Read about Stone Soup’s latest book releases below! A note from William Rubel Friends – I am exceedingly proud to announce that you can now preorder Sarah Hunt’s Foxtale, the First Place (Fiction) winner of our third Annual Book Contest held in 2021. Many, many congratulations, Sarah! The official publication date is November 15. Place your orders now to get the book as soon as it is released and in time for the holiday season. Before talking more about the book, I would like to acknowledge and congratulate the many young writers who submitted works to the competition. It takes a great deal of determination to complete a book-length work of fiction or poetry and courage to submit the work to a contest. Anyone who manages to complete a long work of fiction—or a book-length poetry collection—has accomplished a miracle. Sarah’s novel is set in the future. It involves climate change, space travel, adventure—classic science fiction! It is also a literary work, however. Chapters open with thoughtful aphorisms and quotes from other authors that express ideas important to the story. Sarah’s writing is intense! She is one of those authors who seems to inhabit her characters such that you see and feel what they see and feel. One becomes intensely attached to the characters and to the story. A real page turner! I have a second book to announce today, too. The collection of poems, Catalogue of Ripening, was written by Sabrina Guo during her first years in high school. She is currently a senior. For several years, Sabrina was a Stone Soup star, a repeat contributor and winner of multiple writing contests. This is our first foray into publishing works by Stone Soup authors who have moved into the next stage of their writing life. Longtime readers of this newsletter know that Sabrina has developed a substantive focus on social action: she is the inspiration for Stone Soup’s Refugee Project, has founded multiple programs aimed at empowering girls, and raised tens of thousands of dollars to buy protective gear for medical workers early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Knowing these aspects of her life story, you will find her poetic voice is equally curious, outward-looking, and deeply empathetic. The poems in this collection are beautiful, thoughtful literary works that show Sabrina to be a ripening literary voice, one that is coming into her own. It is very exciting for Stone Soup to see one of our writers mature. Please support Sara and Sabrina by purchasing their books! Both titles are appropriate for either young adult or adult readers and are now available for order (or preorder!) through all major book retailers and at your local bookstore, or by clicking the links to buy on our Amazon storefront, or from an Indie bookstore. My best, Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #44: Writing Dialogue
An update from our forty-forth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 8, plus some of the output published below This week’s workshop, Conner began with the caveat that these tools for writing dialogue, while strict, are just his opinion, and that we are free to write dialogue however we like. Conner’s “eight tools for writing dialogue,” not rules, started with the suggestion that dialogue should be realistic, but not too realistic. For example, even though most people overuse the word “like,” we don’t need to pepper our dialogue with these phrases. The rest of the tools were as follows: 2) use dialogue to reveal characters (differentiate characters, show a character’s personality, make character’s seem real, only write down interesting, essential, and surprising dialogue). As an example we read an excerpt of dialogue from Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God. 3) Start dialogue late, and end dialogue early. In other words, forget about hello and goodbye; jump into the dialogue at the moment the dialogue is essential, and end before the dialogue gets tedious. 4) Avoid the “information dump,” situations in which the characters are presenting each other with information they already know, but that the audience doesn’t. This information should be placed in summary. 5) Gestures are more communicative than words. As an example, we revised the sentence “‘I can’t believe it,’ he shouted, covering his mouth in disbelief” into “he covered his mouth.” 6) Have your characters talk to each other while simultaneously doing something else (as in the 2013 Pulitzer Price winning play Disgraced); 7) Use indirect dialogue, or when characters speak past each other with their own agendas. We used an example from Hemingway’s story “Hills Like White Elephants,” wherein the man wants to talk about their relationship, whereas the woman wants to talk about literally anything else. But you don’t want to get too indirect to the point of using non-sequiturs. 8) Avoid synonyms of the “to say” verb. They often end up being redundancies. Let the reader infer the mood rather than explaining it. The Challenge: Write a poem or short story entirely in dialogue, in which the characters are doing something else—walking, building something, making dinner, writing a letter, playing a game, telling a story—while talking to each other. The Participants: Emma, Anna, Alice, Russell, Savi, Anushka, Arjun, Allie, Robert, Aditi, Benedetta, Tate, Ella, Josh, Samantha In the Kitchen Emma Hoff, 10 “And she brought along all of her friends… I swear, people flit to her like moths to a lamp!” “Moths… horrible things.” “And I simply had to sit there and take it all, trying to pull her over to the side to tell her that I’d never invited any of these people without seeming rude!” “They make holes in clothes, you know that? Well, they’ll never get near any of my clothes… they’ll have to meet my swatter first!” “And then she insisted that they were ‘ever so kind,’ and ‘wouldn’t I let them stay?’ and I had to say yes. She makes me so angry sometimes!” “I would never invite her to a party… she’s just as bad as one of them moths!” “And then she said, ‘oh, Jerry, you’re ever so kind to let them stay!’ and then bustled about, trying to help, but she didn’t do anything at all! She isn’t even interesting to talk to!” “Parties are such a waste of time… oh, look, I’ve burned the potatoes! Stop distracting me with your talk of insects.” “But I’m not talking about insects… here, let me help you, you’ve gone and covered the whole counter with potato skins, how many did you use?” “Don’t tell me I didn’t hear you… you were talking about insects! Female insects, who do nothing but buzz in your ear all day, who you, for some reason, invite to your parties.” “Well, it was definitely a mistake… I’m serious, how many potatoes did you use? And you’re not planning on using all those green beans, are you?” “I’m not planning on wasting my time looking at that silly recipe… I trust my cooking instincts. You can never have too many potatoes.” “This is absolutely ridiculous!” “Maybe you can invite that bug and her millions of friends over to finish our leftovers.” “Stop calling her a bug!” “Why? I thought you didn’t like her.” “I simply don’t believe in calling people bugs.” “Phooey… Myrtle called Janet a nosy fly all of yesterday… of course, I won’t tell her that I agree with her, I would never live it down…” “That many green beans is quite enough…” “You know, Myrtle was telling me earlier that I should go to a nursing home somewhere, where someone can take care of me… I told her that I had my son to take care of me, if you weren’t always away at your parties…” “You can stop glaring at me, you’re exaggerating… and don’t dump all the green beans in!”
