“Without awe life becomes routine…try to be surprised by something every day” ~ Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi ~
Today is the last day of school. It’s been a long week at the end of a long year. Earlier this week, as I sat on my deck for a breath of cool evening air, I was surprised to see a firefly. We usually don’t see them until later in June. This unexpected harbinger of summer made me very happy and helped get me to today’s finish line.
fireflies’ neon flashes and flickers bring the stars
I don’t remember exactly when I first found A Year of Reading, the blog where Mary Lee and Franki Sibberson have been writing about reading, poetry, and literacy for 15 years. It was one of the first blogs I started reading regularly in those early years. Mary Lee’s passion for teaching, her talent as a poet, and her all-around amazingness have inspired me ever since. Her generous invitations to have others join in during her annual April Poetry Projects were the nudge I needed to begin writing my own poetry. Her kind and encouraging words kept me going. How lucky are children who have had the privilege of spending a year in her classroom? How lucky are we that we can help celebrate Mary Lee’s retirement? Congratulations, Mary Lee, and thank you for everything! Like everyone gathered here today, I can’t wait to see where your next adventure takes you!
Afterimage
Your gift of observation is polished to a high sheen; nothing escapes your notice.
After thirty-seven years, you’ve scrutinized and studied almost one thousand students.
You invited their light— every wavelength– into the cauldron of your mind, where an alchemy of attention and imagination helped you find the essence of them.
For your students, thanks to you, everything comes next.
For you, always open to surprises, everything comes next.
(Italicized lines borrowed from Mary Lee’s “Words from the Poet” in Poems Are Teachers. “Everything comes next” is borrowed from the title of Naomi Shihab Nye’s latest collection of poems.)
Please visit the hostess of this online extravaganza, Christie Wyman, at Wondering and Wandering for more #PoemsforMaryLee! Be sure to wish Christie happy birthday while you’re there!
Last weekend, my friend and critique group partner, Margaret Simon, asked on Twitter: “Who’s interested in writing #poemsofpresence? … We can create a calm May 2021 to end the weirdest school year ever.”
It definitely has been the weirdest school year ever. And calm is always welcome. So I have been reminding myself to be present this week to what Kathryn Aalto calls “nature’s palliative powers.” (Writing Wild, p. 237) Here are two poems of presence, inspired by the busy-ness of the apple tree in my front yard.
“Poetry gives us a place to make beautiful sense of life.” ~ Joy Harjo ~
Welcome to the final Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month! Please be sure to visit Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme for the Poetry Friday Roundup. I can’t quite believe that April is over. One of the reasons I began this project was to find a way back into a daily writing habit. Although I didn’t post every day (“Because,” as my friend Heidi would say, “you know, life.“), I did write a poem in response to the work of all twenty-five writers profiled by Kathryn Aalto in Writing Wild. But somewhere along the way, this project morphed into something so much more. All of the women I met in this book are truly remarkable. Some have conquered overwhelming obstacles, including ne’er-do-well husbands, physical abuse and alcoholism. After spending a day or so with each of them, I found myself thinking, “She is my favorite.” Of course, I could never choose one over another. I am truly in awe of each and every one. Somewhere along the way, I read that Diane Ackerman calls herself a “poetic science storyteller.” I immediately thought, “that’s what I want to be when I grow up!” This work has changed me and inspired me in countless ways. I know it will be influencing my writing and my life for years to come.
For this final day, I decided to create a cento, drawing on all the poems I drafted this month. Italicized lines are directly from the work of other writers. Their names are listed in order at the bottom of the poem.
“A Complicated Beauty”
Things are at a tipping point. Earth, mother to all, weaves a web of memories. Know and say their names. Flood the world with empathy.
A bee buzzes hopefully around eager bursts of green, evidence of the wild wonder of the world.
In the day’s waning light, the world can shimmer. Winged creatures of the night with their own ways of being, chime a silent celebration.
Star gazers look up in wonder, notice the ghost moon in the wide, pale sky.
Borders evaporate.
As daily life accepts the night’s arrest, a small spider, pearly and round with delicate legwork, plays the music of Nature.
Winding skyward along an ancient path heat, radiating, heart to heart resilience can emerge.
Alchemy powers earth’s enduring nature, promises for tomorrow. In twilight’s glimmer-glow, forge a new kinship with Earth. The most important magic lies within you.
Welcome to the Poetry Friday Roundup! Wasn’t it thoughtful of April to begin on a Thursday this year, so we have five Fridays to celebrate National Poetry Month? There are number of amazing poetry projects happening at blogs around the Kidlitosphere. You can find a roundup of them at Susan Bruck’s lovely blog, Soul Blossom Living.
I’m taking a bit of a detour from my Writing Wild project, inspired by Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shaped How We See the Natural World, by Kathryn Aalto. Each day in April, I have written a poem inspired by one of the 25 trailblazing women profiled in Aalto’s book. Because there are 30 days in April, I chose another four authors recommended by Aalto. For today’s post, my inspiration comes from Padma Venkatraman, an author not included in Aalto’s book, but one who I think embodies the spirit of the other writers. I also wanted to diversify the list to include more writers of Asian descent.
Padma Venkatraman trained as an oceanographer and now writes middle-grade and YA fiction as well as poetry for young people. Her beautiful, inspiring 2019 middle-grade novel, The Bridge Home, won the Walter Dean Myers Award and two of her poems appeared in this month’s issue of PoetryMagazine. In addition, she just launched “Diverse Verse… a website and a resource for educators and diverse poets and verse novelists.”
