Category: Writing

Slice of Life: Making Space

Catherine Flynn7 Comments

 

On a recent episode of On Being, Krista Tippett’s sublime podcast, Lawrence Kushner explained the concept tzimtzum, or “god’s self-contraction to make spaces within god for creaturely beings to live” (Read more here.) (For the record, I am not Jewish, so I hope I haven’t muddled this or offended anyone.) Kushner went on to say that this idea manifests itself in our daily life when we make a space to create “so that something you love will have room to grow.” I love this.

Making space in my life to create, to write, has been an incredible challenge recently and I almost feel like I don’t even remember how to write anything. But I’m not giving up.

Undergrowth with Two Figures, Vincent van Gogh, 1890. Cincinnati Art Museum, via Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Irene Latham’s Artspeak! theme of happy, I scrolled through Google Arts & Culture until I found a painting that brought a smile to my face. I found Undergrowth with Two Figures by Vincent van Gogh completely enchanting. I longed to step into the painting and gather armfuls of flowers. Instead, I gathered inspiration for this haiku:

Beneath silver trees
coruscating daffodils
illuminate the day

© Catherine Flynn, 2019

Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Kelsey, Melanie, and Lanny for creating this community and providing this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday throughout the year. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

National Poetry Month: A Star-Splashed Fib

Catherine Flynn3 Comments

Many people have wonderful poetry projects planned for this month. I’m following Heidi Mordhorst‘s lead and will join in when I can as prompts strike my fancy or match up with my life.

In this case, Mary Lee Hahn‘s “Playing With Poetry” was the springboard. One of Mary Lee’s options for poetry playfulness was paint chip poetry. Thanks to our recent renovation project, I have paint chips everywhere. We chose “Milky Way,” a luscious shade of yellow for the guest room. (This color also makes me very happy, so I could add Irene’s project to the list of inspirations.)

I’d been toying with how to structure a Milky Way poem without much luck. Then, on Monday morning, the moon was a thin crescent, hanging on the edge of dawn. The arc of the moon got me thinking of spirals, which led me to Fibonacci sequences, which led to this poem.

Star
Sun
Solar
System spins
At galaxy’s edge
The Milky Way’s spiral arms
Twirl like a ballerina’s silver-sequined tutu

© Catherine Flynn, 2019

Slice of Life 19: Making a Poem Out of Legos

Catherine Flynn8 Comments

Another March is coming to a close. After five years of successfully blogging every day, this is the second year that I haven’t been able to keep up with the pace of slicing. As my friend Heidi so wisely stated: “It might be okay to miss a day, because, you know, LIFE.”

And meetings. Have there always been so many meetings? It seems like they’ve multiplied exponentially lately. At a recent meeting in our Library/Media Center, I happened to be sitting at the end of the row, near a table where a bin of Legos awaited the next day’s students. They intrigued me because they were many more colors than I remember from my children’s Legos. There were brown bricks, orange bricks, gray bricks! I confess, my mind started to wander. The next thing I knew, this draft of a poem was in my notebook.

Brown earth thaws, softens
Green shoots peek out of the soil
Gray clouds skitter across the sky, unveiling an
Orange sunset blanketing the sky, cradling a
Yellow crescent moon.

© Catherine Flynn, 2019

Naomi Shihab Nye is absolutely correct: “Poems hide…What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.”

What I didn’t know as I jotted down my ideas was that I was inadvertently warming up for Mary Lee Hahn‘s National Poetry Month project, “Playing With Poetry!” And though I doubt I’ll get a poem up every day, I’m looking forward to joining in the fun!

Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Kelsey, Melanie, and Lanny for creating this community and providing this space for teachers and others to share their stories every day in March and each Tuesday throughout the year. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life 19 & Poetry Friday: Pancakes!

Catherine Flynn18 Comments

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Congratulations, Heidi Mordhorst! You are the lucky winner of a copy of In the Middle of the Night: Poems From a Wide-Awake House! I know you and your second-graders will LOVE Laura’s new book.

