"I know none of these by name"

Each day my inbox(es) fill with poems-a-day from various sources, and someday I should make a study of how I decide to click and read the comparatively few that I do.  Here's one whose arguably not-very-poetic title caught my eye; I wanted to see where this would go.  My instincts are pretty good, I guess--I loved it.

I Have This Way of Being | Jamaal May

I have this, and this isn’t a mouth
            full of the names of odd flowers

 

I’ve grown in secret.
            I know none of these by name

 

but have this garden now,
            and pastel somethings bloom

 

near the others and others.
            I have this trowel, these overalls,

 

this ridiculous hat now.
            This isn’t a lung full of air.

 

Not a fist full of weeds that rise
            yellow then white then windswept.

 

This is little more than a way...         

************************
Read the rest here, and listen to Jamaal read it himself here.  This poem pleases me because of the tension between the everyday register and the imprecise words on the way to a very deliberate and precise capturing of everything the speaker claims not to know.  (In fact I'm adding this to my collection of "no poems," poems which create their meaning by denying it.)   Wouldn't the title and its stem, "I have this, and this isn't..." be a very interesting poetry prompt for kids?

I also like the feeling of effort in this poem, repeated effort, which must be reminding me of the repeated efforts we are having to make to keep driveway and sidewalks clear,* and "return as sprout" must be about the poor green tips of  a daffodil, which in December thought it must be spring and time to spear up, but which now finds itself smack in the middle of the best path we could forge from the front porch to the sidewalk and is now trampled and muddied but still green.

Catherine is hosting today at Reading to the Core, with Irene Latham's new book in the spotlight--isn't it nice that you can just click to get there instead of digging your way through feet of snow?  Let us be grateful for all that is!

*This morning at 4:15 I stood at the window and watched a noisy little Bobcat bulldozer work its way up our street, hoisting scoops of chunky, icy, frozen snow from the edges of the street and dumping it onto the finally clear, dry sidewalk.  Oof.  More shoveling, with a side of boulder-tossing.

cybils poetry finalists I

Oops!  My series highlighting the 7 finalists for the 2015 Cybils Poetry Award is...not allowed!  As a new judge, I didn't realize that I shouldn't post anything at all.  So I've now removed the two offending posts, and we must all wait until the official winner announcement on February 14 to read reviews and critiques by me and the other judges.

However...the chilly nature of one of the finalists put me in mind of an own poem from Pumpkin Butterfly:  Poems from the Other Side of Nature.  I shared it with my students this week after a very interesting discussion about Epiphany in the Christian story and the question "What year was Jesus born?"

Epiphany Forest

On January 6th, when the presents

and carols and cookies are over,

there’s one last thing to do. 

Just as the Wise Men finally arrive

we undecorate, unlight, strip away the gold star.

On the morning of the 7th,

at the bare gray schoolyard

one by one our dying, drying trees,

still in their stands, are planted

among the cold poles of the equipment.

And on the 8th, when the

first snow finally arrives

we fly out onto the playground

faster than the flakes are falling

to marvel at our frosted Epiphany Forest.

©Heidi Mordhorst

                             

Please join Tabatha for some more of the muscle and grace of great poetry--she's got the Roundup at The Opposite of Indifference today.

the last half day

Due to a curious solution to the problem of too many snow days, our school year ended at 12:30 on Monday.  We finished everything important on Friday, and I had hoped just a little that maybe no one would come on Monday--but they did, and we found lots of nice ways to fill that last few hours (including giving everyone one last chance to count to 100, an assessment I had forgotten to squeeze in--just as well they all came!).

And then they were gone.


Sometimes a meager harvest

The last half day--
walls stripped, treasure bags packed,
Jim Joe jumped one last time;
gifts given and received,
farewell hugs ceremoniously
hugged, fast and earnest,
because we'd run out of time again
one last time.

Now the room  is hollow, dead--
nothing living but the teacher and
a single valiant sugar snap vine,
three feet high and climbing
a string up the Weather Window.
On the one vine, at the top, hangs
a single beautifully formed,
pleasingly plump green pod.

Teacher steps out of her sandals
onto a low chair and up onto
the radiator, plucks the fat pod
full of peas she forgot to share
and eats it, all by herself--
one last sweet crunchy mouthful
swallowed alone in the classroom
on the last half day.

