Category: Poetry

Poetry Friday: Whispers

Catherine Flynn10 Comments

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The third week of school is coming to an end. Routines are falling into place, schedules have been ironed out, and most of the tears have dried up. Throughout these hectic weeks, it’s been challenging for me to get my act together at home and find time for writing. I’ve been jotting notes like mad, and keep telling myself that I’ll have time today, I’ll get up early…. You know how that goes!

This Myra Cohn Livingston poem captures the feeling I’ve had as thoughts and ideas keep whispering to me.

Whispers

Whispers

tickle through you ear

telling things you like to hear.

Whispers

are as soft as skin

letting little worlds curl in.

Whispers

come so they can blow

secrets others never know.

This would be a perfect poem to share with young writers as they also settle into the routine of writing every day and learn to keep their eyes and ears open for ideas waiting to be put into words.

Be sure to visit Renee at No Water River for today’s Poetry Friday Round Up.

Searching for a Slice

Catherine Flynn6 Comments

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All day, I’ve been searching for a slice to share.

My search began as I stood at the kitchen sink this morning,

slicing plump, juicy strawberries to stir into my yogurt.

I thought I’d found one when, walking to my car, I glanced up

and saw flock of birds wheeling and diving, their wings

flecks of gold in the morning sun.

But no. They flew away.

At work, possibilities crossed my path at lightning speed.

Third grade lesson— Edgar Badger’s Balloon Day.

Fourth grade read aloud—Three Good Deeds

Concepts of Print assessment—“Show me the word was.”

On into the afternoon, ideas came and went.

I despaired of ever finding one.

Then, driving home from Open House,

weary from this long day,

I rounded a corner, and there before me

hung the full moon.

Suddenly I saw the ordinary events of my day

as pearls on a string, luminous in the moon’s glow.

I’d been building my slice all day.

I just couldn’t see it until I had the right light.

Thank you, as always, to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for hosting Slice of Life each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Poetry Friday: “Headline”

Catherine Flynn9 Comments

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“Make poetry out of every moment.”

~ Cid Corman ~

The weather has been beautiful in Connecticut this summer, but several recent cool nights signal a change is on the way. Poets love to celebrate the seasons, and many wonderful poems sing the praises of autumn. Today I’m sharing a poem from Firefly July, (Candlewick Press, 2014), Paul B. Janeczko and Melissa Sweet’s gorgeous new anthology.

“Headline”

A leaf on

the doorstep—

dont even

have to pick

it up to

know the news.

by Cid Corman

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There are several wonderful poetry collections for children specifically about fall. My favorites include Autumnblings, (HaperCollins, 2003) by Douglas Florian, and Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Steven Schnur. Both books are perfect to use as mentor texts for young poets.

         autumnblings181    images

Be sure to visit Jone at Check It Out! for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Poetry Friday: “I Am Poetry”

Catherine Flynn9 Comments

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I have spent the past week at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project’s Summer Reading Institute. My brain is bursting with all I have learned from my amazing section leaders and the keynote speakers. My senses are overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of New York City in August. My life is richer because of people I have met and friends I have made. It has been a glorious week.

How could I possibly choose a poem to share today that reflects my week? By focusing on one small piece of my experience.

Each teacher was given a book at the beginning of the week to use as a mentor text for the work of the Institue. I received Becoming Naomi León (Scholastic Press, 2004) by Pam Muñoz Ryan. I have loved every book I’ve read by Ryan, but somehow, I had missed this beautiful story about a young girl finding her true self. Pam Muñoz Ryan’s writing is so lyrical, I wondered if she’d written any poetry. A quick search reminded me about The Dreamer, Ryan’s lovely book about the young Pablo Neruda and led me to this poem:

“I Am Poetry”

by Pam Muñoz Ryan

I am poetry,

waiting to seize the poet.

I ask the questions

for which all answers

exist.

I choose no one.

I choose every one.

Come closer…

…if you dare.

I am poetry,

lurking in dappled shadow.

I am the confusion

of root

and gnarled branch.

I am the symmetry

of insect,

leaf,

and a bird’s outstretched wings.

Read the rest of the poem here.

If you haven’t read Becoming Naomi León, The Dreamer, or any of Ryan’s other novels for children, read one today. You’ll be glad you did. 

Please be sure to visit Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Slice of Life: Recipe for a Perfect Summer Day

Catherine Flynn18 Comments

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Last week I was lucky enough to spend four wonderful days at a lake in northern Wisconsin with my son, daughter-in-law, and her family. Inspired by the beauty surrounding me, and a poem I read recently by Laura Purdie Salas, I decided to write a recipe poem about my visit to Lake Minocqua.

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“Recipe for a Perfect Summer Day”

Take one lake filled with calm, clear water,

sun-warmed and sparkling.

Surround it with towering pine trees,

where bald eagles nest and perch.

Fill it with musky and largemouth bass,

walleye and northern pike.

Add:

pairs of loons, warbling their mournful cry,

graceful herons, still as statues on the shore,

iridescent dragonflies, darting over the surface.

Mix in families and friends who spend the day:

swimming and kayaking,

biking or hiking;

your choice.

Top with a campfire,

toasted marshmallows,

and gooey, chocolatey s’mores,

under a star-filled sky.

© Catherine Flynn, 2014

Thank you, as always, to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for hosting Slice of Life each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Poetry Friday: “The Picnic”

Catherine Flynn7 Comments

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“The Picnic”

We brought a rug for sitting on,

Our lunch was in a box.

The sand was warm. We didn’t wear

Hats or shoes or socks.

Waves came curling up the beach.

We waded. It was fun.