There is a lot going on at my house these days. Our renovation project is winding down and we’re hosting an engagement party for my son and his fiancee next weekend. I know we all have busy lives, and kudos to all of you who juggle everything so well, but my attention has NOT been on my writing. I have managed to jot down a few ideas and make some notes, but not much more than that. I am looking forward to writing more in April, but have no particular project in mind for National Poetry Month.

Last week, it was my turn to post a prompt for Laura’s Food Poetry Project. Deciding what to favorite food to post was more difficult that I thought it would be. In the end, I went with the my idea of the delicious breakfast food ever, the pancake.

Writing about pancakes turned out to be just as difficult as choosing them. Sometimes when I’m stuck, I write acrostics to get ideas flowing. This week, after a bit of tinkering, I decided to stick with the form.

Pancake

Piping hot,

Awash in butter

Nine in a syrup-

Covered stack

Abounding with blueberries

Keeps hunger away and

Energizes me for the day!

© Catherine Flynn, 2019

Be sure to visit Carol at Carol’s Corner for the Poetry Friday Roundup! Also, thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Kelsey, Melanie, and Lanny for creating this community and providing this space for teachers and others to share their stories every day in March and each Tuesday throughout the year. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Poetry Friday & A Slice of Life 19: Soup

Catherine Flynn11 Comments

       

I’m a recipe follower. Before I got married, I told my mother I wasn’t moving out unless I got a Betty Crocker cookbook so I’d have the recipe for apple pie. After many years of trying new recipes, though, I learned to be a little more flexible about improvising when I cook. In fact, when it comes to chicken soup, I just start tossing ingredients into the pot. So when my poetry pal and critique group partner, Linda Mitchell, suggested writing about soup, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. This poem, which is basically how I make chicken soup these days, is still a very rough draft.

Soup

In a pot as blue as the sky,
a poem simmers.
Corn kernels
become a hundred tiny suns.
Carrots and potatoes
are the warm, rich earth
while parsley and rosemary
are fresh and green and fragrant.
Chunks of chicken add
more earth and sunshine.
Water,
bubbling up as if from a spring,
mixes and melds
with salt,
with pepper,
with love
sating my soul.

© Catherine Flynn, 2019

Please be sure to visit Rebecca Herzog at Sloth Reads for the Poetry Friday Roundup. Thank you also to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Kelsey, Melanie, and Lanny for creating this community and providing this space for teachers and others to share their stories every day in March and each Tuesday throughout the year. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life 19: A Writing Friendship

Catherine Flynn6 Comments

In a separate post, today I’m hosting a stop on the blog tour of In the Middle of the Night: Poems From a Wide-Awake House, by Laura Purdie Salas. (Leave a comment on that post, and you’ll be entered in a drawing for your very own copy!)

There is a direct link between being part of Laura’s blog tour and participating in the March Slice of Life Challenge. I “met” Laura when I responded to a tweet she sent out looking for teachers to write activity guides to a series of poetry books she was self-publishing. Designing activities to support favorite books is something I love to do. But I wasn’t confident I had the writing experience that Laura was looking for. As I worked to summon up the courage to write to Laura, I reread past blog posts and people’s comments, many from fellow Slicers. Indirectly, this community gave the push I needed to send the email. And, miracle of miracles, Laura put her trust in me! A few months later, Wacky, Wild, and Wonderful: 50 State Poems, part of Laura’s “30 Painless Classroom Poems” series, debuted with an activity guide written by yours truly.

Thanks to a supportive administration, I was able to attend NCTE later that year and meet Laura in person. Since then, we’ve seen each other at other conferences and connected online through Twitter and our blogs. This is exactly the kind of supportive friendship that I’ve been fortunate enough to develop with many other teachers and writers, all thanks to everyone, past and present, at Two Writing Teachers!

Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Kelsey, Melanie, and Lanny for creating this community and providing this space for teachers and others to share their stories every day in March and each Tuesday throughout the year. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.