Poetry Friday: Keith Urban & Where I’m From

September 10, 2015 Catherine Flynn10 Comments

In August I was lucky to attend a Reading Institute at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. This week-long institute is reinvigorating and energizing, and my brain is always bursting with ideas when I leave.

The staff developers at TCRWP do a terrific job of incorporating songs, videos, and other digital texts into their lessons to both engage students and broaden their horizons. I don’t watch much TV or listen to popular music on a regular basis, so I’m often out of the loop on what kids are watching and listening to. But after leaving New York, I was inspired to change the station on my way to work and listen to a country music radio station. Keith Urban’s new song, “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16” (written by Shane McAnally, Ross Copperman, and Josh Osborne) was playing. I was drawn in by the melody right away, and the lyrics really intrigued me.

I’m a 45 spinning on an old Victrola
I’m a two strike swinger, I’m a Pepsi cola
I’m a blue jean quarterback saying “I love you” to the prom queen in a Chevy…

Read the rest of the lyrics here.

Then my teacher brain kicked in and all sorts of possibilities for sharing this song with older students started swirling in my brain. The song evokes a bygone era and offers endless opportunities for building knowledge about the culture of mid-twentieth century America.

I was also reminded of George Ella Lyon’s poem, “Where I’m From.” Popular in writing workshops as a mentor poem, many teachers begin the school year with this poem as a way to learn about their students and build community. Pairing Urban’s rendition of “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16” with Lyon’s poem is a sure way to inspire young poets to pen their own poetic memoir.

“Where I’m From”
by George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

Read the rest of the poem here.

Be sure to visit Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Slice of Life: Stitching a Life Back Together

September 8, 2015 Catherine Flynn22 Comments

Separation
by W. S. Merwin

“Your absence has gone through me
Like a thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.”

The last official weekend of summer was bittersweet. My son was home, and we had company all weekend. Our days were filled with hiking, swimming, and napping. Our evenings began with suppers outside by candlelight and ended long past midnight around our fire pit. There were moments of laughter, but more moments of tears, as the loss of his dear, beautiful Julia is still a fresh wound. His heartbreak is palpable and visible in his face. But as we sat by the fire Friday night, I could feel his relief to be in our backyard, surrounded by his family and friends. I, too, felt a sense of peace start to return. This line, from “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” by William Butler Yeats, came to me:

“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping
slow.”

“Dropping slow” seemed to me exactly the way to describe the process of trying to stitch your heart and life back together without all the pieces. He’ll be putting his heart back together for years to come; maybe for the rest of his life. I’ll be there to help him with each stitch.

This slice was difficult to write. It feels much too personal for a blog that is supposed to be about teaching reading and writing. And yet, a slice is “a simple way to practice what we ask of students—to write…a small sliver of your ordinary life.” I am grateful to be part of this community and to have a place to share this writing, which seems so far removed from my original mission, but which was so necessary for me to write.

Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Poetry Friday: Missing You

August 27, 2015 Catherine Flynn15 Comments

Missing you,
the star
at the center of their universe,
the cats wander the apartment,
their orbit thrown off kilter
by your sudden departure.

They sniff the rug,
the sofa cushions
wondering,
“Where is she?”
“Did she sit here a minute ago?”

They wrap around my legs,
seeking, searching.
They nibble at their food,
lap up water with their rough,
pink tongues that long to kiss
your beautiful face,
then meander back to the bedroom,
hoping to find you
waiting there,
where you belong.

Thank you, everyone, for your all your kind words and understanding last week. My daughter-in-law Julia was a beautiful woman who will be dearly missed by everyone who knew her.

julia-alex-bklyn 2 — Julia Bean 1982-2015

Please visit Sylvia at Poetry for Children for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Poetry Friday: Joyce Sidman’s “First Life”

July 10, 2015 Catherine Flynn9 Comments

I’m immersed in a poetry project that is challenging me in every way imaginable, so I’ve been reading stacks of poetry books for guidance and inspiration. Over the past week, I’ve returned to Joyce Sidman’s Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010) again and again, savoring Sidman’s masterful use of language and form.

The book’s opening poem, “First Life” has become one of my favorites.

This screen shot comes the excellent Teacher’s Guide Joyce wrote, which is available here.

Sidman finds beauty and wonder in all these species, from the lowliest bacteria to wolves, sharks, and humans. The poems in this collection truly are celebrations of these survivors. In her author’s note, Sidman tells readers that “…99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct…the ones who made it, and are thriving, are indeed remarkable.

