Boogie Boarding - a beach poem, a Fib, a boogie boarding poem

Boogie Boarding
by
Gregory K.

Waves
Break
I zoom
On white foam
‘Til I glide to shore
Then the ocean roars, “One more ride!”


Today's Poetry Friday roundup is at Sylvia Vardell's fabulous Poetry For Children. Why not go check it out?

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24 Hours in 20 Syllables -- a Las Vegas poem/a Las Vegas Fib

It's a Fib inspired by a recent whirlwind trip...

24 Hours in 20 Syllables
by
Gregory K.

Flight.
Lights!
Cab ride.
Checking in.
Let the games begin!
Sigh. Bye, Vegas. Next time I’ll win....


Check out this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Becky's Book Reviews. You'll be glad you did....

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Testing My Nerves -- a poem about nerves/a math test poem

TESTING MY NERVES
By
Gregory K.

Shake.
Quake.
Dry mouth.
Sweaty hands.
Can’t relax, can’t rest --
It must be time for my math test.

Yep, that's another Fib (this one fitting in for both National Poetry Month and Math Awareness Month).

I'm posting an original poem each day in April in celebration of National Poetry Month. Links to this and other poems here on GottaBook (and I post all year round, because poetry is NOT just for April!) are collected over on the right of the blog under the headline "The Poems".

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Cat-- a cat poem/a cat Fib

It's my first Fib of April (a few days after the second anniversary of Fibbery!)....

CAT
by
Gregory K.

Purr.
Purr.
I’m Cat.
Stretch and groom.
Sleep deep… and then zooooom!
Chasing something only I know.


I'm posting an original poem each day in April in celebration of National Poetry Month. Links to this and other poems here on GottaBook (and I post all year round, because poetry is NOT just for April!) are collected over on the right of the blog under the headline "The Poems".

If you want to get all my new poems (and only the poems) emailed to you for freeee as they hit the blog, enter your email address in the box below then click subscribe!

The Christmas Fib -- a Christmas poem

The Christmas Fib
by
Gregory K.

Who?
Me?
Naughty??
I was nice...
Some days more than twice!
Please, Santa -- check that list again.


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Some Fibbing for the holidays....

Well, actually, it's unrelated to the holidays other than by timing, but so what? Isn't that a better headline than "Greg points to Fibs on the web"? Thought so.

But regardless... lookie here -- it's an article about Fibs on the Poetry Foundation website!

A personal thrill for me is that two of my Fibs will enter the Poetry Foundation archive, and, as if that's not cool enough by itself, I will end up right next to Robert Pinsky. OK, sure, it's only an alphabetical twist of fate, but I'll take it. Gladly, in fact!

So one more time, here at Thanksgiving, I must again say thanks to all the bloggers, actuaries, writers, knitters, reporters, mathematicians, bird lovers, and everyone who helped Fibs spread last year... and right on into this year, too.

The Golf Fib -- a golf poem

The Golf Fib
By
Gregory K.

Drive.
Putt.
That’s it.
Golf’s simple!
The best game by far!
(As long as I’m ignoring “par.”)


This week's Poetry Friday roundup is over at The Literary Safari.

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A Poetry Friday Fib -- a poetry Friday poem

In case you didn't go see Susan's Poetry Friday article, I'm re-linking it here. And just for fun, I'm extracting and reposting my Poetry Friday Fib from it as my contribution to this week's fun. Multiple birds with one Fib! Gotta love it.


Post.
Link.
Unite.
Spread the cheer:
Fridays through the year,
Poetry fills the blogosphere.

Let's Go Play -- a football poem

Yes, more sports poetry in Fib form here on my Poetry Friday entry (this week's links collected by Susan). This time it's football poetry... stemming from my love of a sport I played alllll the time as a kid until everyone suddenly was much, much bigger than me. Line three would be out for me nowadays, but otherwise...


LET'S GO PLAY
by
Gregory K.

