Valentine's Day in Xanadu

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

(Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

I've been reading about Marco Polo, Venice, the Silk Road, and the court of Kublai Khan in Alan Armstrong's middle grade novel Looking for Marco Polo (Random House, 2009).  Coleridge's poem isn't there, but I couldn't resist posting it in advance of Valentine's Day.

I first read the opening lines of Kubla Khan a long time ago, in another middle grade novel, Next Door to Xanadu by Doris Orgel (1969).  That book has nothing to do with thirteenth century explorers or emperors--it's about two ten-year-old girls who live in an apartment building in Brooklyn, actually--but I still remember the way the poem threaded itself throught the final chapters of the book, and I've always wondered what went on in that pleasure dome.  N.b. that is not the focus of my current research.

Happy Valentine's Day!

STBA Blog Tour: Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets

 

Welcome to the 2010 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour!  I'm honored to be hosting Margarita Engle, author of Tropical Secrets:  Holocaust Refugees in Cuba (Henry Holt, 2009), at bookstogether today.  Tropical Secrets is this year's STBA winner in the Teen Readers category.

Anamaria Anderson (AA):  Congratulations and welcome to bookstogether, Margarita!

Margarita Engle (ME):  Thank you.  I am so deeply honored by the Sydney Taylor Award, and I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak about Tropical Secrets. 

AA:  Tropical Secrets is such an evocative title.  Would you share some of the secrets to which it refers (without, of course, giving any of them away)?

ME:  I feel very close to this title.  It springs from my own sense of wonder about the story.  There is a feeling of discovery.  I am fascinated by the safe harbor Jewish refugees found in Cuba, and in other Latin American countries as well.  I am particularly intrigued by the Cuban teenagers who volunteered to teach Spanish to the refugees.

AA:  How did you go about the research for this story?

ME:  I found the factual details in an amazing scholarly study called Tropical Diaspora, by Robert M. Levine.  Without the nonfiction accounts in that reference, I could not have written Tropical Secrets.  I am astonished that the history of Holocaust refugees in Cuba, and in Latin America as a whole, is not more familiar. 

AA:  I agree, Margarita.  The fictional characters of Tropical Secrets—Daniel, Paloma, David, and el Gordo—bring these unfamiliar historical events to life for your readers.  When did your characters, and their personal stories, begin to reveal themselves to you?

ME:  The characters and plot of Tropical Secrets came to me in a huge wave.  It was overwhelming.  I could barely scribble fast enough to keep up with the flow of words.  It was as if this story had been waiting to be told, and was searching for a home.

My mother is Cuban, and was raised Catholic.  My father is the American son of Ukrainian-Jewish refugees.  Tropical Secrets unites the diverse branches of my ancestry.

AA:  I think it found the perfect home.  What would you like your readers to take home from Tropical Secrets?

ME:  I wrote Tropical Secrets because I admire the resilience of refugees, and the generosity of those who help them.  This is a facet of Tropical Secrets that transcends all borders and eras.  It is true of natural disasters as well as manmade ones.  I simply wanted to pay homage to the idea of safe harbors and the kindness of strangers.

AA:  That facet of Tropical Secrets resonates especially clearly right now, in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti; and it is always worth remembering.

Thank you so much, Margarita, for these insights into your work, and congratulations again.  I look forward to your forthcoming books (The Firefly Letters and Summer Birds:  The Butterflies of Maria Merian, both 2010) and wish you all the best.

And thank all of you for stopping by the STBA Blog Tour!  Please be sure to visit the other stops on the tour today and later this week; and of course I hope you'll visit me at bookstogether anytime.

Poetry on ice?

Literally, according to this reference in Louise Borden's The Greatest Skating Race: A World War II Story from the Netherlands (illustrated by Niki Daly; Margaret K. McElderry, 2004):

She could cut letters and words in the ice of the canal
with the blade of her skate,
like the long-ago Dutch poets.

Who were these Dutch poets?  Did they really cut poems in the ice?  Vondel and Bredero wrote poems about skating during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (known as Europe's Little Ice Age), and some of Vondel's poems are even short enough to skate (two words: U / Nu!).  The whole thing is probably apocryphal, but it's a lovely image nonetheless.

[The painting is by Hendrick Avercamp, A Scene on the Ice (1625).  You might recognize it from Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (actually, it belongs to the National Gallery, and you can skate there, too).]

Paint me a poem in reverse

I met Justine Rowden, author of Paint Me a Poem: Poems Inspired by Masterpieces of Art (Boyds Mills, 2005) at KidlitCon '09 (we had exchanged email before then, and she had kindly sent me a review copy of her book).  In Paint Me a Poem, Justine pairs each of thirteen paintings from the National Gallery of Art's collection with an original poem that offers just one new and unexpected way to look at it.

My favorite of Rowden's poems was inspired by Andre Derain's Flowers in a Vase, a still life I probably wouldn't have stopped to look at if I passed it in the Gallery.  Justine imagines two of the flowers (pink roses, also shown in a detail image) jostling one another for space in the vase.

The quality of the reproductions in Paint Me a Poem is excellent.  Unfortunately, as Justine informed me, the cover image of Cat and Kittens by an anonymous 19th century American artists was reversed!  The interior image is correct, and the book is being reprinted.  [Breaking news!  Laura at Author Amok reports that Paint Me a Poem has just been reprinted.]

What one detail of Cat and Kittens captures your imagination?  Poems welcomed but not required!

[Poetry Friday is at GottaBook today.  Thanks, Greg!]