ODT #4 building services

People are helping me to collect poems that come at my One Difficult Truth for 2019 All Time in different ways.  Steve Peterson, aka @insidethedog, found this one for me...

The Illuminist | Jane Hirshfield

Even in his glass cabin you can see
the man driving the snowplow
is whistling, happy. He races
one road, then the next, moving new snow.

A monk patiently hammering gold-leaf,
before him the world grows pliably, steadily brighter.

And if more will fall again tonight,
no matter.
He will put on his hat, his gloves,
and make again order.

All day the plow’s sound rises,
a pre-Gregorian chanting singing its singer.
Gold of winter sun grows thinner and thinner.

Now
he can lay it right with the little plow.

The scriptorium darkens over white vellum.
His puttering ink-stroke, lengthening,
glows.

And if it's my job to translate some of these expressions of paradox, of  bitter/gorgeous-messy/miraculous- tedious/tantalizing, into versions for my young poetry fans, here's how this one might go.

Building Services | after Jane Hirshfield

Even louder than his growling you can hear
the man mopping the floors
is driven, determined.  Mr. B polishes
one hallway, then the next, moving the day's dirt.

Ms. P patiently herds hands placing tiles;
before us the wall grows tesselated, steadily sparkled.

And if more mud will ride in again tomorrow
on our shoes, no matter.
He will fill up his bucket, add soap
and make again order.

All day the polisher's sound rises,
the circular pad throatily spinning its song.
 Flicker of mosaic tree grows broader and brighter.

Now, for a minute,
he can mark it off with yellow CAUTION signs.

The skylight darkens over white cement-board.
 Our glittering glass-field, spreading,
glows.

         ©Heidi Mordhorst 2019


 The round-up today is hosted by dear Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference, where--oy!--she is as full of surprises and serendipities as ever.  See you there.

at the very top

We've reached it, almost:  that time of year so precisely and richly described by Natalie Babbitt that it changed me as a reader and a writer. 



The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.
-- Prologue from Tuck Everlasting, 1975

This beginning to a book caught me like hands holding my 10-year-old head on both sides, looking me urgently in the eyes and saying, "Of words we can make art, art as true as a photograph layered with brushes of color, with sound and rhythm of blues symphony, full of the woven textures of weariness, curiousness, motion and suspense.  Writing can do it all."

What about you, poetry friends?  What piece of literature brought you to see writing as art, made you want to live in and even make this kind of art?


Keri has the round-up today at Keri Recommends.  Happy Almost August.

OIK Tuesday: overheard in the car

Every year at our congregation there's a holiday party between the two services, which offers kids the chance to make cards for sick kids, donate mittens to the mitten tree, roll up little goodies in crepe paper streamers that become Joy Balls intended for parents' stockings.  But you know what they head for first, don't you?  It's the graham cracker "gingerbread" house station, which gets its own whole room.

Both kids took quite a bit of time and effort over theirs this year (Duncan's being thatched with red licorice whips and then further shingled with brown M&Ms. There has been a lot of damaging weather this year and you just can't be too careful in a time of climate change), and on the way home in the car ("MOM!  Would you mind driving a little more carefully!") they commented on the less designed, less elegant approach of some fellow architects. 

"Most of them end up looking like sheds more than houses!"

***************************

Gingerbread Shed 

Four walls, flat roof

to make a lid—

built a bunker’s

all you did.

Shape is lost in

gobs of frosting.

Your hands, and arms,

and neck

need washing.

That’s no house—

it’s a gingerbread shed

to store the tools

of a sugarhead:

hersheykisseslicoricelace--

is that a froot loop on your face?

gumdropsskittlescandycanes--
your eyes say “Rush me to Insane.”

That’s no house—

it’s a gingerbread shed.

Now give me that

and go to bed.

Heidi Mordhorst 2012
DRAFT


Postscript:  Duncan pronounces this "the best thing you've written in a long time.  It rhymes and it tells the ideas in a way I can comprehend!"  I guess my campaign in defense of sensitive free verse for children is not over.

picturing writing: literacy through art

At NCTE I found myself laughing at myself, because with 700 sessions to choose from, I managed to attend a session that I had already attended last year!  Not so surprising--the concept of "Picturing Writing: Fostering Literacy through Art" is right up my personal alley, and the collage-based approach called "Image-Making Within the Writing Process" is my back door.  Thanks to Beth Olshansky and her teacher colleagues for leading me home (two years in a row).

So, in our new 2.0 Elementary Integrated Curriculum we are supposed, as winter sets in, to be studying plant and animal life cycles, planting seeds and learning about baby animals. (Never mind that all around us dying, darkening, sleeping.)  To tie it all together and to lead us into a poetry project, I chose Leo Lionni's Frederick and Eric Carle's The Tiny Seed, which we have been comparing and contrasting, enacting and evaluating: which parts of this story could really happen?  do Frederick and his family do what real mice do? 

