Lesson Prep: A Poem

While looking for something special to present to my Badgerdogs for tomorrow's class, I found a Robert Langston treasure.  Short, succinct, and thought provoking. I hope my poetic pups will connect with it. 

Deeper

A bird tapped at my window,

trying to crack open a sunflower seed.

I stared at it

in search of a deeper meaning

but found none. Should I be surprised?

Can any creature but man have a purpose?

The bird stood up and looked me in the eye.

In that glint I saw

it searching for a deeper meaning.

Finding none, it turned

and flew away.

This poem should generate some 4th grade conversation, shouldn't it?

Submitting for the Badgerdog Anthology

It's that time of year again in Badgerdog, when I glean through this semester's fabulous collection of poetry, essays, and fiction my twenty-four pups have been writing to try and decide what would be best to include in the Youth Voices in Ink Anthology. I've returned to Manor Elementary this semester and it has been great fun, like a homecoming in a sense. It’s really nice to back.

This year’s little writing community is comprised of brave kids from all walks of life: athletes and cheerleaders, artists and chess players, karate kids and dancers. And, intrinsic to all of the students is a love for reading and writing. Yes! 

These fine young authors seem to be starving to get at the page. Class goes like this. I explain the lesson, make a few suggestions and then…POW!...they blaze away at their journals as if their pencils are on fire. I just stand back and watch them go. You have to love that Manor Elementary Badgerdog enthusiasm.

Want to see this whole Baderdog experience is for yourself? Come by the Texas Book Festival this weekend and attend a reading at 10:30 in the Capital Extension Room E1.012 and hear for yourself. You'll be amazed....I promise!

Arrooooo!!!

My 3 A.M. Epiphany

I know I said we'd begin to discuss Brooks' masterpiece The Moves Make the Man, and we will, mind you. We will. But last night, it hit me! I finally understood why the voice of the Sportcaster gets my goat. In two words....Author Intrusion! The Sportcaster cannot keep from lacing their text with sport lingo because they are not coming to the page fully from the character's perspective, but rather from their own. 

Like I said earlier, Sportscasters assume that the reader is a sports fan, hence the lingo load. Now, books written in this slant can be quite successful. Though lots of readers love them, they're just not my cup of Gatorade.

For example, highly successful Mike Lupica is a well-loved author and ESPN sports caster, so the voice comes by naturally. The lingo is his schtick. It is a big part of who he is. While his books are very, very popular, his Sportcaster-ness fouls out in his prose from time to time. Here's a line to consider from Mike's Travel Team.

In this scene a twelve-year-old Danny is watching a girl his age play basketball. As she bounds around the court in her budding-cuteness, Danny thinks that she was out there, "...scoring all the points, getting all the rebounds, passing like she was ready at twelve to go play for the women's teams at UConn or Tennessee or one of those colleges where the women's team was better and more famous than the men's" (97). Can you hear the sport casting author speaking rather than hormone-charged, adolescent Danny? I don't think that, while inhabiting a moment like this one, the mind of a twelve-year-old boy would go directly to collegiate rankings. I think he'd keep his eye on the girl with the ball and the feelings she is generating inside of him. In this instance, Lupica's Sportcaster author voice intruded upon the character's voice. Mike trumped Danny. Lupica's voice was louder, sending Danny to the literary showers. Yerrr out! I'm talking now.

There...now maybe I can get some sleep tonight!

The Moves of a Gamer

Gamers know sport, yet focus on story. They have an amazing knack for weaving the invisible webbing of a character's athleticism in and out of all aspects of the plot. In More Than Just a Game, Chris Crowe says that writers who approach the genre in this slant are"... more concerned with story than sports action, it is important that sports stories focus on character and the lessons characters learn from their involvement with athletics and with other people" (41). In these great books sport truly becomes a metaphor for life. The protagonist's bond with sport is used to challenge character.  To test it. Strain it. Break it and build it back again. 

Rather than being cliched fables about winning and losing, there is a definate purpose for athletic scenes in a these novels, stemming from the innate nature of what the character brings to the page. The athletic arena is the back drop for these stories, rather than the theme's totality. Sport is the cat gut that ties the emotional arc to the story simply because the character happens to be an athlete.

And, boy....does the athletic playing field give a writer the equipment needed to tell a dynamic story.

Over the course of the next few posts, let's look at one of my most favorite sports novels, The Moves Make a Man by Bruce Brooks.  Let's put my Gamer theory to the test. Does Brooks approach the story through the lens of character? Is his work packed with cliche's? And, if so, how are they used? To propel the trajectory of the story or to impress the reader with his razzle-dazzle knowledge of the game? Hmmm...I wonder.

Sports Novels: The Voice of the Gamer

Ahhhh, the Gamer. The writer who knows what it is like to inhabit the sweaty, scraped-up, pressure-packed skin of an athlete. If they don't have a first hand experience in the sporting arena, they write like they do because they have taken the time to get it right. Gamers know that the connection to sport lies within the character. The protagonist takes their unique athletic ability along with them as the plot unfolds. Sport is important to the story because it is important to the character.

Sport is the backdrop, the field onto which the story unfolds rather than being the story itself.  Gamers do not rely on over-used clichés. Their language is engaging, fresh, and alive!

William Zinsser encourages writers of sports novels to, "Hold the hype and give us heroes who are believable" (184). Not some flat, undeveloped, fair-weather fan athlete or some game-dominated, redundant, sportscaster slanted plot line. No! Zinsser goes on to say, "Sport is now a major frontier of social change, and some of the nation's most vexing issues...are being played out in our grandstands and locker rooms." (185). Real stories about real issues with well-developed, complex characters. Good stuff, wouldn't you say?

Oh sure, there is plenty of game action in stories told in this slant. Of course there is. That's the world in which the character resides, isn't it? A skilled Gamer takes the essence of athletic arena...the referees and locker rooms, doing some pine time and putting up the winning point, injuries and elation...and lets the characters take the lead to create a great story.

A Gamer's story is much, much more than just a sports story. It is a story about life!

Reference: Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.