Meanwhile, across the Pond

I'm watching a live stream of James Murdoch being questioned by members of Parliament in London, even as I write. (Thank you, Guardian newspaper.) I continue to be fascinated by this scandal, for reasons too numerous to examine in this post. But here's what struck me this morning:

12.54pm: Louise Mensch apologises that she has to leave immediately after her questions to collect her children which she says are the same ages as Murdoch's.

Could you imagine for one second that a member of the US Congress would say he/she had to leave a hearing to pick up his/her children? Even one as glamorous as Louise Mensch? I await the day.

To do list for this past Columbus Day

Write till noon
Dye eyelashes
Bike downtown
Come up with good book idea
Occupy Wall Street
Kayak in Hudson
Catch Martin Scorsese's Hugo as a work-in-progress


All done!

Poetry Friday: The Unacknowledged Legislators of Mankind

Marilyn Singer will be one of the panelists tomorrow at a program at the New York Public Library called "A Passel of Poets: Children's Poetry in the Modern Age." One of the questions librarian Betsy Bird asks is "Does poetry for kids ever truly get its due?' I actually think it does; if not publicly, then in the hearts and minds of the readers. Certainly that was true for this reader of poetry.

Shelley called poets the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. Here's an acknowledgment of poetry for a Friday night by way of Kurt Anderson and his radio program Studio 360. Anderson interviewed Palestinian poet Tamim Al-Bargouthi on NPR earlier this week. Al-Bargouthi, previously unknown to this blogger, is a poet who came to the world's attention with his poem "In Jerusalem." His father is Palestinian; his mother Egyptian.

Al-Bargouthi is not in Cairo right now, though from Kurt Anderson's interview it sounds as if he longs to be there. But his contribution has been felt. He wrote a poem about the revolution in Egypt, and faxed it to his newspaper in Cairo. According to Studio 360, when the paper published it, the text was photocopied and distributed among the people risking their lives in Tahrir Square. Al-Bargouthi's image was somehow broadcast "every ten minutes" on sheets pinned up by the people calling for Mubarak's ouster in Cairo. In a revolution, poetry is worth dying for.

This is a transcription of Al-Bargouthi's very rough and off-the-cuff translation on Anderson's radio show. I don’t have any Arabic, so I can neither read nor transcribe his words. I wish I could. But even in this unpoetic translation, the poetry speaks for itself.

O Egypt, It’s Close

We’re close, it’s going to be a good day,

Nothing remains of power but a few batons,

If you don’t believe it, just come to the Square and see.

The tyrant only exists in the imagination of his subjects,

Even those who stays at home after this will be free.

Poetry Friday: Too big to fail

With the presidential Marine 1 helicopter chopping its blades over our offices yesterday, Earth Day didn't feel very green here at Sanford Greenburger. Obama was on his way to scold Wall Street at nearby Cooper Union. Sirens blared, traffic snarled.

But then I received this beautiful message in an email from poet and novelist George Ella Lyon, and the two worlds grafted together.


THE MEADOW DOES NOT KNOW


about the stock market.

Today she is worth

exactly what she was worth

yesterday, a year ago, at creation.

I don’t mean property value,

taxable assets. I mean

milkweed and copper moths

honeybees, cow vetch,

king snakes.

Meadow life

is not money.

What rises

and falls here are stems

and flowers, leaves and fruit.

No zigzag line of profit and panic

but the great wheel turning.

Here God gives of her

extravagance and here, like

flicker, viceroy, dragonfly

we come into our inheritance.

-- Earth Poems, George Ella Lyon

Sidewalk art

Just a quickie tonight, so that the blog does not feel completely unloved.

There's a sidewalk artist who works in our neighborhood. His subjects so far have been Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (during the election), and Michael Jackson, after June 25 of this year. Today, I passed his handiwork, and am still guessing the identity thereof. I have an idea, but what say you?

And here's an easy one: Who'll be the first to make the connection to a children's book?

George Washington and Bernie Madoff

Separated at birth?

It's a free country

"It's a free country, I can _______ if I want to." Didn't you say that a LOT as a kid? I did. "It's a free country, I can take your clothes if I want to" (to my sisters). "It's a free country, I can eat chocolate before dinner if I want to" (to myself). Of course I couldn't say it to my parents, because talking back was the worst of all possible transgressions in my household.

But when was the last time you heard a kid say "It's a free country"? I have not heard it in a long time. Because now we're a "If you see something, say something" country. Now we're a "You will be photographed country."

How is this filtering down to the books we read? The books we choose to publish? It would be interesting to know.

Hats off to SIR TERRY PRATCHETT!

Interrupting the holiday quiet for some raucous cheering!!

This news made me smile enormously when it was casually mentioned to me by an industry colleague at a New Year's gathering last night--the first I'd heard of it, since I've been a wee bit disconnected from industry chatter while away from the office over the last two weeks. There's something transcendent about the power of Terry Pratchett's imagination, a fact that I think the literary world has been all too aware of since he went public with the difficult news of his battle with Alzheimer's Disease just over a year ago, and I'm just filled to the brim with pleasure that he's been so well-honored.

I love this quote from his video interview with the UK's newspaper The Telegraph about the news of his Knighthood--"It’s amazing what can be achieved if you just do something fairly quietly but quite well for a very long time." A statement to inspire many writers, I think.

(And as an aside, if you have a holiday bookstore giftcard that's burning a hole in your pocket, I'd humbly suggest Terry's newest YA novel Nation--a tale that by turns will challenge you, make you laugh, make you teary, and best of all, make you think deeply.)

