Happy Poetry Friday, Friends!
This week saw considerable progress on the upcoming new anthology Picture Perfect Poetry: An Anthology of Ekphrastic Nature Poetry For Students.
In fact, I should be ready to send it in for a proof copy today! I am so excited that this project came together. The book is beautiful! Thank you to all of those who contributed to the anthology.
I chose a tentative book birthday of March 31st, 2024. Primarily, this date was chosen because I told participants it would be published in March. But, the date depends on a few things, including how much I need to change after I see the proof.
I am trying to be as thorough as possible – sometimes triple-checking things – so that I have very little editing to do after proofing the hard copy.
My other thought though is that maybe I should just have it come out during April since it is Poetry Month. I’d be interested in hearing your opinions on that.
The book is uploaded to KDP (Kindle Direct Press) but I plan to use Ingram Spark too. I just have to read a little about what happens with ISBN numbers (I bought my own numbers – so it is not linked to KDP) when I choose to publish through both platforms. I know it’s possible, I just have to read the specifics.
After all, it would be a great book for school libraries, bookstores, and teachers to have. Ingram Spark is better for that.
Lastly, one of the reasons I wanted to publish this anthology was because I saw so much work from Poetry Friday Friends and on other pages, where the authors were getting rejected. This applies to me as well.
A case in point is my villain poem. Some might remember I wrote a poem on a villain but didn’t share it because it had to be unpublished (yes, even to a blog) to be submitted. Twice now it has received rejections. I know that is not a lot but when I received the second one early this week, it brought forward a feeling of perseverance that was part of my motivation for the Picture Perfect Poetry Anthology.
I’d like to share the poem with you now. If you have suggestions, please let me know. I want to experiment with crowd-sourcing a poem! Post Script: I think the ending line needs work.
Captain Hook’s Rant
Oh Peter, why do you have to be such a child?
Flying around with Wendy and Smee,
You’re going nowhere fast, can’t you see?
The magic you use is not a match for me,
For Captain Hook, I am, and will always be.
My ship is my home, where you don’t belong.
Following my orders is how my crew stays strong.
Against the silly games that you want to play,
Zipping in and out with that fairy that cannot slay.
You don’t know me at all; How I earned this boat!
Where I came from, how I worked, all to stay afloat.
Oh, Peter! Stop your foolish games!
Come now, grow up, so together we can have fame.
We’ll have a dual, one will win, and another will die,
I know which side of the sword I’ll be, without a lie.
The fight will be clean, two grown-up men.
No fairies, no pirates, just us in the fen.
Oh Peter, grow up now, I won’t wait anymore
For you to continue being a child!
© Carol Labuzzetta, 2023
Wisconsin Poet
I also wrote about Peter Pan in my Medium blog for today. You can catch that article here.
This week Poetry Friday is hosted by Tanita Davis on her blog, fiction, instead of lies. Thanks for hosting Tanita!
The Apples in My Orchard 
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