Madeleine L'Engle as Poet

I honestly don't think that L'Engle was as powerful a writer of poetry as she was of prose.

Yet, I read her poems, because in her poetry she gamely wrestled with God, in all the joy and pain that comes with trying to be a person of faith.

Late tonight I pulled down yet another book, THE WEATHER OF THE HEART, a book of L'Engle's poems published in 1978. This one is a beauty, and particularly appropriate at the moment of her death. It is titled LOVE LETTER.


I hate you, God.
Love, Madeleine.

I write my message on water
and at bedtime I tiptoe upstairs
and let it flow under your door.

When I am angry with you
I know that you are there
even if you do not answer my knock
even when your butler opens the door an inch
and flaps his thousand wings in annoyance
at such untoward interruption
and says that the master is not at home.

I love you, Madeleine.
Hate, God.

(This is how I treat my friends, he said to one great saint.
No wonder you have so few of them, Lord, she replied.)

I cannot turn the other cheek
It takes all the strength I have
To keep my fist from hitting back
the soldiers shot the baby
the little boys trample the old woman
the gutters are filled with groans
while pleasure seekers knock each other down
in order to get their tickets stamped first.

I'm turning in my ticket
and my letter of introduction.
You're supposed to do the knocking. Why do you burst
my heart?

How can I write you
to tell you that I'm angry
when I've been given the wrong address
and I don't even know your real name?

I take hammer and nails
and tack my message on two crossed pieces of wood:

Dear God
is it too much to ask you
to bother to be?
Just show your hindquarters
and let me hear you roar.

Love,
Madeleine

Madeleine L'Engle on Writing for Children

There is nothing that annoys me more than how little respect people have for children's media. I will meet someone at a cocktail party, and when they ask me what I do, and I reply, "I'm a television producer." That always elicits a bright, engaged reaction, "REALLY? What do you produce?"

When I say I make television for kids and teens, the response is a dull "Oh." End of conversation. As if great story-making for kids is any easier than it is for adults, especially because the budgets are exponentially smaller! I am proud of my craft and resent the assumption that because I try to change the world for kids with meaningful media, I'm somehow not "in the game."

The brilliant writer Madeleine L'Engle wrote books for both audiences. Her adult books, both prose and poetry, explore issues of faith and spirituality. I have been thinking about her work all day, and tonight I pulled one of her books, WALKING ON WATER: REFLECTIONS ON FAITH AND ART, from the shelf. It has a wonderful passage about this topic.

One summer I taught a class in Techniques of Fiction at a midwestern university. About half way through the course, one of the students came up to me after class and said, "I do hope you're going to teach us something about writing for children. That's really why I'm taking this course."
"What have I been teaching you?"
"Well - writing."
"Don't you write when you write for children?"
"Well - but isn't it different?"

No, it is not different. The techniques of fiction are the techniques of fiction. They hold as true for Beatrix Potter as they do for Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Characterization, style, and theme are as important in a children's book as in a novel for grown-ups. Taste, as always, will differ (spinach vs. beets). A child is not likely to identify with the characters in Faulkner's "Sanctuary." Books like "A Wrinkle in Time" may seem to difficult to some parents. But if a book is not good enough for a grown-up, it is not good enough for a child.

Farewell, Meg Murry

It is 6am, and I write this with tears streaming down my cheeks as I've learned of the death of the brilliant writer Madelaine L'Engle, author of my favorite book, "A Wrinkle in Time." It will not have escaped discerning readers that this blog, Tesseractive Pictures, derives its name from that book and the tesseract that allows Meg and her baby brother Charles Wallace to time travel as they try to save their father. I remember myself as a child, arguing vehemently with my own father, an eminently practical engineer who had no use for science fiction or fantasy. I insisted that the idea of time as the fourth dimension, accessed by "wrinkling" time, was certainly true. It had to be. The way L'Engle wrote about it in the book was so logical and compelling, I was certain that it could be proven to be true (as indeed it still may be). And besides, Mrs. Whatsit said so.

The last time I cried over Madeleine L'Engle was eight years ago, when I was reading "A Wrinkle in Time" aloud to my daughter Jules, then a second grader. We got to the part at the end when Meg is steeling herself to take on the all-powerful IT, who has captured the brain of her beloved little brother, Charles Wallace. Meg knows she has to go, but is terribly afraid, as she cannot imagine how she can overcome his power. She is a crusty underachiever who is struggling with self-esteem issues - hardly the person who is likely to be a hero, and she knows it. The stubbornness that often infuriates the people who know Meg is an asset at this moment - she simply refuses to give up.

As I was reading, I started to cry. My daughter looked at me curiously. "Mommy, why are you crying so hard?" she asked.
"I am crying because I am being Meg, and she is very afraid," I replied, and kept on reading aloud and crying.

Meg gets closer and closer to the moment of truth, still not able to think of anything that she could possibly have that would defeat IT. "WAIT! I know...I KNOW!" Jules said excitedly. "It's LOVE." Which of course, made me break down in sobs.

The climax of the final Harry Potter book turns on this same realization, as Harry defeats Voldmort through the power of love. J.K. Rowling has been widely praised for creating a mythology based on a rich and nuanced presentation of the battle between good and evil, even touching occasionally on theology. I like this very much about her writing. But, Madeleine L'Engle did it first, and she did it better.

I once attended a reading by L'Engle, in the old Brentanos Bookstore, on Fifth Avenue. I perched on the edge of a bookcase in the children's section, behind the kids sprawled all over the floor, listening to her read from her latest story. When she finished reading she talked to the children about the process of writing, and described an incident that is quoted in today's NY Times obituary. She was in the habit of reading aloud to her son whatever she had written while he was at school each day. On this particular day, she was reading the chapter from "The Arm of the Starfish" in which the character Joshua dies. Her son started to cry, and insisted that she needed to go back and re-write it so that Joshua wouldn't die. She told him that she couldn't - "that was simply what had happened, and there was nothing I could do to change it."

L'Engle's writing had a searing, enduring impact on my way of thinking about myself, first as a young girl who was often as complicated and prickly as Meg, then as a woman and mother (Meg's mother, a beautiful scientist absent-mindedly cooking dinner on a bunson burner, has long been my idealized role model!). She also inspired me to continue to be a dreamer, a woman of faith, and to eventually become a writer. As I learn of her death, I thank her, once again, for these gifts.
Madeleine L'Engle - New York Times Obit