Ante 1

illustration by Elizabeth Stanton

Am working on a picture book about the foxes tamed in Siberia. Ever since the Rhyming Picture Books Conference in NYC, I keep thinking about manuscripts that rhyme, but have concluded that to have a story, illustrations that bleed on the page and regular rhymes is simply too much for the page! Love J Patrick Lewis’s poetry anthologies but he doesn’t have to lay out the pages; the art director does. And there’s no story with a character who engages the reader from page 5 on…I’m also grappling with science (non-fiction) and animal characters (fictionalized)
Meanwhile, I’m trying to use Procreate on an iPad to illustrate. Being a tactile girl, the virtual tools are not a good fit!
Ho-hum on I go.
Jeanne

 

 

Definition #383 science

collared lizard

“To My Daughter Teaching Science

by Dana Robbins

They are olive green and elegant, tails curved to a fine point,
these lizards that my daughter cares for so lovingly
in the terrarium in the back of her science classroom in Brooklyn,
miniature dinosaurs, motionless as yogis, fingers

curled around a branch. She has worked long underpaid hours
to create this wonderland while the politicians rail that teachers
are the problem. Gently, she drops a worm on a leaf for the lizards,
says they prefer crickets, then shows me the hissing cockroaches

who hide under bark in another tank. I recoil. “It’s instinct,”
I say. “No,” she tells me, “people all over the world eat insects.”
I remember her as a toddler, teaching songs to her bears;
her voice trilling from her room to fill every corner of the house.

Now my daughter is teaching me; I want to imitate the hooting
of owls, fold paper into birds, twist pipe cleaners into spiders,
sit cross-legged on the colorful rug to look up at my daughter,
lovely with her long hair pulled back, her eyes bright

and intent, as the long days with troubled children,
the attacks from braying critics fade away,
as the lizards on their branch tilt their inscrutable heads
to listen to the strange creatures who surround them.

“To My Daughter Teaching Science” by Dana Robbins from The Left Side of My Life. © Moon Pie Press, 2015. Reprinted with permission.

Definition: 108 Poetry and Science

Doctor DeLoca and Daughter

Anton Chekhov considered himself a doctor foremost and a writer by hobby.

There are a great number of medical doctors who also wrote fiction and poetry, among them 19th-century American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sherlock Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Robert Seymour Bridges, who is the only physician to have been Poet Laureate of England.

American writer Walker Percy was a medical doctor, and Michael Crichton completed medical school before he became a full-time writer.

Doctor Arturo Vivante wrote more than 70 stories for The New Yorker magazine.

Mystery writer Robin Cook is a physician and author of the best-selling thrillers Coma (1977) and Mutation (1989).

Dr. Abraham Verghese took a break from hospitals to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the early 1990s; he returned to medicine and now teaches and practices at Stanford, where he has a secret unmarked writing office on campus.

Pattern #38 Macro-Bio

Iceland Volcano Glacier

In atoms, science
brings divining- seen with third
eye: soul enlarging!

Pattern #32 Pansies

Hardy Pansies

hardy pansies treat
for deer: buck and doe fam’ly
fresh excavation!

Pattern #31Bosk

busk bush-a small wood
thicket of bushes bosquet,
boscage, grove, shrubs, trees!

plantation picture!

Patterns #3 Horizon

Horizon

Horizon

Horizontal threads
Pulse across eyes’ latitudes
Attitudes becalm.

MISAPPREHENDING

MISAPPREHENDING THE COSMOS

I thought the cosmos laid the foundation of the earth.
Misapprehended.

I thought the sun determined earth’s measurements.
Misapprehended.

I thought the stars sang together to lay earth’s cornerstone.
Misapprehended.

I thought birds stretched a line upon it.
Misapprehended.

I thought the heavenly beings shouted for joy.
Misapprehended.

I thought I could call the clouds to rain.
Misapprehended.

I thought I could call forth lightning.
Misapprehended.

Or tilt the water-skins of the heavens.
Missed it.

Or have understanding.
Missing.

Hunt the lions.
Crouch in their dens.
Satisfy their young.
Provide for the raven.
Mmmmm.

I misapprehended.
It was God…all along…Infinite
Not me….infinitesimal.

(see Job 38;1-7; 34-41)
Jeanne Poland
All rights.