Joyce Ray

Children's Author and Poet. MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, Vermont College of Fine Arts. Author of YA historical novel Feathers & Trumpets, A Story of Hildegard of Bingen. Contributing author of America's Notable Women series, Apprentice Shop Books.

A Moon Poem

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A Moon Poem

Ramona hosts Poetry Friday today at Pleasures from the Page. Thank you, Ramona! A big thank you to Irene Latham for the autographed copy of Moonstruck! Poems About Our Moon, edited by Roger Stevens and illustrated by Ed Boxall. In celebration of the upcoming publication of The Museum on the Moon, Irene offered Stevens’ book of poems by random selection. It arrived in my mailbox! The anthology features Roger Stevens’ fun poems, along with moon poems by other poets. Emily  Brontё’s poem “Moonlight, Summer Moonlight” is included.

Moonlight, Summer Moonlight 

‘Tis moonlight, summer moonlight,
All soft and still and fair;
The solemn hour of midnight
Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,

But most where trees are sending
Their breezy boughs on high,
Or stooping low are lending
A shelter from the sky.

And there in those wild bowers
A lovely form is laid;
Green grass and dew-steeped flowers
Wave gently round her head.

 

With all these moon poems in my brain, I visited the Colby College Art Museum and found a moon painting! August Moon, by Dan Namingha, is part of an installation named “Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts and Village.”  20 and 21st century Native artists’ work is paired with art by the Taos Society of Artists in early 1900s New Mexico, creating a dialogue with differing perspectives of Pueblo culture.

Namingha’s gorgeous painting inspired me to write this poem, a Nonet, which I learned to write in this poetry forum. If you’re not familiar with this form, it’s a nine-line poem with the first line containing 9 syllables. The remaining lines contain syllables in descending order. So 9 syllables followed by 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. Since this poem is inspired by a painting, it’s an ekphrastic nonet!

Three Sisters

They stretch in waves of harvest color

now summoned by Moon Mother’s glow.

Three sisters raised with strong roots

helped one another grow.

On a moonlit stage,

corn, beans, and squash,

moon-boldened,

laugh at

Crow.

            ~Joyce Ray ©2023

LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN

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LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN – a Book Review

This book review comes an admission – Author Toni Buzzeo is a personal friend! She is a New York Times best-selling children’s author who has published twenty-nine picture books, including the 2013 Caldecott Honor ONE COOL FRIEND, illustrated by David Small. I am delighted to recommend Toni’s first Middle Grade novel, LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN, published this summer by Holiday House.

Cora Mae Tipton yearns for electricity to come to her Kentucky mountain in 1937. Convinced of its benefits, she and her best friend set out to educate their classmates through a school newspaper, in hopes they will persuade parents to join the electric cooperative. Resistance to change comes from where it matters most – Cora’s and Ceilly’s own homes. As much as Cora loves her rural mountain life, she knows that the future will require communication dependent upon electricity. Her dream of becoming a journalist also depends on light for nighttime exam studies. Cora will win readers’ hearts as she navigates the demands of a mother suffering from depression, the near tragedy of an injured brother, and her own sorrow in her quest to bring light to Shadow Mountain.

Author Toni Buzzeo has created a detailed setting for well-developed characters in this story of friendship, family, loss, and personal motivation. While the action keeps the reader turning the page, Light Comes to Shadow Mountain is a rare gem of a book that invites reflection. Readers who love Lauren Wolk’s Echo Mountain will love Light Comes to Shadow Mountain.

You can visit Toni on her website: https://tonibuzzeo.com/

SUSTAINABILITY, BASHO, AND A NEW BOOK

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What does the 17th century poet Bashô have to do with sustainability? As a Buddhist, this haiku master revered nature. His haiku celebrate frogs, cicadas, summer rain and much more. He lived in simpler times when sustainability was a way of life, not a call to save the planet.

Bashô traveled by foot throughout Japan and recorded his impressions. The Narrow Road to the Interior is his literary travelogue in a totally new poetic form – haibun. Haibun consists of a paragraph of prose followed by a haiku. The haiku is meant to complement the text or suggest new meaning. My new book is both a nod to Bashô and a call to sustainable practices.

the seed of all song
is the farmer’s busy hum
as he plants his rice

~Bashô, The Narrow Road to the Interior

 

Thank you to Linda, hosting today from A World Edgewise. My blog has been on vacation for a long time – Covid, broken arm, rehab, other projects. Sometimes it’s a challenge to pick up from where you left off!