Flag.
Touch.
Tackle.
It's all good.
Whatever the name,
It’s football! Let's go play a game!

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(for your procrastinatory pleasure, links to this and other poems here on GottaBook are collected to the right under the headline "The Poems".)

Getting Ready -- A Hockey Poem

Sports poetry keeps on popping up here at GottaBook, in this case with me adding to the world's collection of hockey poems (in Fib form). What can I say? I love sports almost as much as I love food, so expect to see more poems on both topics as time goes on. You have been warned. Happy Poetry Friday (with links collected at Big A little a)....


GETTING READY
by
Gregory K.

Pads.
Glove.
Face mask.
All I ask...
By all that's holy,
Survive my first game as goalie.

(for your procrastinatory pleasure, links to this and other poems here on GottaBook are collected to the right under the headline "The Poems".)

If you want to get all my new poems (and only the poems) emailed to you for freeee as they hit the blog, enter your email address in the box below then click subscribe!

Beach Fib

A BEACH FIB
by
Greg Pincus

Waves
Shells
Tide pools
Minnow schools
Bright, sun-kissed faces
Sand in the most awkward places

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Fib news: I gotta book deal!

I’m utterly, totally thrilled to say that yours truly has a two book deal with the wonderful folks at Arthur A. Levine Books (an imprint of Scholastic). Now, for those of you in the kid-lit world, you’ll understand when I say that I feel as if I won the lottery. And for those who don’t know of Arthur and his remarkable cohorts, the bottom line is that I’ll be working with people from whom I’ll learn an incredible amount and who will always make sure I deliver the best possible book I can deliver.

And what will that first book be, I hear you ask? Well, I can tell you that the working title is…

The 14 Fabulous Fibs of Gregory K.

Yes, there will be Fibs in it, but it won’t just be a book of Fib poetry. We’re talking story and character and all that good stuff. For more than that little tease, though, you’re gonna have to stick around to see how things develop. Or for updates, why not e-mail me and let me know you want to be on the Fib mailing list? Excellent.

This deal, I have to say, is a testament to the power of bloggers and the Net. Yes, the Levine Books folks knew me before Fibs, and I knew them thanks to SCBWI conferences and me submitting (and them liking but rejecting) my work. I believe we’d’ve worked together at some point, regardless of Fibs. HOWEVER, the wonderful Fibbing of friends, family and a few blogging pals set the stage for the remarkable Fibbery of the Slashdotters. From there, Fibs spread through the Net… and the buzz ended up getting me in the New York Times (a mere two weeks after the first Fib post!). After that, Arthur came to me with a brilliant pitch and voila… there’s a book with Fibs in the future.

I know the Times article and book deal would not have happened without the Net activity before it, so, I truly, truly thank all of you who Fibbed and linked and pointed others this way, be you bloggers, poets, mathematicians, teachers, MSNBC.com, CBS.com, Word Freaks, gamers, actuaries, musicians, librarians, knitters, or something else entirely. And I also hope some of you are inspired: watching a mention on Slashdot create the opportunity for a kids' book deal (with poetry!), you start to realize that thanks to the Net, almost anything is possible.

A baseball Fib...

Baseball is near and dear to my heart, and I think sports Fibbery is still underserved, so I thought I'd toss up a baseball Fib. This is also a tribute to the remarkable weather we've had out here lately. You know, the type of weather where you understand why people settled in the middle of a giant desert....


What?
Done?
No way.
Come on -- stay.
Nothing else will do:
It's a perfect day to play two.

Poem of the Day: Word Nerd

"Can't
Count."
"Word nerd!"
"Your mother
Sequences your dad."
Fibonacci Poetry Slam!


This is the last of the April Poems of the Day what with it being the last day of April and all that. It seemed appropriate to end with a Fib after all that's happened this month. I hope you've enjoyed the poems (and National Poetry Month, of course). Just like before April, poems will pop up here on a semi-regular basis anyway, so if you're only here cuz of them, don't despair :-).