Today’s poem is my response to Venkatraman’s poetry prompt recently posted on Ethical ELA. In her introduction to the prompt, she stated that “as a writer who cares about young people, I feel compelled to preserve hope in the face of [hate crimes against Asians]. She challenged poets to write “a short poem dedicated to hope in defiance of hate.” Here is a draft of my response.
Finding Our Way
Can we agree we’ve gone astray? Lost sight of treasures untold. Our map’s completely upside down from chasing too much gold.
Some creatures are gone; they won’t return. But we can change this course. Protect each species; keep them safe And learn from our remorse.
Recognize your neighbors. Know and say their names. They’re living beings, just like you, treat everyone the same.
The world keeps changing bit by bit. We all can do our part to make the world a better place. The change starts in your heart.
Carolyn Merchant‘s 1980 book, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution is, according to Kathryn Aalto, “one of the most important feminist books ever written.” (Writing Wild, p. 102) I am embarrassed to admit I had never heard of it. In her groundbreaking book, Merchant “analyzes environmental history to frame the relationship between the natural world and humanity, particularly gender and the environment.” (Writing Wild, p. 103) She also helps give rise to the idea of ecofeminism, or “a feminist approach to understanding ecology.”
Merchant’s ideas are new to me, so I needed a poetic form that could help me distill them and gain some deeper understanding. I find that acrostics sometimes give me a vocabulary for a topic and get the words flowing, especially if its a topic I don’t know a lot about. This seemed like a good place to start. And because it’s the end of a long week, it also seemed like a good place to stop for now.
Ecofeminism
Earth, mother to all, Cradles and nurtures the Organic cosmos, Fuels the vital forces of Ensouled beings. Magical traditions are Inextricably linked, a vast symbiotic Network, millenia in the making. Its equilibrium has been disrupted, no longer Sustainable, thanks to Mechanization and greed.
Welcome to the first Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month! Today’s post is my response to my critique group’s monthly prompt. This month, Linda Mitchell challenged the Sunday Night Swaggers to
See something in many ways, then write a poem patterned after Pat Schneider’s ‘The Moon Ten Times.’
The object and the number of different views was our choice.
Rural Hours, Susan Fenimore Cooper’s best know work, captures the daily rhythms of the natural world in early-nineteenth century Cooperstown, NY. Her entry for March 22nd describes “the return of the robins.” Since returning robins are still a sure sign of spring, I took this line for the title of a week’s worth of observations of this beloved bird.
T.S. Eliot may think that “April is the cruelest month,” but I’m over March and looking forward to National Poetry Month. I’ve been planning a project that I’m excited about, but am not ready to share the details today. While I was tidying up my classroom this afternoon it occurred to me that some book spine poetry would be a good way to warm up for next month. Here are a few short poems, courtesy of some of my favorite authors.
Ask me how to heal a broken wing: love
I wonder how to read a book. Follow the recipe after dark. You nest here with me, this place I know.
The wisdom of trees sweep up the sun green on green
If you come to Earth, hike a world of wonders. Footprints on the roof.
Looking forward to seeing you all next week for the beginning of National Poetry Month. In the meantime, be sure to visit Susan Bruck at Soul Blossom Living for the Poetry Friday Roundup.
It’s the first Friday of March. Time for another Sunday Swagger Challenge. Each month, one member of my critique group poses a challenge for us all to respond to. This month, Margaret Simon posed a very flexible prompt: “Using any book, choose three page numbers. On the chosen pages, find one word to use. Write a poem.”
This seemed very manageable. One of my students has been reading Kate DiCamillo’s books, and Kate’s exquisite use of language has always inspired me, so I pulled a copy of Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures off the shelf and found these three words: variations, floating, glowing
An image of clouds came into my head as I considered these words. Here is the draft I came up with:
Clouds
Tenuous ideas cling together, like water droplets fusing into wisps of clouds floating in an azure sky.
Slowly, word by word, a line forms. Line follows line until they coalesce into a poemling, glowing with promise.
Maybe this baby poem, fragile as it is, is a variation on an old theme.
No matter. Just as clouds come in all shapes and sizes, possibilities for poems are infinite.
Every month, one of my critique group partners poses a challenge to the group and we all post our responses on the first Friday of the month. This month, it was my turn to come up with a prompt. Since life has been challenging enough lately, I wanted to pose more of a supportive opportunity than a challenge. This passage fromS. Kirk Walsh’s essay “How E.L. Doctorow Taught an Aspiring Writer to Hear the Sounds of Fiction” in The New York Times Book Review was exactly what I had in mind:
For the final writing assignment, Doctorow asked us to choose one of the works on the syllabus and borrow — or steal — from it in a fiction of our own... I chose “The Waves”: I copied Woolf’s sentences word for word, then replaced her language with my own.
So our challenge was simply this: Copy a mentor poem (or other text) “word for word, then replace [that poet’s] language with your own.” Finding a mentor poem was easier than I thought it would be. Looking for another book, I found Light & Shadow(Holiday House, 1992), a book of poems by Myra Cohn Livingston inspired by photographs by Barbara Rogasky. Livingston’s poem, “Late Afternoon,” caught my attention immediately.
“Light rests in the crooked elbows and branches of old trees,
drowses in the shadows of moss-covered rocks, naps In piles
of leaves scattered over forest floors, stretches out to sleep
and dreams itself wearing a shining necklace of dewdrops.”
Isn’t that stunning?
Here is the poem my “borrowing” inspired:
Winter Morning
Light seeps through the outstretched fingers and branches of bare trees,
rouses birds, roosted in a tangle of brush, quickens the blood
of cardinals and jays, who flutter around snow-covered feeders, reaches deep into the shadows
and dreams itself wearing an iridescent crown of feathers.
Reading to the Core 