Poetry Friday: Forever Friends?

Catherine Flynn14 Comments

I didn’t get much writing done in October. I probably won’t get much writing done in November, either. But I keep plugging away. Slow and steady, right? Today’s poem is my response to Michelle Heidenrich Barnes‘s October(!) ditty challenge from Calef Brown. He asked us to “Write a poem or a story about two anthropomorphized objects.” 

I thought about this for days, but kept coming up empty. Then, on Halloween, it finally came to me. I have a drawer full of pins to match almost every book and subject from the third grade curriculum I taught for many years. I don’t wear them too much any more, but I have a cat pin I often wear on Halloween. Bingo! Finally, several drafts later, here is my still-needs-work-but-it’s-come-a-long-way draft.

Forever Friends?

Trapped inside a box of baubles,
An enamel mouse and rhinestone cat
Grew restless and began to squabble
On their cushiony, cottony mat.

“If I had legs, I’d crouch and pounce,
Then grab your shimmering tail.
You’d be completely trounced,”
that feline loudly railed.

“If I had legs, I’d dart and dash,
Evading your golden claws,
zipping past you in a flash,”
the wee brave mouse guffawed.

“If only we could reach the rim,”
bemoaned the paralyzed pair.
“We’d be free to stretch our limbs,
and breathe in pure fresh air.

“This lid won’t budge; we’re out of luck.
Why don’t we make amends?
No lark for us. We’re truly stuck.
Let’s bury our grudge and be friends.”

© Catherine Flynn, 2018

Will the truce last?

Thank you, Michelle and Calef for this thought-provoking challenge! Please be sure to visit Linda Baie at Teacher Dance for the Poetry Friday Roundup!

 

Poetry Friday: Sydell Rosenberg’s H is for Haiku

Catherine Flynn11 Comments

“It’s amazing what you can see when you just sit quietly and look.”
Jacqueline Kelly, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Looking closely and seeing familiar objects in new and unique ways is the essence of poetry. H is For Haiku is a joyful collection of haiku by Sydell Rosenberg, a poet and New York City public school teacher who passed away in 1996, that celebrates everyday life 17 syllables at a time. Rosenberg’s daughter, Amy Losak, has lovingly gathered 26 poems to fulfill her mother’s dream of publishing a book of haiku for children. (Read more about this journey here.)

I love that this collection begins with the word adventure, for that’s exactly what H is For Haiku is. Readers step into a world where children’s daily lives and dreams spill across the page, just as the universe seems to be pouring out of a cat’s tail in the first poem. What child hasn’t thought of monsters when they see lobsters in a tank or wondered about turtles perched on a rock?

Rosenberg’s haiku are also full of the joy of language. Young readers may not know what a jaunt is, but they will to go on one with a “wide-eyed doll” after reading the poem for the letter C. The subject of each poem does not necessarily begin with the letter the poem represents. This inventiveness shows children how playful language can be. After reading “a squirrel sweeps up sunbeams/with her transparent tail,” who won’t be inspired to notice the world in new way?

 This collection is spirited, inventive, and fun. Sawsan Chalabi’s whimsical illustrations fill H is For Haiku with a diverse cast of expressive characters that perfectly complement the tone of Rosenberg’s poems. After reading H is For Haiku, children of all ages will pay closer attention as they go about their day, always on the lookout for the poetry hiding in unexpected corners of their world.

Honoring Syd’s life,
crafted with her daughter’s love:
H is For Haiku

Thank you, Amy Losak, for giving us the gift of your mother’s poetry.

Please be sure to visit Michelle Heidenrich Barnes at Today’s Little Ditty for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

 

 

Poetry Friday: The Wondrous Wonderpus

Catherine Flynn6 Comments

Without intending to, I ended up taking a hiatus from blogging during October. I have missed all my poetry pals, though, so I’m determined to at least get pack to posting on Fridays.