For those seeking more on Fibbery, there's links over on the right of the blog that will take you to the hottest Fib spots on the blog, or you can simply scroll lower and see what you can see. Lots of good stuff lurks hereabouts, so enjoy!

Poem of the Day: Fib Time

FIB TIME
by
Gregory K.


Tell
Fibs.
What time?
Every day
Two seconds before
Clocks hit 11:24.


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Fabulous Fibbery.

It's "around the world with Fibs" time here at GottaBook.

A video in Spanish (from someone who speaks even faster than I do).

A great thread in Greek on Alexis Stamatis' blog.

A shout out from the Dutch Cowboys.

And I've run into Fibs in French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and a handful of other languages as well. I only wish I could read them all.

Again, for those interested in Fibbing here, please feel free to put your Fibs right in the comments. If you look to the right on the blog, you'll see links to various Fib related posts (look under the headline The Fibs). There are amazing Fibs in the comments of various posts here, so I encourage you to click around. You can also find all relevant Fibbery simply by scrolling down in the blog.

Finally, in NON-Fib news, I'm thrilled to see that early GottaBook supporter David LaRochelle has been awarded the SCBWI 2005 Sid Fleischman Humor Award for his first novel Absolutely, Postively Not. Wonderful news for a great book.

And as if David wasn't talented enough as a writer and illustrator, just look what he can do to Pumpkins!

A smattering of Fibbery.

I'd be lying if I said today wasn't fun. It was. Fun in the type of way I don't often get to experience, so I made a point to step back and enjoy it. And talk to relatives, of course, which was a great time for me.

Other than the Times article (gratuitiously relinked here), I particularly enjoyed this link from an Italian website.

Two places to submit Fibs sprang up, quite different places at that: at the Knitting Curmudgeon and at Perigree blog.

While this particular thread didn't catch fire, it is on the website of the Academy of American Poets, also known as them that throws National Poetry Month. Good company to keep, Fibs!

Already folks have emailed me articles from the Independent and the Irish Independent that appear to be from papers that are out tomorrow (or today over there). To quote from the Independent:

Fibbing, if we can call it that, may be just the thing for a lazy bank holiday weekend. Alternatively, it might just drive you round the bend. And there is the danger, of course, that once you start, devising fibs will become as addictive as crossword-filling or Sudoku-solving.

Finally, once again, I'm truly grateful to all who have posted Fibs here (to find them, scroll down two posts below and/or look to the links over on the right of my blog under the heading The Fibs) and on their own blogs. I've tried to read as many as I can, and I'm truly impressed with the breadth of Fibs... and how some folks truly can say so much with so little.

I look forward to Fibbing this weekend, but it's late now, so I gotta book.

Fibbing the day away...

Well, now, Fibs DO have a life of their own at this point. They're in the comments on my blog -- mostly here and here -- but also at these (and other) locations around the Web:

Here at Slashdot.

The early adoptor thread at Word Freaks.

Fibbers at Informed Consent.

On the World of Warcraft.

Of course the nerds at NerdNYC.com would like it.

Fibs and Electronic music are a great fit.

Can the actuaries tell us how long this Fib trend will last?

I'd also like to tip my hat to my fellow bloggers who have linked here (this is the closest I can come to a full list, but thanks to all!).

And heck, even the Poetry Foundation has connected to me.

UPDATED to add Fib (poetry) from Wikipedia.

Quite a fine and Fibbish day. More to come!

More Fibbery

Fibs.
Terse.
Defined.
As your tools,
Twenty syllables;
How you use them is up to you.

In my first post on Fibs, I mentioned rules and guidelines. I'm gonna talk about some of them here, but the most important thing I can say is that other than the syllable count of 1/1/2/3/5/8, all rules can be broken. The goal is to WRITE. That said...

Since I started Fibbing to focus on word choice, the one rule I've held myself to is "no articles in the one syllable lines." I also try not to use conjunctions, though part of that is that when I use them, I start singing School House Rock and annoy the neighbors.