This month I’m thrilled to announce publication of Food for All our Tomorrows, Poems on Seed, Soil, and Sustainability by the Asian Rural Institute Press. AFARI (American Friends of ARI) has generously printed copies for a North American audience.

This book is a collection of twenty-nine bi-lingual poems for middle grade in the haibun style. Four years in the making, the idea for this book germinated throughout three volunteer stints at the Asian Rural Institute in Tochigi, Japan. Though the haiku that complete each haibun are classified as English language haiku, I hope that Bashô might have approved.

ARI is tucked away on a hillside in Japan. It’s a green school, one committed to sustainable farming where grassroots people can learn and share ideas for building a better world.

My husband Bob and I spent 4 months at ARI in 2010, and two months each in 2013 and 2018. We planted and harvested, mucked and fed pigs, along with chickens, goats, and fish. We provided office support, cooked meals, worshiped, sang and played together.

And we fell in love with ARI where grassroots participants from Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Africa and South America produce food, honor the earth by caring for the soil, conserve resources, and care for each other.

 

 

I am honored that the Asian Rural Institute chose to publish this book. I hope it will plant many seeds- seeds of respect for soil and plants, and seeds of awareness of our need for each other.

 

See the Blog Post for comments

After Edna St. Vincent Millay

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After Edna St. Vincent Millay

Karen Eastlund hosts this week’s Roundup. Thank you, Karen. Find all the poetic offerings and end-of-June musings over at Karen’s Got a Blog!  

This week I’m writing from Maine, and it feels so good to be back in my home state. Almost as if to welcome me home, one of my poems aired on WERU Community Radio in Blue, Hill, Maine last week.

During an April online workshop, participants were asked to write a poem using the first line of another poem. I began with the delicious first line of an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, “Elegy Before Death.”

There will be rose and rhododendron

(after Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Elegy Before Death”)

There will be rose and rhododendron

before you take your leave.

Apple blossoms’ heady scent

will welcome swarms of bees.

In the crotch of Cortland branches,

finches will nest and sing.

Eggs will hatch, young will fledge,

blind to your scourge’s sting.

There will be solitary picnics

beneath gnarled apple trees,

gratitude for setting fruit,

for cool shade of leaves.

Oh, would the plucked fruit of Eve,

her curious mind cursed,

yield knowledge of a longed-for cure

before orchard drops are pressed!

Your demise will leave us reeling.

Our wounds are grave and deep.

Not one of us will mourn your passing;

for you, we will not weep.

~Joyce Ray © 2020

You can hear the radio recording of the poem on a post on my website, along with a piece about my writing journey.  I’d love to have a visit from you!

Reader Review by Becky Goodwin

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What a simply beautiful book. The ongoing themes of fear over loss, fear of sexuality, fear of pain and that God will ask too much of her (Hildegard) made her character feel human, approachable and profoundly accessible, even though the details of her life are so foreign to today’s audience. The details of the time period – the specific mention of everything from the furniture in the monastery to the herbs used in the infirmary made the 12th century come alive and created texture to the story – the space itself became real for me. I couldn’t put it down!

Reader Review by Carol Armstrong, Pennsylvania

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With profound sensitivity, the author of Feathers and Trumpets breathes beauty and contemporary relevance into the life of the 12th century historical personage Hildegard of Bingen. A religious visionary, Hildegard is well-known today among students of sacred medieval music for her ethereal Gregorian chants, and among scientists for her learned treatises on natural history and the medicinal uses of plants, trees and animals to cure human disease. But it is her deep faith and her strength of character that inspires author Joyce Ray and which she unfolds to us in this book. With language and images that are poetic and lyrical, and with a structure which is unconsciously simple and straight-forward, the author transports the reader from the ordinariness of the material and mundane to that of spiritual beauty, power and grace.

Although the book is catalogued as juvenile fiction, readers of all ages will find a quiet beauty in the telling and a source of inspiration in the reading of Hildegard’s courage, unflagging spirit, deep intellect and self-discipline in facing the social, physical and gender obstacles in her life and of her time.

VCFA’s The Launch Pad interviews Joyce Ray about Feathers & Trumpets

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The MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults Author Blog

How did attending VCFA affect your writing life?

VCFA made me part of a community of writers and elevated my writing to a
lifelong adventure. I began to see what made books work. My critical
analysis skills developed, and my critiquing skills improved. Most
importantly, I learned to write from my heart.

See the entire post: