wonder

In Room 166 this week kindergarteners are exploring in depth the question of "What Do Poets Do?"  With the help of Langston Hughes, Lilian Moore, Tracie Vaughn Zimmer and e.e. cummings we have learned that:

Poets choose to write about one small thing.
Poets choose juicy words that sound good together.
Poets choose where to put their words.
and
Poets create strong feelings.

I revised my poem selections this year because of a change in our curriculum, and we have a theme of "hands" going on.  Here's the poem--which somehow I had missed in my long study of cummings's work--that we read in search of a strong feeling (I selected the bold-type section for kindergarten readers)...and oh, people, I have just made a wild discovery.  See below.

Spring is like a perhaps hand || E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962

          III

Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully 
out of Nowhere)arranging 
a window,into which people look(while 
people stare
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things,while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps 
fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

**************
Here is the discovery:  in my haste to revise my poetry project booklet on Monday morning, I see that I left off the last line, "without breaking anything."  I just never even saw this wondrous final finesse of spring's perhaps Hand!

I don't feel bad about selecting the second stanza only for younger kids, but I do feel foolish for missing that last line--and yet for the kids, it was that (entirely plausible) ending of the poem on "and" that created the strong feelings of surprise and amusement and wonder!  In fact our response to the poem ended up being adding a word or phrase that seemed to follow this rather tricky abstract metaphor (which we concretized by acting it out.  Partner 1 was the window first while Partner 2 was the the hand, and then we swapped roles.)

"Wonder" is one of the Po-Emotions included in Mary Lee's NPM Challenge, too, on April 20.  Here was my response to the challenge.

?

Like the beat of your heart

wonder should be reflexive

all of a sudden daily you

should find yourself

pricked by a kind of desire

formless but strong

an itch of the mind

that you just must scratch

but it's not in your head

it wanders all over your body

your feet want to travel

your hands want to unravel

every sense wants in

on the wonder,

while your mind does the molding

stretching  & straightening the circling

half-round-stem-and-dot

into a bee-line towards that

exclamatory dot of Got It

!

--HM 2015
all rights reserved 

I'll end with Hana's response to "April Rain Song" below, and after tomorrow, when "I am a poet too" concludes our week-long intensive, I'll be able to do my annual sharing of kindergarten poetry.

April Rain Song Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk. The rain makes running pools in the gutter. The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night— And I love the rain. ~ Langston Hughes Hana:  "If the rain kisses me I will  smile with the rain." The roundup is flowing down at No Water River with Renee LaTulippe today--wonder your way over there!