30d30w: the fifth word

birthday

secret whistles
fiery code

For those who are just tuning in, welcome to the 30days30words cumulative, collaborative poem!  To keep things simple for busy people this National Poetry Month, I posted a single word on Monday and each day have invited all comers to suggest the next word in the poem.  We'll continue like this throughout April, one word at a time, until I've selected 30 words in total and we have a finished poem of some surprising form and function.  I hope many of you will stop back in often to toss your lexical petals into the April gale!

Thursday's suggestions redirected the flow of the poem again--already.  Where I had begun to envision a birthday secret whistling fierily along somewhere, or a birthday full of secret whistles and fiery somethings, yesterday's choices sifted out along rhythmic lines and I found myself favoring the three one-syllable words--"song," "breath" and "code." (Thank you, Tabatha, Linda and Kate.) 

The first two pick up on the musical meaning of whistles and both have their place in a birthday scenario, but code does something different--it connects back to secret in an intriguing way, so that the business of making your wish as you blow out the candles might take on an incantatory quality--as though you have to encode your breath to get your message to the cosmos.  A further upshot of this choice is that birthday is now serving as a title and whistles has now morphed from a verb to a noun!

After only five days, I'm finding this a powerful and fascinating exercise that's taking me down to a depth I hadn't expected (so much for a mini game).  With the Progressive Poem (hosted by Irene and at Doraine Bennet today), each poet contributes a whole line, and while there is much mystery and surprise, the "premise" of the poem develops rather faster.  In this word-by-word version, these early days may be the most fascinating, as I try out players' suggestions, inventing and reinventing the premise without knowing where the total poem is going, what the "point" of the poem will be. 

As I consider each word and its direction, I'm asking, "Whose is the voice?  What age is it?  Are there other characters? What is the setting?  Does the poem speak of This Moment Right Now or does it refer to some past or future experience?"  Each new word selection transforms the answers to these questions, subtly or radically.  For example, in not choosing "-suiting" for Word Two or "seductively" for Word Four (both interesting suggestions), I deliberately aimed the poem at younger readers, avoiding goofy nudity or any hint of that kind of seductive.  (Have you listened to this song about whistling?)

This is an exercise that I rarely do in my own composition, I realize with some shock.  As I'm writing, I think in syntactic chunks that move me toward some overall notion of what I'm trying "to state or express or convey."  I do use a thesaurus sometimes to remind myself of shades of meaning, but hardly ever do I give each individual word the attention that I'm giving them this week. (And do PLEASE go visit No Water River to enjoy a cabaret of poets reciting their contributions to the Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School on video, including me and my buddy The Saurus!) 

My attention is also heightened as I try to respect the intent of each contributor's choice--what was Petrina thinking when she offered "iguana"?  What abundant secrets was Laura imagining when she conributed "abound"?  How will the poem be different if I choose fiery breath over fiery code?

For me the word geek at least, 30days30words is turning out to be Beyond Fun.  Thanks to all who have participated, and YOU are welcome too!

Check in on all the poetry parties that are happening this month by visiting the round-up with Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge!

process; product

It's Madness indeed--the March Madness Poetry Tournament hosted by Ed DeCaria!   On Monday evening I received my 10-seeded word--HYPOCRISY-- which in 36 hours I had to develop into a poem worthy of competition.  The word gave me pause, certainly; I worried that I would, like many with even more challenging, abstract words, have to spend my eight allowed lines defining it.  But my 10-year-old easily demonstrated his understanding of "hypocrite," so I forged ahead....

and wrote a rather serious, instructive piece that just didn't seem to be the right thing for the competition:

A Little Light Lying 

Your parents teach you social graces:

“Really—you look good in braces!” 

We say what we don’t really mean;

The edge of truth’s a touch too keen. 

But falseness leaves an ashy trace

A lasting mask tough to erase

Face the mirror, fail to see—

That’s genuine hypocrisy.

 

~Heidi Mordhorst 2013

(draft)

 

So I decided to start completely over, with something involving a hippo.  Obvious, right?  And naturally comical.  And then--now that I review my Tuesday night train of thought, I can barely discern how I got there, but it had to do with reading a lot about hippos and watching a lot of amateur YouTube videos of hippos and crocodiles--a line of poetry came into my head:  "How doth the little crocodile..."  That was all I had at first.

 

Luckily, Google rarely lets me down, and soon I had the voice of Alice (yeah, the Disney Alice) reciting her whole poem from Chapter Two of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. 

