Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Make Every Word Count

As some of you know, Chris Heppermann and I wrote a trilogy for young readers. Basically aimed at pre-teen girls featuring -- wait for it -- three pre-teen girls. Oh, and a witch. Backyard Witch, as a matter of fact. But don’t leave your seats while the blog is in motion. Afterwards, you may rush to Amazon.

Writing with Chris was fun; writing for younger kids was fun. I’d never done anything like that, but Chris knows the kid-business and is great at structure. I like to just sit around in my smarty pants and emit evenly-spaced bars of irony and jest. (And that’s me emitting, okay. Not my pants.)

Now she wants to work on something even shorter. For even younger readers. Sure, I’m game.

So we think of some characters and some problem-to-solve. Wendell as a bored, over- sheltered little bear and Goldy as the fearless daughter of avant-garde artists.

Chris told me what to do -- Punchy. Short sentences. Not much description since an illustrator will do that. Here’s my opening:

*    *     *

“Wendell, are you all right?”

Wendell looked into his empty bowl. “Almost finished, Ma.”

“But you’re all right.”

“I’m just on the patio.”

He made his spoon clink against the blue bowl so he could stay outdoors a little longer. So his mother would think he was occupied. And safe.

Not even twenty yards away, stood the woods. Tall trees making the usual dark canopy. A familiar path leading toward the sun-dappled clearing, then circling back toward his house. A path he walked every day with his parents while the porridge cooled. Every day. Day after day.

He could see other paths, dimmer ones. Where did they go? And who made them?

With a sigh, he carried his bowl indoors and put it on the sink.

“Such a good little bear,” said his mother patting him on the head. “Time for a nap now?”

“Mom, I just ate breakfast.”

*  *  *

And here’s Chris’s:

On the wall of Wendell’s bedroom was a map that showed all of the places he could never go:

Up north to the bridge. “You might fall off,” said Mama.

Down south to the lake. “You might fall in,” said Papa.

Out west to the cave. “Full of scorpions,” said Mama. 

Out east to the meadow. “Who knows what’s over there,” said Papa.

“I’ll be careful,” said Wendell.

“It’s time for breakfast,” said Mama.

“How am I supposed to be an explorer when I grow up if you never let me explore?” said Wendell on the way downstairs.

*    *    *

I looked at hers and thought, Oh, yeah. So that’s what you meant. Harder than it looks, but aren’t most new things? I’m not giving up. I’ll think haiku. Make every word count.

Stay tuned.


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: You Never Know

My friend Gerry Locklin turned me onto poetry in grad school at the University of Arizona. We were 22 and 23 respectively when he showed me a copy of an indie magazine named The Wormwood Review. I didn’t need drugs to open those doors of perception. The Wormwood Review did it for me. I was studying poetry (and how I hate to see the words study and poetry side by side. Can’t you just see students gritting their teeth and wondering what that freaking albatross stands for?) but none of the poems in Wormwood or Poetry Now or Aldebran Review needed lucubration; they were right there on the page waiting to be enjoyed.

And they were enjoyable: goofy and uncultivated and against-everything-one-should-be-against, they were little celebrations of another kind of life – not serious, not dogged, not sober, highbrow or grave. They looked liked they’d been fun to write and they were fun to read. Did any of these poets imagine their verse was immortal or enduring? No way. Although Wormwood lasted a long time, lots of the indie mags were as ephemeral as the poetry they published. Here today, gone – sometimes – today.

Still, a lot of us who started fifty or so years ago are still around, still writing, and often still not taking things seriously. But here’s the thing – writing fast as I do and in a sense tossing poems often leads to a lot of balmy but imprudent work. Poems that don’t jell and never will. Poems that more witless than witty. Poems that collapse under the strain of so much whimsy. But every now and then something very cool happens and a poem steps forward wearing its jester’s cap and bells and just kills. A little gift from the poetry gods.

Of course, after that I want another gift, so every morning I give my Ego ten bucks and send it off to watch a movie about itself, put my butt in the chair and do my best. Because – as the title up there says, you never know.

*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.