Please be sure to visit Katie at The Logonauts for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Slice of Life: Wonder Poems

July 7, 2015 Catherine Flynn11 Comments

For the fourth summer in a row, Kate Messner, Gae Polisner, Jo Knowles, and Jen Vincent are hosting Teachers Write!, a wonderful online summer writing camp. What began as the result of a comment during a Twitter chat has grown into a huge community and even inspired a book, 59 Reasons to Write (Stenhouse, 2015).

Yesterday, Kate kicked off the 2015 season with an invitation to wonder. Kate writes that wondering is where authentic writing starts, that “Wonder is essential for writers, but sometimes, we don’t leave time for it in our daily task-finishing, dinner-making, laundry-sorting lives.” Unfortunately, this is often true in our classrooms, too.

I usually make time for wondering during my drive to work and when I’m walking my dog, so it didn’t take me long to come up with a list, which soon morphed into a poem:

What wonders does the world behold?
a chirping robin greeting the dawn
a mighty river carving stone
a million stars shining in the sky above
the ringing of a telephone
the warmth of your hand in mine
finding a friend in the pages of a book.

Not sure what I would do with this list, I went about my morning. Within an hour, I heard a story on NPR about the NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Of course I started wondering what discoveries will be made about this most-mysterious non-planet. The similarities between the word “planet” and “Pluto” popped out at me, and I started thinking about how to work this into a poem.

J. Patrick Lewis says that in poetry, like architecture, “form follows function.” My work-in-progress has me thinking a lot about poetic forms. Lately, I’ve been working on a diamante (Which J. Patrick Lewis doesn’t consider a true verse form; read why here.) because it seemed like the form might help me accomplish my purpose for writing. This form also seemed like it might work for a planet/Pluto poem. Here’s a draft:

Planet
celestial, spherical
orbiting, rotating, reflecting
rock, solar system, outcast
freezing, wandering, eluding
distant, mysterious
Pluto

While there are parts of this I like, I wasn’t thrilled with it. Still wondering, I did a little research. Tricia Stohr-Hunt’s blog, The Miss Rumphius Effect is a treasure-trove of poetic resources, so I checked her site for more information. Coincidentally, Tricia’s post yesterday was about cinquains, another short form with a strict pattern. So I decided to try the Pluto poem as a cinquain.

Frozen,
rocky mystery
wandering at the edge
of our solar system; outcast:
Pluto

I’m still pondering this one, but playing around with different forms was fun. It also helped me see a new possibility for a poem that’s been challenging to write. In addition, a few implications for teaching became clear as I was writing.

Asking a child, “What are you wondering about?” is such simple act, yet how often do teachers do it? What a gift it would be to ask our students this fundamental question each morning! What a list kids would generate! If we did this, then all the moaning about not knowing what to write about or groaning about making revisions might fall by the wayside. When you’re truly invested in what you’re doing, it doesn’t feel like work. And who knows where their questions will lead?

Thank you Kate, and everyone at Teachers Write! for the inspiration, and thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Astray on a Summer Breeze

June 29, 2015March 20, 2020 Catherine Flynn21 Comments

How to teach poetry? “This has always worked: find the material in your own life.”
~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

Penny Kittle tweeted this last night from the Boothbay Literacy Retreat, quoting a line from Naomi Shihab Nye, the evening’s “Distinguished Lecturer.” I had been thinking about this very idea earlier in the afternoon after I saw this on my way home:

Needless to say, I did a double take. So I drove home, parked the car, and the dog and I walked back to the field to capture the moment. The camera on my phone really doesn’t do justice to the scene, so I’ll try to paint a picture with words.

A balloon bouquet,
astray on a summer breeze,
touched down in a
sun-drenched meadow
to dance with butterflies.

I hope you all have a chance to enjoy a few sun-drenched afternoons this summer!

Poetry Friday: A Treehouse All Your Own

June 25, 2015April 17, 2016 Catherine Flynn10 Comments

Each month, Michelle Heidenrich Barnes has a poetry challenge over at her blog, Today’s Little Ditty. This month, her guest poet, Corey Rosen Schwartz, challenged readers to “Write a stanza or two about building a treehouse and challenge yourself to come up with a rhyme word that is two or more syllables. “

Well, I managed one pair of rhyming multisyllabic words in this poem inspired by my boys. And although their tree climbing days are long past, they still like to play in the woods.

When you’re feeling boisterous,
rowdy, shouty, roisterous,
go outside and find a tree
that you can call your own.

One that has a flat, wide space
between the branches that can brace
a treehouse hideout
that you can call your own.

Find a friend to help you hoist
smooth pine planks for each floor joist
plywood walls and a flat tin roof
that you can call your own.

