MyPoPerDayMo 2013

Most reading this will have heard of NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month. It takes place every November, and I'm thinking about it this year because my 9th grade daughter, who went off to high school and promptly joined both newspaper staff and creative writing club (*fist pump YES*), has announced that she will be writing 50,000 words this month. This is something like 1600 words a day, for a final novel similar in length to The Great Gatsby or Slaughterhouse Five.

Although Daisy allowed me to participate in plotting her novel (for which she has a pretty cool concept), there's no way I could commit to that goal myself. I have, however, twice attempted to write one poem per day for the month of November--once mostly successfully and once not at all. For many of you poetry bloggers, a poem a day is no big thing--you do it all the time as a matter of habit. But for me it requires a lot of discipline, and since my teaching life at the moment requires even more discipline, and since fundamentally I'm not a very self-disciplined person, committing to try for one PoPerDay for a month is a big deal.

I'm going to go in, inspired by Laura Shovan's novel-in-verse project, with the plan of writing all the poems from inside a classroom, which might just coincidentally be mine. I also might cheat by reusing poems I've already written since the start of the year. And if my undisciplined mind suddently writes a completely unrelated poem, I'll allow it and worry about connecting it or cutting it later. I'm pretty sure MyPoPerDayMo will be an unlovely rag of a thing, but it will be 30 poems instead of 5 or 6, and that's always worth doing, right?

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The Other Kind of Toast

My mask hurt my nose.
The parade was long.
Back in the class the table was longer!
Plates with cupcakes, cookies, grapes!
But we couldn't eat yet--hands in laps.
The teacher made us toast.

"To the Fearless Frogs!" we all said.
We bumped our cups--GENTly, GENTly--
we didn't spill a drop.
"Cheers!" we said, and then we drank.
Then Angel said, "To Halloween!"
And Jashawn said, "To loose teeth!"
Camilo said, "To Ms. Friedrich's Class!"
"Salud!" "Chin-chin!" and "Prost!"
And then we got to eat.

HM Nov 2013 draft
*Fearless Frogs doesn't come close to Mighty Minnows, but it's best I can do for now/ Also please see Frederick by Leo Lionni.

OINK Tuesday: Dad is a...

Part of the reading we do in Kindergarten is in “guided reading groups,” where I sit with a small group and a set of little beginner books such as Moms and Dads.  I read it to them, they read it with me, they read it independently, and then they take it home to read with their families.

Moms and Dads was Group One’s greatest challenge yet:

“Mom is a bus driver.

Dad is a window cleaner.

Mom is a police officer.

Dad is a vet.

Mom is a librarian…”

On page 11 we learned that “Dad is a farmer,” and we had to look hard to see that he was a pig farmer, because only parts of various pigs were visible in the photo illustration.  It was much easier to see that “Mom is a farmer, too,” because her cows were very apparent (and complete).  However, for this group that includes four English learners, the tough part was remembering the vocabulary for all the jobs.

During the unison reading, I paused on page 11 to let the children refer to the photo and recall that “Dad is a… a…”  Silence. 

After studying the picture again, finally Marla said, “Pig!”   We all laughed.

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Dads at Work (#29 in MyPoPerDayMo)

His dad is a window cleaner;

Her dad drives a rig.

Your dad is a dentist, and

My dad is a pig.

He goes to work in black and white.

They call him Spotted Swine.

He roots and snuffles, rolls in mud;

He snorts and is porcine.

At home he cleans his hairy ears

And tucks away his tail.

He joins us at the dinner table,

Then reads through all the mail.

Tomorrow will be like today:

My dad will go to work.

He’ll eat his lunch out of a trough—

A porky piggy’s perk.

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved

feeling small: from NCTE in Chicago

Thursday was a beautiful day in Chicago, and not just because I'm here all on my own for four days.  I arrived for the NCTE Convention early enough to be a tourist, and although the temperature was a bracing 33*, the sky was as blue as in the (stock) photo.  Millenium Park is a marvel.  Here's #17 in MyPoPerDayMo.


scaled

I swim the serpentine spine of a
steel-shingled leviathan

it skims the base of a canyon of coral
steeples skinned with glass scales

even deeper, schools of flashing
fish swarm north and south

a lattice of ribs arches above
the sea bed, something shipwrecked

nearby a steely cephalopod
crouches enormously over its cave

I’m one of the
slow-motion minnows
that bumps its nose bumps its nose
against a shiny sea-cloud, asking

in all this vastness
where am I?


Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved

I'm looking forward to greeting some PF regulars in person for a change!  For those enjoying it from the comfort of their own homes, Poetry Friday is with my neighbor Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference.

let the trio lay

In the spirit of BLTN rather than TGIF, I'm here to post something, anything, for Poetry Friday.

The Word-of-the-Month poetry challenge at David Harrison's blog is FLAMBOYANT, and Steven Withrow put up a flamboyant triolet, which got me all rhyme-and-metered (which is the poet's equivalent of hot-and-bothered)....so here's #11 in MyPoPerDayMo series.


Triolet for 11.11.11

Flames are floating on the frost,
Torches throwing off their sparks.
The lake of green is crackling, lost.
Flames are floating; on the frost
Flamboyant tongues of light are tossed.
They ride the wind in waves and arcs.
Flames are floating on the frost,
Torches throwing off their sparks.

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved


Poetry Friday *was* hosted by April at Teaching Authors yesterday, and it's never too late to stop by!