone to stone across a flowing creek. I think of this kind of writing as painting with words, a process involving hands, eyes, ears, thought, and emotion, all simultaneously working together.

The relatively free style of Muriel's poems represent the creek flowing over the stones as it pushes against its banks. Ollie's and Emma's poems represent the stones. I "painted" them to look round and smooth, each with a slightly different shape, like real stones. They are "cupped-hand sonnets," fourteen-line poems in which the first line rhymes with the last line, the second line rhymes with the second-to-last, and so on, so that the seventh and eighth lines rhyme with each other at the poem's center. In Ollie's poems the rhymes are the beginning words of each line, and in Emma's poems they are the end words.

To give the sense of stepping from one stone to the next, I have used the middle rhyme of one sonnet as the outside rhyme of the next. You will see that the seventh and eighth lines of each of Emma's poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Ollie's next poem, and the seventh and eighth lines of Ollie's poems rhyme with the first an last lines of Emma's next poem."

Despite the seeming complexity of the structure of this book, the form NEVER gets in the way of the story. Muriel's free-flowing poems match her free thinking about her own future (NOT as a farm wife, as everyone else seems to expect of her) and the suffrage movement. Emma's and Ollie's poems are solid and almost invisibly interconnected, bringing their two families and their own lives closer and closer.

Again in this book, I learned things that are never found in history books about WWI, the suffragettes, the Spanish Flu Epidemic, settlement houses in Chicago (Hull House) and Washington, D.C., and the ability of body and soul to heal from the ravages of war.

Put both these books on your "must read" list. They are too good to pass by.

Greg's doing the Poetry Friday round up this week at GottaBook.