Raising a glass or three of champagne, then, to master storyteller Sir Terry (it just *sounds* right, doesn't it?), and to his likewise brilliant editors, including the Bowen Press's own Anne Hoppe, who edits his children's and YA books, and to Jen B, editor of his adult works. Huzzah!

2009 Predictions: You heard it here first

Here are my predictions for publishing in 2009:

January
Anita Silvey won't be happy with this year's Newbery, either.

February
There'll be no federal bail-out of anyone's backlist.

March
Books will have to be more beautiful and skillfully made to deserve ink and paper.

April
Anyone who does go to Bologna/Comic-con will find a treasure.

May
Authors will outnumber booksellers at BEA.

June
Jo Rowling will announce her next project -- a "cozy mystery."

July
See April.

August
Obama will have disappointed us from time to time.

September
Something (surely!) will be the next Twilight/Wimpy Kid.

October
One significant publishing company will close its doors right before Frankfurt.

November
Bowen Press will be thankful not to have been that publishing company (tempting fate, I know).

December
_____________________

Any ideas for December, or corrections/changes/additions gratefully received. I'd especially like to be right, however, about November.

Ah, Wilderness!

It would be difficult to overstate the cultural, historical, pick-an-adjective importance of what happened on Tuesday night, though I'm sure that won't keep the blogosphere (and this blogger) from trying. That being said, the narrative legacy of this time in history is not going to be limited to the moonwalk/Berlin Wall/etc moment that was an African American man being elected President of the United States. What has me so excited is that it's going to be in the shifting of our national attitude that takes place in all the small, desperately-important decisions we make every single day. My friend Ruta came into my office yesterday with that same glow about her that everyone I've met since the election was called has had, and said "I want to go sign up to volunteer for something right now." I had the exact same feeling. One could say that I should have been thinking this before, and one would be right, but that aside, I was completely unprepared for the acute manifestation of everything that President Obama (I'm never going to get tired of typing that) has been talking about this entire campaign: that the management of our country is something best not left to the "professionals," it's something that belongs to us. And if I ever assumed that it wasn't, I, along with everyone else in this country, got my answer on Tuesday.

I'll admit, while I was confident enough in the power of President Obama's message and, honestly, in the certainty of the numbers (thanks, Nate at fivethirtyeight.com), there was a part of me that assumed that while Barack could win, he wouldn't be able to reach as many people as he did, to unite us as much as it seems like he has (or, has started to) from those poll numbers in so many counties across the country. And then there was the assumption that the concept of every person having the ability to make this country a better place is just a romantic ideal, and would be lost amidst the detrius of everyday life in this country - John Lennon's "other plans," in other words. And if these assumption are wrong, than how many other nihilistic assumptions we've all held about our potential as a people are wrong? I'm not usually one for exuberant optimism, but this is a kind of feeling that I've never had about America. It's the kind of feeling that makes someone want to become a better person, so that one can contribute to this brand new country of ours, and that can mean anything. It can mean volunteering as a tutor, or signing up for that writing class you always wanted to take, or it can simply mean sitting underneath a bough with a book you haven't read before, if only to open yourself up to new ideas. This is the feeling at the heart of the promotion of reading to kids across the country, and this makes me even more excited to be in the business of pubishing those books.

My friend Max just wrote an email saying "feeling this good about our president is going to take some getting used to." I know what he means. And I hope we never do.

The Senator from Illinois

Obama's sublime victory speech last night alluded to or quoted Lincoln three times, by my count. And I couldn't help myself -- I have to say I thought of a book we're publishing, GETTYSBURG: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL as I heard his words:

"[The campaign] drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth."

I don't know whose words makes me cry more as I read that, Lincoln's or Obama's. But if you want to take a look at how C.M. Butzer interpreted Lincoln's famous oration for the generation of opinionated, validated young people that Molly talks about in the post below, you should spend some time with GETTYSBURG. I am so proud to be publishing it, right now.

The Power of New Media on EVERYTHING

I started being fascinated by blogs, and the way new media was changing the publishing industry, about four years ago. I find now that I'm fascinated by something far bigger--by the way new media is changing LIFE.

I started thinking on the subway ride home yesterday--hours before we had any certainty as to how the election would turn out--about the fact that so much of this election has played out, and been influenced by, the power of new media. Not just in obvious ways, like the text messages and emails that in essence replaced old-fashioned print campaign literature this time around, but by the imperceptible side effects that so many new kinds of communication are beginning to have on our culture, and our world. It seems to me that the presence of new media as an ordinary part of life has caused people, especially young people, to THINK more than ever before. Because of blogs (and Twitter, and YouTube comments, and Facebook groups, and Ning communities, and etc.), people have claimed and embraced their right to have and share opinions--about everything. And in order to have an opinion, you have to be informed--unless you want to get flamed or laughed off the internets. And people en masse having access to information and ideas and developing opinions as a result is a the first step toward capital-C Change of any sort, I think. And then we get to watch as that Change becomes history.

When I shared these thoughts last night with my friend who's a former history teacher/history buff extraordinaire (and thus my unending source of fascinating/interesting/random political trivia over the past few months), he took it a step further and said that media hasn't had this much influence on an election since 1960--when the first presidential debates were televised, totally changing the relationship between people and politics. And (interesting trivia fact alert!), where did those very first televised debates take place? Chicago. Now there's an intriguing sort of full circle.

All that added up, I can't help but feel that it's a fascinating time to be working in media/communication/the world of ideas. And it's a fascinating time to be living, too.

One day till the election...

...and we're all a little nervous here at the office. Trying to hide it, but not doing so well. IT records will show frequent trips to Google News and http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/. Harper has an excellent new non-proselytizing picture book about Barack Obama, by Jonah Winter and A.G. Ford, just parenthetically.