After those rules, it really gets more subjective. There's definitely a difference between my best Fibs and my ones that read far more like I found a 20 syllable sentence and broke it into Fib form. Often, that difference is in focusing on those two one-syllable lines. "Worms./Gross." is, to me, a stronger start than "I/was." If there's a natural break between the lines, in general it reads better to me. If a thought can finish at a line end, that's great. And I, personally, love using the eight-syllable line in counterpoint or as a thought of its own.

I also have found that my Fibs tend to fall into subsets: Pop Culture Fibs, Rhyming Fibs (traditionally, by the way, Fibonacci poetry is not a rhyming form. But it CAN rhyme, as some who have posted have shown), and Fibs that fib are three examples. I'm gonna post one (or more) of each in the comments below. We've also seen political Fibs and math Fibs... plus my very own Spam Fib. That should be a big category, based on the 19,000 Spam haiku collected here.

Thanks to the Third Carnival of Children's Literature, I now know that April is also Mathematics Awareness Month. This makes Fibbery doubly divine in April.

Also, a special tip o' the hat to the Word Freaks for their excellent Fibbing.

If you spot any other Fibs online, please drop word to yours truly. But this is long enough, so I gotta book.

(For those entering in via this post, there is much more Fibbery to be found all around the blog these days. Besides the post The Fibs mentioned at the top and this post, both of which have comments filled with fun Fibbery, you might want to journey up to the top of the blog or look over on the right hand side for some links collected under the headline The Fibs. As always, feel free to leave a Fib here or elsewhere. Fib on!)

(And a further edit: please click here for news of a Fib-related book deal!)

The Fib

One
Small,
Precise,
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.

What’s that, you ask? That’s the very first Fib I wrote. What’s a Fib? Well, first a little backstory….

At the 2005 SCBWI-LA Writer’s Day, poet-novelist Ron Koertge mentioned the idea of “warming up” each day by writing haiku. To paraphrase what he said, writing haiku keeps you in tune with the importance of word choice and how you can say so much with so little… with the goal being that subconsciously you will continue to be aware of both points whenever and whatever you write.

I was intrigued, but my geeky mind immediately began to churn. Why just haiku? I wanted something that required more precision. That led me to a six line, 20 syllable poem with a syllable count by line of 1/1/2/3/5/8 – the classic Fibonacci sequence. In short, start with 0 and 1, add them together to get your next number, then keep adding the last two numbers together for your next one. It’s a wonderful sequence, and it’s one that is repeated in nature (most famously in nautilus shells). Heck, some folks use it in knitting and music,… and, as much as I’d like to say I invented a new form of poetry, these sequences have been part of various poetic structures since before Fibonacci’s time. However, "the Fib" is my take on the idea, complete with a wicked cool name, if I say so myself.

I’ve found writing Fibs helpful, as they really do make me conscious of word choice in everything I write (which is particularly critical in my poetry, picture book manuscripts, and e-mails to Mom). Also, I’ve found kids respond well to the form, especially when they hear that “Ewww. Worms.” can be 1/3 of their poem. So, I think it’s time for the Fib to gain more exposure.

In another post, I’ll talk more about various Fib rules and guidelines and subsets (like Fibs that tell fibs!), but for now, I’m curious to hear what you think or see if any of you want to try your hand at writing Fibs … and hoping you all want to join me in spreading Fibbery around the web/in classrooms/wherever.

This
Post
Is now
Completed,
So, I gotta book.
See you all on the comments page.

(There are wonderful Fibs in the comments here, and if you look to the right you'll find links to other posts with even more Fibbery (such as the post cleverly named More Fibbery.) If you head on up to the top of the blog you'll find new Fibbish links, too. In short, feel free to poke around... and don't be shy about telling a Fib or two.)

(And now another update: a book deal (and that's no fib!))

(The BIG update: The 14 Fibs of Gregory K. - the novel that came to life because of this post - is now available wherever books are sold!)