Poetry Soup Ep. 1: “The Painter” by John Ashbery
Mission Statement A lot of people don’t realize how great poetry can be, and there are very few places where young people can be introduced to great poets. I created Poetry Soup to share my love for poetry and to inspire others to read more of it. In this podcast, which will come out 1-2 times a month, I will read and discuss poems by some of my favorite poets, such as Wislawa Szymborska, Tomaz Salumun, and Wallace Stevens. I hope you enjoy it! Ep. 1: “The Painter” by John Ashbery Transcript Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Each episode, I’ll discuss a different poem and poet. Today, I’ll be talking about a sestina by John Ashbery. Imagine a painter that could never even begin a single painting. This is the subject of John Ashbery’s “The Painter.” This poem is a beautiful sestina (we’ll talk more about sestinas later) that Conner, the instructor of one of the Stone Soup writing workshops, brought up in one of his classes. John Ashbery was born on July 28, 1927, in Rochester, New York, the US. He was a member of the New York School of Poets, a group of poets, many of whom lived in New York City, who had similar writing styles. The school included some of my favorite poets. James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest, and Frank O’Hara were all members. Ashbery wrote a lot during his lifetime, including a novel called A Nest of Ninnies (published in 1969) with Schuyler and many poetry collections, including Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, which was published in 1975 and won three awards: the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Award. Ashbery also penned several plays and was an art critic (in fact, a book called Reported Sightings, Art Chronicles 1957-1987, edited by Daniel Bergman, was published in 1989, containing Ashbery’s collected art reviews). Ashbery’s poems were also compiled into Collected Poems, 1956-1987, which made Ashbery the first poet to ever be published in the Library of America (LOA) series. John Ashbery died on September 3, 2017, in Hudson, New York, US, at the age of 90. Now I’m going to read “The Painter.” Afterwards, I’ll talk about it! Sitting between the sea and the buildings He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait. But just as children imagine a prayer Is merely silence, he expected his subject To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush, Plaster its own portrait on the canvas. So there was never any paint on his canvas Until the people who lived in the buildings Put him to work: “Try using the brush As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait, Something less angry and large, and more subject To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.” How could he explain to them his prayer That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas? He chose his wife for a new subject, Making her vast, like ruined buildings, As if, forgetting itself, the portrait Had expressed itself without a brush. Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer: “My soul, when I paint this next portrait Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.” The news spread like wildfire through the buildings: He had gone back to the sea for his subject. Imagine a painter crucified by his subject! Too exhausted even to lift his brush, He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer Now, of putting ourselves on canvas, Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!” Others declared it a self-portrait. Finally all indications of a subject Began to fade, leaving the canvas Perfectly white. He put down the brush. At once a howl, that was also a prayer, Arose from the overcrowded buildings. They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings; And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer. This is a miraculous example of a sestina — but what is a sestina? A sestina is a poetic form with all lines ending the same way. Did you notice how certain words repeated throughout the poem? Those are the six end words. Each line has to end with them, but they shift position in different stanzas. Each stanza has six lines. Each line ends with a word. The last word of the last line is the word that ends the first line of the next stanza. The end word of the first line becomes the end word of the second line. It’s a really complicated pattern, so it’s always helpful to have an example poem! A sestina has seven stanzas. The last stanza has three lines and uses two of the end words in each line. Sometimes, because this form can be restrictive, sestinas can sound clunky. “The Painter,” however, has done a very good job of flowing just like a free-form poem should. Now I am led to talk about the poem itself. I’m not trying to be cliche when I say that this poem emphasizes the power of creativity. In the beginning of the poem, the painter sits and stares at the sea — but he doesn’t paint. The people in the buildings tell him to “try using the brush” and actually paint something. They tell him that if he can’t paint the sea, he should choose something else for his subject, so he chooses his wife. However, the painter still does not draw anything and returns to the sea as his subject. The ending of his poem is strange. The people become so angry that they throw his canvas off the top of the building into the ocean — but even though he has not painted anything, he is so involved in his art that the blank portrait has become himself. They are one and the same. In the last line, “as though
