Tag: Poetry Friday

Poetry Friday: The Cities Inside Us

Catherine Flynn10 Comments

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I’m participating in Teachers Write! this summer, so I’ve been thinking about writing a lot this week. (If you haven’t heard about  this fabulous online summer writing camp for teachers and librarians, you can learn more on Kate Messner’s blog.) With all these thoughts whirling around in my head, it seems appropriate today to share a poem that speaks to the writer in all of us.

“The Cities Inside Us”

by Alberto Rios

We live in secret cities

And we traveled unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize

But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.

They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city

Inside us…

Read the rest of the poem here.

By Herkulaneischer Meister via Wikimedia Commons
By Herkulaneischer Meister via Wikimedia Commons

Be sure to visit Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s Poem Farm for today’s poetry round up.

Poetry Friday: There Was a Frog

Catherine Flynn3 Comments

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As the literacy specialist in a K-8 school, I have many roles and responsibilities on any given day. For the most part I enjoy them all. But hands down, the best part of my day is working with students. I work with first grade students through our RTI process (known as SRBI, Scientifically Research Based Instruction, in Connecticut). We begin each lesson with a poem to “warm up our ears.” The students choose one or two previously read poems to read to themselves, and then we read a new one together. Over the years, I’ve noticed particular poems that all the children seem to love. Many of these favorites come from The Frogs and Toads All Sang (HarperCollins, 2009), by Arnold Lobel.

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These poems were written and illustrated as a gift to writer Crosby Bonsall and her husband. Decades later, they were discovered at Bonsall’s estate auction and brought to the attention of Adrianne Lobel, Arnold’s stage-designing daughter. She added color to her father’s illustrations and this wonderful book was born. You can listen to Adrianne Lobel describe the process here:

By June, my first grade students are well on their way as readers. Lobel’s poems provide just the right balance of familiar and challenging words, not to mention the fact that the poems are about frogs and toads. (Not the Frog and Toad, but I haven’t met too many first graders who don’t love these charming amphibians.) In addition, these poems are silly. See for yourself.

There Was a Frog

by Arnold Lobel

There was a frog

Who had a car.

He drove it fast.

He drove it far.

He traveled

Fifty days and nights

And never

Looked at traffic lights.

“I learned to drive

Quite easily,

But I never learned

To stop,” said he.

What’s not to love about that? If you’re looking for the perfect summer read for any frog and toad loving first grader (or any primary grader, for that matter), this book is it.

Be sure to visit Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for today’s Poetry Friday Roundup

Poetry Friday: Ox Cart Man

Catherine Flynn9 Comments

Poetry_Friday_Button-210Ox Cart Man

by Donald Hall

In October of the year

he counts potatoes dug from the brown field

counting the seed, counting

the cellar’s portion out,

and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey

in combs, linen, leather

tanned from deerhide,

and vinegar in a barrel

hooped by hand at the forge’s fire.

Read the rest of the poem here

Donald Hall’s “Ox Cart Man” first appeared in The New Yorker on October 3, 1977. Two years later, Hall revised and expanded it into a picture book. Barbara Cooney’s primitive folk art paintings perfectly match the tone of this tale of a self-sufficient farmer and his family. Winner of the 1980 Caldecott Award, the book portrays 19th century farm life and its close ties to the seasons. The Horn Book described it as a “pastoral symphony translated into picture book format.”

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Be sure to visit Tabatha Yeatts at her lovely blog, The Opposite of Indifference for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Poetry Friday: “Cadence” by Margaret Wise Brown

Catherine Flynn7 Comments

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Cadence

There is music I have heard

Sharper than the song of bird

Sweeter still while still unheard

There beyond the inner ear.

Softer than the sounds I hear

Softer than the ocean’s swell

In the caverns of a shell,

Tinier than cutting wings

Of flying birds and little things,

Like a cat’s paw in the night

Or a rabbit’s frozen fright.

This is the music I have heard

In the cadence of the word

Not spoken yet

And not yet heard.

by Margaret Wise Brown

I discovered this poem on a bookmark in a book that someone at school was weeding out of their collection. I knew Margaret Wise Brown from her classics Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and The Important Book, but I wasn’t familiar with this poem. It first appeared in Nibble, Nibble, a collection of 25 poems which was first published in 1959 with illustrations by Leonard Weisgard. Wendell Minor created new illustrations for “Cadence” and four other poems from the original collection in 2007.

