it's that time again

rustle-rustle...THUD.  

Autumn has fallen hard here this week.  Trees are looking disheveled if not bare, leaves are blowing in the rain, and we've had many mornings of chill, damp fog.

But in PreK we have been focused with delight on pumpkins, which--let's face it--are among the most cheerful of produce! (Never mind that I needed a long deep sob on Tuesday over the fact that for the first time in my entire teaching career I am not carving pumpkins with my class.)

It so happens that I have a few poems for this time of year.  The pumpkin one is, curiously, more hallowed and floating than hollowed and glowing.  And then there's the obligatory black cat.  Please enjoy a blast from my authorial past, and pardon the homemade photos of actual pages; I am too tired to do better.

               

Both of these are from PUMPKIN BUTTERFLY: POEMS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF NATURE (Wordsong/Boyds Mills, 2009).  I have a case or two in my basement if you would like to order a nice signed copy for your young ones or your classroom!    

Our host today is my pal Linda at TeacherDance.  Ring her doorbell for tricks and treats aplenty (but NO I REPEAT NO Trumps)!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

i can't sleep,

which for me is so unusual, and if not, I know why, usually, and tonight (starting too late after the debate, and late to take my nightly half-tablet of diphenhydramine hydrochloride, and a tiny knot of something in the back of my neck; is it dread?) unusually I don't know why I'm awake at 1:28 with no plan for a Poetry Friday post, so I turn to this endlessly suitable POEM IN YOUR POCKET collection from the Academy of American Poets, selected by Elaine Bleakney, a stranger who must share my taste since I always find the poem I am looking for.

This poem by Robert Creeley, I find, is almost exactly as old as I am--published in June of 1964 in Poetry Magazine. My eye is heavy with the sight. I can feel my face breaking,

breaking, I hope, into sleep.  Did I lift all that, to what purpose?

Our host this week is Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup.  We seem to be in a similar state of mind, falling, not falling. It all drops into place.

hop to it hoopla hooray!

 

Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, children's poetry champions extraordinaire, have done it again.

Their new anthology, HOP TO IT: POEMS TO GET YOU MOVING, pulls together 100 new poems by 90 living poets designed to get kids up, down and moving all around.  Originally conceived before the pandemic hit and so many of us evacuated our school buildings, the collection morphed and flexed, in keeping with the needs of our time.  It is now woven through with poems that acknowledge the realities of life in masks, school on Zoom, and the small and larger griefs that accompany the goof and games of childhood.

I'm so pleased that my "Poem for When Things Get a Little Too Serious" is included.  Another time I'll highlight the very fun EXTRA, EXTRA section at the back as well as some of my favorite discoveries for PreK Zoom use!

Our Poetry Friday host today is Janice Scully at Salt City Verse.  Hop on over for more book-birthday celebration of this great anthology and other poetry treats!

duplex challenge

 Well, thank you very much, Margaret Simon! A bracing challenge for the Sunday Swaggers this month: we swag on over to Jericho Brown's THE TRADITION to learn more about the duplex form, one which I tackled already not too long ago to satisfy a different challenge.

But it would be a cheater-pants move to just reuse that poem, so in honor of the fact that in this new world order I swim laps on a cloudy October afternoon (every other year of my life pooling came to a hard stop on Labor Day Monday),  I offer this fresh and drafty new duplex, "a ghazal that is also a sonnet that is also a blues poem..."

<poem>

Can't wait to see what Margaret and the other Swaggers have come up with--you can too by clicking below.  

-Catherine at Reading to the Core -Margaret at Reflections on the Teche -Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
-Linda at A Word Edgewise

Our hostess with the mostess today is Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference (and I mean that literally--I believe that Tabatha posts more consistently than any of us steady and prolific posters).  May your Friday be steady and prolific as well.