Once you’ve built your private lair
twenty feet up in the air,
you can jump and stomp and shout
in a treehouse all your own.

Be careful as you prance about.
The ground’s a long way down!

Please be sure to visit Carol at Carol’s Corner for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Slice of Life: Trusting Myself

June 23, 2015 Catherine Flynn10 Comments

My school is undergoing some renovations this summer and several teachers are moving to new classrooms. Because of this, people were cleaning and weeding like mad during the last few weeks of school. I am not moving, but should have been doing my own weeding. Instead, I couldn’t resist going through other people’s discard piles. Unbelievably, I found a copy of Paul B. Janeczko’s Poetry from A to Z: A Guide for Young Writers (Simon and Schuster, 1994).

I’ve been savoring this anthology, which includes poems by Valerie Worth, Myra Cohn Livingston, Ralph Fletcher, Eve Merriam, and more. Many poems are accompanied by notes of advice and guidance from the poets themselves. My favorite so far is this piece of wisdom from Georgia Heard:

“I write first drafts with only the good angel on my shoulder, the voice that approves of everything I write. This voice doesn’t ask questions like, ‘Is this good? Is this a poem? Are you a poet?’ I keep that voice at a distance, letting only the good angel whisper to me: ‘Trust yourself.’ You can’t worry a poem into existence.”

This is exactly the encouragement I need as I write the first draft of a poetry project I’ve been working on. School demands have been draining and distracting me for the past few months, so I haven’t gotten too far beyond pages of notes. But now that summer is here, I’ll be at my desk every day with that good angel on my shoulder, trying not to worry, trusting myself.

Poetry Friday: Bells

May 29, 2015May 30, 2015 Catherine Flynn12 Comments

At the beginning of May, Michelle Heidenrich Barnes, of Today’s Little Ditty, posted a lovely interview with Nikki Grimes. At the end of the interview, Grimes challenged readers to write a “wordplay exercise and create your own free verse poem” based on a word chosen from a short list. Be sure to head over to Michelle’s blog to read all of the poems contributed for this challenge.

I’ve been playing with this all month. First I picked lemon, but wasn’t happy with the results. Once I started thinking about bell, the possibilities and references in popular culture seemed endless. If I had more time, I think it would be fun to create a found poem just from lines in songs and movies. Here is my current draft:

Bell is a heralding word—
Whether pealing in joy
or tolling in grief;
clanging on trains
or ding-donging on doors,
a bell says, “Listen to me!”

Bells are blue in the garden
and silver on sleighs.
Bells of brass
sound on ships at sea.

Bells wake us each morn,
they urge us to flee;
they can jangle our nerves
or proclaim angels’ new wings.

Once the town crier,
now they ping on our phones.
Whatever song they send
through the sky,
Bells cry out “Listen to me!”

Please be sure to visit Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Slice of Life: Sprouting Words

May 26, 2015 Catherine Flynn10 Comments

Words sprout from my pen
like weeds in my garden,
crowding my thoughts
and obscuring what I really
want to say.

If I keep at it long enough,
will I one day know
how to show and not tell
as easily as I can spot
a purple coneflower
hidden among the grasses?

I’ve been gardening for a long time. Some of my earliest memories are of helping my grandmother in her garden. Both of my grandmothers were expert gardeners, and they taught me the names of favorite flowers and the basics of gardening. Many of my peonies, iris, and poppies came from their gardens, and I feel confident when I’m caring for these hardy plants.

My writing is a different story. I didn’t keep notebooks when I was growing up, and I haven’t always wanted to be a writer. In fact, for a while I seriously considered majoring in horticulture. Although I keep at my writing, it’s easy to become frustrated and want to give up. In the garden, I know which weed to pull. In my writing, I go back and forth, changing this word and deleting that one, until all that’s left is an unintelligible pile of gibberish.

And yet, from time to time, I see a glimmer of hope. A turn of phrase that is good, not just one I think is good because I wrote it. I feel something, some awareness or knowledge that I can’t even name, begin to take root in my brain. The gardener in me knows I have to nurture this fragile shoot. It needs watering and feeding. It needs the right amount of sunlight. This nascent writing requires the same kind of attention I give my newly sprouted plants. If I leave them for too long, they’ll be choked out by dandelions and other hardier plants.

In his memoir Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music, Glen Kurtz writes that practicing is “a process of continual reevaluation, an attempt to bring growth to repetition…that teaches us the sweet, bittersweet joy of development, of growth, of change.” The process of growing and changing isn’t easy, but the rewards are many. So I’ll keep practicing as faithfully as I tend my garden. Who knows what will sprout up?

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