I’m in the middle of moving of out my house. It’s not a move my family and I want, but it’s happening nonetheless—and quickly! So much has been going on I’ve hardly had time to process my emotions, but I have many. They’re raw and living right on the surface of my skin. If someone, even gently, were to touch my shoulder, I feel like I would evaporate into a pile of dust.
It’s not just the move; it’s everything I’ve been going through these past few years. I guess you could call it a midlife crisis. But Moonbow isn’t about midlife; it’s about children’s books. So I won’t go into all that. However, I did recently have a moment of clarity. While packing up boxes, I found a folder from 2010. Inside were papers I’d written about a shiny new business I wanted to launch called Glitter Guide. I’d mapped out all my hopes and dreams. And you know what? Everything I wrote in those thirteen-year-old papers, I eventually achieved. It was a nice reminder that good things can happen and will happen, maybe not on my timeline, and certainly not without hard work and dedication, but they will. I just have to keep searching for those *Flashes of Delight.
One of those delights is poetry. Reading poetry, no matter how abstract or avant-garde, sparks my curiosity and inspires me. I’m not using it for comfort or to soothe my anxieties, although sometimes it does; I use it for leverage. It’s a way to catapult my thoughts in new directions, which may seem weird considering the amount of unknown I’m already treading through. It’s like a broken compass. Instead of showing me the right direction, it shows me there is no right direction. And strangely, that’s a delight.
I often turn to the poet Ruth Krauss. A few months ago, I read her poem “If Only.” I also wrote about her beautiful and perplexing multiplicity as a children’s author (you can read that article here). Krauss wasn’t afraid to do things differently. Her children’s books and her poems for adults can sometimes leave people frustrated. I read an old Kirkus Review of Minestrone (1981), a collection of Krauss’s poetry, poem plays, and lines from her books for children, and I felt like they missed the point—or rather, they believed there needed to be a point. Of course Krauss’s words work best when they’re used in their intended form, but Minestrone isn’t a picture book, and it’s not trying to be. It’s not even trying to be a poetry book. It’s Krauss in all her disparate forms. We’re getting a snapshot into her wildly imaginative mind. Does it make sense? That depends on who you ask. Even the sentimental sections don’t bother me. It’s OK to be saccharine every once and a while. Especially when it’s balanced with the funny and strange poetry that Krauss does so well.