In September, the lovely and generous Irene Latham invited her readers and friends to share “some octopus poems and art” to be featured on her blog during October, otherwise known as #NationalOctopusMonth. I’ve never been a huge fan of octopuses, but I am a HUGE fan of Irene and all her writing, so I dove into learning more about the fascinating creatures.

I soon discovered the wonderpus octopus (Wunderpus photogenicus), who lives in the coastal waters near Indonesia and Malaysia. This beautiful little octopus inspired this poem, “The Wondrous Wonderpus.”

 

 

By Jenny (JennyHuang) from Taipei (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Thank you again to Irene, for always being such an inspiration. Please be sure to visit Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup for the Poetry Friday Roundup!

Poetry Friday: “Talking About the Day”

Catherine Flynn15 Comments

For the past week or so, I have been attempting to write a sonnet. It is not going well. I have counted syllables, tapped stresses, and written lists of rhyming words. I have read sonnets. I have read about writing sonnets. This has not helped. But I am not giving up.

Among the many sonnets I’ve read, I found this little gem, which seems to be lacking a few characteristics of a sonnet, in the Poetry Foundation’s sonnet collection.

“Talking About the Day”
by Jim Daniels

Each night after reading three books to my two children–
we each picked one–to unwind them into dreamland,
I’d turn off the light and sit between their beds
in the wide junk-shop rocker I’d reupholstered blue,
still feeling the close-reading warmth of their bodies beside me,
and ask them to talk about the day–we did this,
we did that, sometimes leading somewhere, sometimes
not, but always ending up at the happy ending of now.
Now, in still darkness, listening to their breath slow and ease
into sleep’s regular rhythm.

Read the rest of the poem here.

Please be sure to visit Jone Rush MacCulloch at Deowriter for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Poetry Friday: “…With Care in Such a World”

Catherine Flynn8 Comments

As I searched for an idea for today’s post, I came across this poem by William Stafford:

“The Well Rising”

The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through deep ground
everywhere in the field–

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer–

Read the rest of the poem here.

The final line, “with care in such a world,” resonated with me, and I decided to use it as the strike line for a Golden Shovel.

Please be sure to visit the lovely Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

 

Poetry Friday: Questions for the Author

Catherine Flynn13 Comments

Over the summer, all our students in grades five through eight read Restart, by Gordon Korman. The kids loved the book, and have had some amazing discussions about its characters and themes. Earlier this week, as a culminating event, we had a  Skype visit with Mr. Korman, who entertained us with stories and writing advice. Before our visit, the kids came up with many insightful questions. Their thoughtful wonderings inspired this poem. (Which was also inspired by Naomi Shihab Nye‘s ditty challenge for September on Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’s blog, Today’s Little Ditty.)

To the Author Of My Favorite Book:

What made you write this story?
What gave you this idea?
How did you find the just-right words
to show the way I feel?
Did you peek inside my diary,
or spy on me each day?

Were you ever lonely?
Were you ever blue?
Did someone ever write a book
that felt like a friend to you?

Do you think I can be happy
like the girl inside your book?
You made her come alive,
you gave me a new friend.
Please write more of her story
so our friendship never ends.

© Catherine Flynn, 2018

Please be sure to visit Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Slice of Life: Life is Short

Catherine Flynn8 Comments

Every teacher knows the week before school starts is one of the busiest of the year; a week that leaves little time for reflective, thoughtful writing. I’ve decided that working through some of the mentor texts in Linda Rief’s The Quickwrite Handbook is a realistic option to keep me writing during these first few weeks of school.

This week, Linda’s suggestion to borrow the phrase “Life is short…” from Maggie Smith’s poem “Good Bones,” appealed to me. Here is my response:

Life is short, so on the last Sunday of August, the day before school started, when I still had piles of books I wanted to read and at least one poem I wanted to write, I drove for half an hour to meet my friend.

Life is short, so we met at a place where we could walk in the sunshine of a late summer morning through a field still wet with dew and bedecked with the lacy offerings of a thousand spiders and talk about our busy week, our busy children, our busy lives.