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Brown was a pioneer in children’s literature and wrote hundreds of books. You can learn more about her life and work here. Leonard S. Marcus published a biography, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon (HarperCollins), in 1999 and Over the Moon: An Imaginary Interview with Margaret Wise Brown in the May/June 2010 of The Horn Book.

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My favorite quote from this interview reveals Brown’s prescient wisdom about the lives of children.

“In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child’s need for quietness is the same today as it has always been–it may even be greater–for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.”

We all need time to be lost in our thoughts, time to listen for those words “Not spoken yet/And not yet heard.”

Be sure to stop by Teaching Young Writers for today’s round up. Thank you, Betsy, for hosting!

Poetry Friday: Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World

Catherine Flynn9 Comments

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Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World

by Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded
soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and
simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with
angels.

Read the rest of the poem here or listen to Richard Wilbur read his poem.

Be sure to visit Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup for the round up of Poetry Friday posts.

Poetry Friday: America the Beautiful

Catherine Flynn7 Comments

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There’s a scene in the movie Peggy Sue Got Married where 43-year old Peggy Sue, played by Kathleen Turner, finds herself back in her high school home room singing either “America the Beautiful” or “The Star-Spangled Banner.” (I can’t remember which, and we no longer have a working VCR, so I can’t check.) She sings with such gusto that her friends look at her like she’s nuts. I’ve always found her passion inspiring.

I thought of this scene last night at a rehearsal for our town’s Memorial Day service next weekend. Every year for the past four or five years, I’ve sung with a group of other people in town at this and other occasions. I hadn’t practiced with them for a few months and I had forgotten not only how much fun we have, but also how moving the songs we sing are. Of course we sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” We also sing “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “God Bless America” and my favorite, “America the Beautiful.”

“America the Beautiful” was written by Katherine Lee Bates in 1893. Bates was an English professor at Wellesley College, and she was inspired to write her poem after a trip to Colorado.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Most people know only the first verse and chorus, which celebrates the beauty of the American landscape. The rest of the poem pays tribute to the Pilgrims and patriots who made the ideal of America possible and asks for God’s help in living up to the possibilities of our freedom. You can read it here (and learn more about Bates and her trip to Colorado). Although it had been sung to other tunes, Samuel Ward’s music, originally written in 1882, was added in 1910 and became the accepted version.

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Several picture books have been created using Bates’s poem. Neil Waldman illustrated a version in 2002, and Wendell Minor’s interpretation of the poem was published in 2003. Anita Silvey featured this lovely book on her Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac last summer.

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A stunning pop-up version was created by Robert Sabuda in 2004. In 2010, Katherine Lee Bates’s great, great, grandnephew, Chris Gall paired his unique vision with his relative’s famous verses. America the Beautiful: Together We Stand  is the most recent version, published just this year. This rendition is illustrated by a virtual who’s who of picture book illustrators. Quotes from presidents are paired with the lyrics and illustrations.

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After 9/11, my school had an assembly to come together and mourn. The principal said a few words, but we mostly sang patriotic songs. I was shocked to discover that many of my students didn’t know the words to these songs. After that, I always included a song in the morning routine my classroom. This is one of the things I miss the most about not having my own classroom.

These songs are part of our cultural heritage. No matter what our politics, curriculum, or testing demands, we should be sharing these songs with our students every day.  Peggy Sue shouldn’t be the only one excited about singing them.

Poetry Friday: “Think Like a Tree”

Catherine Flynn10 Comments

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At the beginning of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie Nolan gazes at the tree in her yard and recalls lines of poetry learned in school:

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like the Druids of old… (From H.W. Longfellow’s Introduction to Evangeline)

To Francie, her tree is hope, for “no matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky.”

I’ve been thinking about trees, and the hope they represent, this week. This might be because a piece of land I pass on my drive to work each day is being cleared and the most amazing tree has been revealed, not twenty feet from the road. It has a huge limb that grows almost perpendicular to the trunk before it arches up toward the sky, creating an inviting perch. Every day I want to stop my car and climb onto that seat.