Our sandwiches were different kinds.

I dropped my jelly one.

by Dorothy Aldis

I discovered this poem years ago in Jack Prelutsky’s wonderful anthology, Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young. (Knopf, 1986) And although Dorothy Aldis wrote it almost 100 years ago, children can relate to this simple depiction of a picnic at the beach just as easily today as they did then. First graders love this poem, and the concrete details help those kids who don’t automatically visualize learn to create images from a poet’s words.

"Cassatt Mary Children on the Beach 1884". Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cassatt_Mary_Children_on_the_Beach_1884.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Cassatt_Mary_Children_on_the_Beach_1884.jpg
“Cassatt Mary Children on the Beach 1884”. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Hope you all have time for one more picnic at the beach before summer ends! Please be sure to visit Mary Lee at A Year of Reading for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Poetry Friday: Flowers of the Ocean

Catherine Flynn11 Comments

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When I was a kid, my family always spent a week camping in Rhode Island. We spent many days at the beach, but we also spent time at Beavertail State Park in Jamestown. My parents loved to sit and watch the waves crashing over the rocks and the ships in the bay. My favorite part of being at Beavertail was examining the many tide pools that dotted the rocks when the tide was out. I imagined that I was a marine biologist, studying the seaweed and mollusks that braved the harsh conditions of these rocky oases.

I was reminded of these tide pools last week when a friend and I visited the Yale Center for British Art to see “‘Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower’: Artists’ Books and the Natural World,” an exhibit which celebrates the work of “self-taught naturalists and artists [who] recorded and observed the natural world around them from the sixteenth century to the present.” The variety of artistic responses and creativity on display was stunning. In addition to traditional sketches and watercolors, there were collages, works of cut paper, dioramas, and mixed media.

Specimens of Sea Weed, ca. 1840 Yale Center for British Art
Specimens of Sea Weed, ca. 1840
Yale Center for British Art

I found this collage of sea weed specimens especially charming. Apparently creating this kind of sea weed collage was a popular activity in the 19th century, and E.L. Aveline’s poem, “Flowers of the Ocean, often accompanies such pieces. The poem appeared in The Mother’s Fables, in Verse, Designed, Through the Medium of Amusement, to Convey to the Minds of Children Some Useful Precepts of Virtute and Benevolence in 1812. The title page of this volume urges readers to “Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks/Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.” Not bad advice, and the artwork in this exhibit demonstrates that many people followed it faithfully.

Flowers of the Ocean

Call us not weeds—we are flowers of the sea;

For lovely, and bright, and gay-tinted are we,

Our blush is as deep as the rose of thy bowers;

Then call us not weeds—we are Ocean’s gay flowers.

Not nursed like the plants of a summer parterre,

When gales are but sighs of an evening air;

Our exquisite, fragile, and delicate forms

Are nursed by the ocean, and rocked by its storms.

by E.L. Aveline

“Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower” is on display until August 10. If you’re near New Haven, it’s worth the trip. Please be sure to visit Janet and Sylvia at Poetry for Children for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Poetry Friday: Dirge Without Music

Catherine Flynn12 Comments

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Dirge Without Music

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains, –but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love–

They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled

Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Yellow Roses in a Vase, 1882 Gustave Caillebotte Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., via Wikimedia
Yellow Roses in a Vase, 1882
Gustave Caillebotte
Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., via Wikimedia

Please be sure to visit Linda at Write Time for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

 

Slice of Life: Cultivating Creativity

Catherine Flynn7 Comments

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I am not an artist. But over the past year or so, drawing has been nudging its way into my brain. At NCTE, Linda Rief spoke about incorporating several different art techniques into a poetry project. Linda’s presentation inspired Vicki Vinton to invite readers of her blog, To Make A Prairie, to do “something creative” in response to a poem they love. So when I was offered the opportunity to attend an art “camp” for adults, I jumped at the chance. For the past two days, I have been sketching and painting and making collages.  This experience has been everything I hoped it would be and more.

One of yesterday’s activities found us out in the garden, gathering images. It was a classic summer day: bright blue sky, puffy white clouds, insects buzzing from flower to flower, birds chirping from the tree tops. It was lovely just to sit and soak in the beauty of the moment. Our teacher instructed us to do just that, but to write and/or sketch the images surrounding us.

Back in the studio, we were given time to turn our thoughts into haiku, then time to capture the image in watercolor or colored pencil.

I drafted two poems based on my observations:

1.

serene summer day

breezes whisper through pine boughs

lilies trumpet joy

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First try–tiger lilies are hard to draw!

2.

hidden sweetness

clover blossoms pink as dawn

bees hover and buzz

This experience has been quite an eye-opener, and I’ve had some interesting insights into my writing process through drawing. Driving to the studio yesterday, I was filled with anxiety about this experience. Now I wish I had more than four days to continue to forge what Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way, calls “pathways into [my] consciousness through which creative forces can operate.”

Thank you, as always, to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for hosting Slice of Life each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Poetry Friday: Walt Whitman’s “Miracles”

Catherine Flynn6 Comments

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Before I began student teaching, my cooperating teacher invited me to the class Christmas party so I could meet the kids. One boy wanted to know what was my favorite holiday. I didn’t hesitate a minute. “Summer,” I replied.

So even though the solstice isn’t until tomorrow, here’s to the miracle that is summer!

Miracles

by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of

   the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night

   with any one I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer 

   forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so

   quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with 

   the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—

   the ships with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?

Don’t miss this gorgeous video inspired by Whitman’s words:

Be sure to visit Jone at Check It Out for the Poetry Friday Round Up. Happy summer, everyone!