Life is short, so even though there was laundry to sort and rooms to vacuum, we drove to a diner where we drank hot coffee and ate fluffy eggs and ignored the hustle and bustle around us and talked some more and worked on the crossword puzzle, just like we used to when she lived down the street, enjoying the easy comfort of our long friendship, a friendship that makes this life beautiful.

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 Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Poetry Friday: W.S. Merwin’s “Beginners”

Catherine Flynn12 Comments

Like many of you, and hundreds of thousands of educators around the country, I’ve been busy preparing for the start of school next week. The buzz of anticipation at meeting new students, sharing new books, and embarking on our learning journey never fades. Unfortunately, there are always aspects of our teaching lives that we have no control over and don’t always agree with. What we can control, though, is our response to the situation.

I’ve always admired people who remain calm in every situation because I occasionally go to DEFCON 1 in an instant. I know this is not always appropriate or even warranted. It’s usually also never helpful. This is something I’m working on. I will carry the last line of this poem by the very wise and wonderful W.S. Merwin into the new year to help me.

“Beginners”
by W.S. Merwin

As though it had always been forbidden to remember
each of us grew up
knowing nothing about the beginning

but in time there came from that forgetting
names representing a truth of their own
and we went on repeating them
until they too began not to be remembered
they became part of the forgetting
later came stories like the days themselves
there seemed to be no end to them
and we told what we could remember of them

Read the rest of the poem here.

Wishing you all a great year!

Please be sure to visit my wise and wonderful friend, Margaret Simon at Reflection on the Teche, for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Slice of Life: When I Was Young…

Catherine Flynn4 Comments

As summer winds down, I’ve been thinking not only about what I accomplished (closets cleaned, books read, poems written), but what I didn’t do. For many years, my in-laws had a very rustic cabin on a lake in “down east” Maine.  We spent many weeks there over the years. Going to camp was right up there with Christmas and birthdays for my boys. The cabin was sold long ago, but for some reason, I missed it more than usual this summer.

Maybe that’s because I started thinking about it in June after I received my copy of Linda Rief’s fabulous new book, The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students’ Thinking and Writing. One of Linda’s quickwrite suggestions is to “borrow Cynthia Rylant’s line ‘When I was young in the…’ (or ‘at the’) and write down all that comes to mind about that place you love or that place that you dislike.” Although I never spent time at the lake when I was young, it isn’t hard to imagine this magical spot through the eyes of a child.

When I Was Young at the Lake

(with thanks to Linda Rief and Cynthia Rylant)

When I was young at the lake, I woke to the sun shining through the trees, making puddles on the floor of the cabin’s loft. I skipped stones across the glassy water and paddled a canoe to the island near our cove. My brother and I ran wild through the forest and built a fort to defend our territory. We swam in the cold water and searched for unusual rocks on the beach.

When I was young at the lake, the air smelled of pine trees and we picked wild blueberries that grandma baked into a pie. On rainy afternoons, as raindrops pinged on the roof, we sat on the porch and put puzzles together. On clear nights, we watched meteor showers from the beach that were better than any fireworks we’d ever seen.

I fished for trout with my grandfather from our rowboat. Grandma always clapped when we presented her with our catch. Then she breaded each fish in cornmeal and fried them in her big cast iron skillet. Once a year, we drove to Machias for lobsters and corn on the cob. On those nights, we felt like kings as pulled tender meat from bright red claws and licked our buttery fingers clean.

When I was young at the lake, we fell into bed, exhausted from the day’s adventures, and drifted to sleep to the lullaby of loons.

A rock from the shore of Beddington Lake.

Linda explains that “these quickwrites are seeds of ideas, the beginning of a piece to be worked on right away or, at the very least, captured for later use.” I can easily imagine revisiting “When I Was Young at the Lake.” I can imagine a poem emerging from these lines, or maybe a picture book. Even if these memories never get farther than this post, my memories of the lake are always in my “deep heart’s core.” (“The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” by W.B. Yeats)

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 Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.