Meanwhile, each child used watercolors to paint 3-6 papers for collage, in the manner of both Carle and Lionni. As the class worked to see what animals, plants and weather their unpredictable painted papers suggested, I learned quite a lot that will help me support the project next time!  (Note to self:  20 collaging kindergarteners at once is too many.)  Still, their collages are very pleasing, often striking, and most importantly, quite individual. 

This week we're placing our collages in front of us and writing poems.  While a couple of the 5-year-olds are able to write their compositions on their own, for most I'm scribing with strategically placed blanks for them to spell juicy words like fish, rain, float and lion.  I cannot wait to share the whole collection with you, but for now I have only two to hand.  Jordan cut 4 shapes from a pinkish-purple paper, arranged them as a fish on a stripy bluish sea paper, and then painstakingly cut and glued maroon and ochre spots from another paper to create a bubbly surface. Here is his poem.

Mighty Minnow
by Jordan

mighty minnow swimming fast
in a deep, deep sea
pinkish-purple spots and dots
do you see any more colors
or anything else on me?

Ezekial is my youngest nearly 6-year-old and My Project for the year. We worked very closely to make the lion he imagined out of a deep muddyish turquoise paper. Here is the poem we negotiated.

Lion
by Ezekial

the blue dad lion
is walking to his wife
the playground is their house
they eat leaves and grass
they climb up the ladders
and they jump!

Extra poet's note: My plan, of course, was to model the collage-to-poem move using my own giraffe-under-sunset collage...but as my colleagues often say, "Kindergarten happened," and I found myself sitting down to write with children without ever having modeled. Guess what? For this class anyway, it has not mattered. Perhaps the other poetry we've been reading (most recently Frederick's "Sky Mice" poem and Douglas Florian's Beast Feast) and all the singing we've done has been enough. Their words sing, too!

Bonus activity:  the children are loving acting out each poem as it's completed. More soon...

SPARKs fly

As I noted some weeks ago, I'm participating in SPARK 10, an online collaboration project between artists and writers. This painting is by Delores Ekberg of Piedmont, SD. Here's how she describes the work: "This is watercolor on rice paper...fun to do. You crumple rice paper, attach it to illustration board with acrylic matt medium, then brush color on the creases, or "rub" color on the creases...I used colored pencils...then use watercolor to make a picture of whatever you see coming out of the textures."

Here's my poem (probably not my final draft) inspired by the art. Ooh, I hope she likes it!

Willowriver


blossoms in autumn from
crumpled trunks
rootrippled river
from wrinkled tips of twigs

hangs lowswinging
among elderly leaves
dripping dry mineral hues

falls to ground
lies in brittle layers
sinking to siltsoil taking down
swallowed sunlight

sends up heat

is wisdom


Enjoy all the poetic richness of Poetry Friday this week with Toby at The Writers' Armchair.

P.S. Two notes to all my PF friends:
1) I apologize for receiving all your kind comments and regularly failing to return the favor. I shall try to do better now that my teaching life is settling down.
2) Will you be at NCTE? Let me know!

[uptoFIFTEENonline-listservs] in the picture

I find lists to be a powerful way of describing and defining. When I placed a personal ad in the Village Voice ohsomany years ago, it consisted of a list of items in my possession, among them "103 earrings, garlic press, Swiss Army knife, X tapes." That last got me plenty of suggestive letters from folks who misunderstood thoroughly.


I've realized that I'm now receiving daily digests from no fewer than 15 different listservs; taken together they describe and define me pretty thoroughly. The most recent addition is the Maryland Writers' Association, where I found an announcement about this project:



Welcome to SPARK!

Open to writers, musicians, and visual artists of all kinds,
SPARK is a participatory creativity event that takes place four times each year.

The project’s rules are simple: Writers send their partners a story or poem; artists send an image of their painting, photograph, or sculpture; and musicians and video artists send either a file or a link to their work on another website. Then, over the 10-day project period, each person uses their partner’s piece as a jumping off point for new work of their own.

This site is a work in progress, containing inspiration and response pieces from SPARK’s 2010 rounds. You can view those pieces by clicking “See the work,” above. You can also see work from SPARK’s first six rounds here.

SPARK Rounds take place in February, May, August, and October. If you’d like to join us, send us a note!

I've already registered to participate in SPARK 10 later this month, because I had so much fun doing something similar before. I've written some poems to go with paintings by my friend Elyse Harrison, a local artist who runs a studio/gallery, and participated in an event a few years ago where Elyse invited artists and writers to collaborate and then put up a show of their work. I wrote a poem to go with a provocative landscape photograph that I had intended to post here, but alas, I can't find it.

So instead I'll put up this week's "15 Words or (ahem) Fewer" poem, a weekly opportunity provided by the endlessly energetic and inspiring Laura Purdie Salas. This week she posted the above, and in response I posted the following.

gown

it's the elbows
that tell the story
of the next twenty-four years
of togetherness

Heidi Mordhorst
ARR MATEY 2010


While a list, like a column of tiny buttons, might describe and define, sometimes it's what is not quite in the picture that tells the real story.

Laura and Heidi at the ALA Poetry Blast 2010










Check out the list of Poetry Friday posts at Carol's Corner!