Inspiration Monday #1: Pirates!

Hello, and welcome to This Side of Storyland!

Monday is a dreary day, 24 hours of disappointment spent coping with the fact that we are once again expected to go to work, go to school . . . or just start another week. If ever we need inspiration, we need it on Mondays. So here I am, bringing you the first of what I hope will be a fruitful series of posts called "Inspiration Monday"! Our theme today: pirates!

I adore pirates. The adventure, the mystery, the romance! Let's start off by coming up with a list of pirate-y words. Here are mine:

1. Sea.

2. Swell.

3. Sail.

4. Swashbuckle.

5. Buccaneer.

6. Cutlass.

7. Breaker.

8. Treasure.

9. Island.

10. Gold.

If you have any to add, please put them in the comments! I'd love to hear them!



Now I'm going to write a poem using the words I brainstormed. I'm really just making this post up as I go along, so please bear with me. Okay, here we go:

To Be A Pirate

Their ships brave the breast of the seas,

Cutting through blue swells.

Black sails are as feared as pointy sharks' fins.

The swashbuckling buccaneers,

With their cutlasses ready,

With the wind tangling their hair,

Stampede through breakers

And emerge on treasure islands

Hungry for pleasure and for gold.

One of the wonderful things about pirates (there are many!) is that there are so many angles you can use to view them. There's the romantic, sea-struck aspect. This is the aspect I used for my poem.

Then there's the silly, cartoonish aspect that is used on National Talk Like a Pirate Day. (Yes, it is an actual day. September 19th.) This is the aspect in which all pirates are portrayed with an eye patch and a peg leg and a tricornered hat, and in which they begin all their sentences with, "Arr, matey!"
Of course, every really good pirate should have some battle scars, but I think there's room for the scars to vary from pirate to pirate. One pirate can have a missing hand, one can have a missing leg, one can have a missing eye . . . hmm, all of these "battle scars" seem to be missing body parts. How about a missing ear? A missing toe? A missing eyebrow?

There's also the aspect in which all pirates look handsome and smell nice and talk wittily. (That's my favorite.)

 And I'm sure I could come up with a few more ways to look at them if I tried harder. But how can you compete with that last picture? 

I was going to post some more pictures here for your inspiration and delight, but I'm having a hard time getting any satisfactory picture to stay put. So instead I'll skip to the last piece of inspiration: my favorite books (and movies) about pirates!!

1. Book that contains a romantic gentleman pirate: Frenchman's Creek, by Daphne Du Maurier.

2. Book that contains classic pirates: Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

3. Movie that contains classic pirates with one very, very special pirate who sticks out in such a lovable way: Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl.

4. Book that contains . . . um . . . pirates (not sure how to classify this set): Peter Pan, by J.M. Barry.

5. Book that doesn't really contain pirates but has a pirate-y feel: The Girl from Everywhere, by Heidi Heilig.

6. Book that contains only one solitary pseudo-pirate, but will make it onto any booklist I compile if I can possibly fit it in because I love it so much: The Princess Bride, by William Goldman.

7. I'm cheating here. This one is neither a movie nor a book. He's a character, but I'm going to put him on the list anyway. Killian Jones (a.k.a. Captain Hook) from Once Upon a Time.

Do you love pirates? And do you have any pirate-y recommendations for me??

Thanks for stopping by,
KB