 

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale! 

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

 

Wikipedia similarly rarely lets me be, so there I discovered something I had forgotten--that Alice's crocodile recitation is her garbled version of a serious, instructive poem of the 18th century poet Isaac Watts.  His poem is about a bee and is usually titled

 

Against Idleness and Mischief

 

How doth the little busy bee

Improve each shining hour,

And gather honey all the day

From every opening flower! 
 

How skilfully she builds her cell!

How neat she spreads the wax!

And labors hard to store it well

With the sweet food she makes. 
 

In works of labor or of skill,

I would be busy too;

For Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do. 
 

In books, or work, or healthful play,

Let my first years be passed,

That I may give for every day

Some good account at last.

 

Et voila!  A concept.  By only a couple of hours past my bedtime, I had borrowed Isaac's form and diction along with Lews's parodic twist and submitted this to the MMPT competition:

 

Against Falsity and Pretense


How doth the chubby hippo
Improve his shining hide
And bob the waters of the Nile
On every muddy side!
 

How lazily he opens wide!
How jolly seems to be!
Then crushes skulls of crocodiles
With sweet hippo-crisy.

Is that cheating?  I decided not (and it was, after all, AT LEAST a couple of hours past my bedtime).  While not wholly original, I reckoned that I had done enough creative reworking to justify calling it mine, and part of the work was a new appreciation for the historical antecedents of our modern poetry for kids. 

 

At this writing the competition is fierce!  I'm up against Alvaro Salinas Jr. (aka M.M. Socks) and his funny "LeeAnn's Farm," and after an early lead I find that the the voting is EXACTLY EQUAL!  Stay tuned to find out if my hypocritical bee/crocodile/hippo can garner enough votes to get me to Round Two!

 

And now we must give a bit of Poetry Friday attention to the PF Anthology for Middle Schools, edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.  I'm wondering what would have happened if those clever editors had told us what the weekly themes in the book would be, so that all us poets could have written to assignment, as we're doing in the Tournament or may have done for the poetry tag e-books?  Would our pieces have been any better? Worse? More risky and edgy as we ventured outside our own comfort zones, as we're doing with these crazy words Ed has given us?  Process is soooooo interesting!

 

The Poetry Friday round-up is with Jone today at Check It Out!  See you there!

 

 

Poetry Friday power-up!

The Poetry Friday Anthology:

Poems for the School Year

with Connections to the Common Core

compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong

Pomelo Books 2012 -- official release date September 1

This supremely practical anthology, which will be available in both soft-cover book and e-book versions, is the latest feat of  magic worked by that Daring Duo of Poetry, Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.

It contains 218 new poems by 75 of the best poets now writing for children, but unlike other quality anthologies of literary poetry, this one is organized with the busy classroom teacher in mind (and I should know).  In other words, it's the best of educational and literary publishing all rolled into one lively package!

It includes 36 poems for each grade level K-5, which is one for each week of a standard 180-day school year.  Even better, the poems have been organized according to broad themes that repeat for each grade level, so that in Week 1, all grade levels enjoy a "School" poem, in Week 18 every kid K-5 gets a "Human Body" poem, and in Week 29 there are poems about...poetry!  There are heartfelt and serious poems under themes like "A Kinder Place" and "Families," and hootingly playful poems under "Stuff We Love" and "Nonsense."  By the end of the school year, when kids have had lots of poetry experience, the themes are related to poetic devices such as "Metaphor and Simile" and "Personification," addressed at accessible levels.   

For the few teachers who are truly poetry-phobic, this anthology is a gift.  It says, "Take a few minutes just one day a week to make poetry your focus...we'll help you do it right, do it in community, and enjoy all the rewards!"  To support the less confident, each poem comes with 5 quick tips for sharing, teaching, enjoying:

*a hook for introducing the poem,

*a developmentally appropriate way for students to join in reading and speaking the poem,

*ideas for discussion and teachable moments,

*and finally, a connection to another poem in the anthology or another poetry book to explore.

Of course, many more teachers will be doing as I'll do, dipping in here and there to select poems not by week but by theme, and looking beyond my own grade level to find other gems that I'll bring into our curriculum through content connections, writing and performance.   I'll be highlighting some of my favorites in coming posts, and you can bet that those of us contributors who also participate in Poetry Friday in the Kidlitosphere will be sharing more tips and tricks and on their blogs, too!