I loved to climb trees when I was a kid. I loved being enfolded in their branches. My mother used to have a fit that I was too high, that I would fall and break my neck. I never did fall. Somewhere along the way I grew too old for climbing trees. But I’ve never stopped admiring their beauty, their resilience.

Trees nurture us in countless ways. They provide shade in summer and shelter in winter. Our air is purified by their leaves. They produce fruit and harbor bees and their honey. It’s no wonder that cultures throughout history have considered trees sacred and have worshiped them.

“Think Like a Tree,” by Karen I. Shragg captures the beauty and magic of trees and reminds us of their wisdom.

Soak up the sun

Affirm life’s magic

Be graceful in the wind

Stand tall after a storm…

Read the rest of this poem here.

Writers and poets have been celebrating trees for millennia. What is your favorite tree poem?

Be sure to visit Anastasia Suen’s Poetry Blog for today’s round up of poems.

Poetry Friday: Picture-Books in Winter

Catherine Flynn4 Comments

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In case you haven’t heard, May is Get Caught Reading month. Sponsored by the Association of American Publishers since 1999, Get Caught Reading month is “a nationwide campaign to remind people of all ages how much fun it is to read.” You can find out more, including how to order the celebrity posters, here.

ImageTo celebrate, here is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Picture-Books in Winter,”  a reminder that books allow us to experience any adventure imaginable, no matter what the season.

Picture-Books In Winter

Summer fading, winter comes–

Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,

Window robins, winter rooks,

And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone

Nurse and I can walk upon;

Still we find the flowing brooks

In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,

Wait upon the children’s eye,

Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,

In the picture story-books.

We may see how all things are

Seas and cities, near and far,

And the flying fairies looks,

In the picture story-books.

How am I to sing your praise,

Happy chimney-corner days,

Sitting safe in nursery nooks,

Reading picture story-books?

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Pick up a book and have an adventure today!

You can learn more about Robert Louis Stevenson and read other poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses at Poets.org. Also, be sure to visit Liz Steinglass at her lovely blog for the round up of poems.

Poetry Friday: “Poet’s Checklist”

Catherine Flynn4 Comments

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An acrostic poem, according to Poetry4kids, is “a poem in which the first letters of each line spell out a word or phrase.” The word can be anything; colors, animals, names, and more. Acrostic poems have been around since antiquity, and they are still popular today in schools. (I wrote more about sharing acrostics with students and how they support the CCSS here.)

On this last Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month, I want to share one of my favorite acrostics. This poem, by Patricia Hubbard, appeared in the May, 2003 issue of The Reading Teacher (Vol. 56, No.8). I think Hubbard perfectly captures the process of writing a poem.

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Poet’s Checklist

Always start with ideas that sing in your heart.

Choose sharp, juicy, whistling words.

Rhyme is fine, but it must shine.

Over and over and over–write, read, revise.

See, touch, taste smell, listen to your poem.

Too sloppy? Recopy.

Ideas dance on the polished page.

Celebrate–you are a poet. Share, speak, sing.

by Patricia Hubbard

Please visit Laurie Salas Purdie at Writing the World for Kids for the Poetry Friday Roundup!

Poetry Friday: Apple Blossom

Catherine Flynn4 Comments

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“Find something you love, and write a poem to celebrate it.”  X.J. Kennedy

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Blossoms 3 by Liz West, via Wikimedia Creative Commons

Usually at this time of year, the apple trees in my yard are loaded with blossoms. This picture was taken in 2010:

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My yard, as seen from my office window.

Because of the cold weather this spring and damage to the trees during Hurricane Sandy, they are still bare.

I love these apple trees and the masses of blossoms they produce each year. We don’t harvest the apples; they’re small and bitter.  The neighborhood deer, however, have quite a feast in October! I look forward each year to their beauty and promise.  I’m waiting patiently for them to bloom, but in the meantime, I followed Kennedy’s advice and wrote a tanka to celebrate something I love.

soft rosy petals

cover tree branches like snow

gossamer petals

dance in a soft gentle breeze

delicious promise of fruit

© Catherine Flynn, 2013

Be sure to stop by Live Your Poem for the round up of poems. Thank you to Irene Latham for hosting today!