HM 2015
all rights reserved

***********************
Mary Lee herself is rounding up remotely at A Year of Reading today.  Go get yourself some farmyard fun and lots of poetry goodness from around the Kidlitosphere!

arrow to the mark

I saw that this week's host, Renee, featured Lee Bennett Hopkins on Lilian Moore a couple of weeks ago, so I went trawling to remind myself of her work.  In my travels I read that Lilian was the first editor of Scholastic's Arrow Book Club in the 60's--somewhat before my long and delighted relationship with that institution.  (There are still paperbacks on my shelves that I ordered from Arrow--notably an edition of Robin Hood--labeled with my name in terribly inexperienced 3rd-grade cursive. Was there anything better than finally receiving the fresh new books you'd ordered on the newsprint form and awaited for weeks?)


I found my way to this one, a swoon-worthy shaft of perfection that flies to my heart, singing out "Why d'you have to go and make things so complicated?"  Seriously, it's time for me to get back to where I once belonged and write some simple, straightforward rhymes of joy.  Perhaps I'll let Lilian shake me, take me, make me fly....

Go Wind | Lilian Moore

Go wind, blow
Push wind, swoosh.
Shake things
take things
make things
fly.

Ring things
swing things
fling things
high.

Go wind, blow
Push things
wheee.

No, wind, no
not me–
not me.

 ***********
These first weeks of September have been hotter than most of August was where I live.  Today the Mighty Minnows made their second visit out to our special tree, where we steamed and sweated in heavy humidity and worked to draw like scientists, observing textures and colors.

Tree trunk
tree bark
I think I'll park
myself in maple shade.

Tree branch
tree leaf
my rest is brief--
I need some lemonade.

By golly, I believe Lilian's inspiration blew over me indeed!  Enjoy the round-up today at No Water River.  

to count or not to count

In my haiku study I'm learning that Japanese haiku is not structured with 3 lines of 17 syllables, 5-7-5, but instead counts "sound units," which are shorter and more regular than English syllables.

A recently published essay by Toshio Kimura called "A New Era for Haiku"  handily summarizes the essence of haiku, which lies in these characteristics: shortness, a fixed form of some kind, humor (which surprised me), "haikuness," and "kire" or cutting, which results in the juxtaposition of two or three images.  It also explores the deep cultural traditions of haiku in Japan and the changing ways of reading and writing it around the world.

It looks like most writers (in Japanese and English) continue to use a three-line form with lines of unmeasured length, but the overall shape tends to remain short-long-short.  Many writers also continue to include "kigo" or season words and nature themes, but not all.  Here is one from the essayist himself:

returned--
just bending the head
as a flower

And here's one of my attempts from this past week, watching Duncan and his friend in the ocean at Rehoboth.

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

busting waves
again and again deliciously
they break me

****************
I think I'll need to go back this week and look at that one with my new reading in mind--does it have haikuness?  does it break my rules or follow them?  What are my haiku rules anyway?  And is it true that publishers for children are going to want only haiku that follow the 5-7-5 pattern?

In the meantime, please surf on over to Buffy's Blog for the Poetry Friday roundup, and I look forward to hosting you all next week for the Independence Day edition of Poetry Friday!

tenebrio molitor

It's that time of year again in Room 166...and perhaps this year the hard-won miracle is a bit more poignant.





our connection to these mealworms is anything but
tenuous.
their stage is our stage: child.
we take them from the dark, fearless, though daily we
molest them.
their aim is our aim: grow.

we watch them wriggle out of old skins, wild with
effort.
their change is our change: tough.
then we find them waxen white and frozen on their bran,
pupae.
their wait is our wait: long.

[dedicated to my kindergarten team]

The Poetry Friday round-up is at The Miss Rumphius Effect with the lovely Tricia, down in my hometown of Richmond, VA.  See you there all weekend!

good honest work

After last week's wobble, I'm pleased to say that oh me of little faith has enjoyed election elation of a physical nature!  Here in Maryland, in addition to our reliable support of the Democratic candidate for President (a particularly admirable one, in my view), citizens also voted resoundingly for a DREAM Act which eases undocumented immigrant students' access to higher education, and FOR civil marriage rights for same-sex couples.  This last is particularly momentous, since it is the first time that the people (not the courts, not the legislature) of a state have voted directly in favor of marriage equality for their LGBT neighbors.


Compared to many of our friends, we did only a little to educate and inspire, but there was some work involved.  To see our investment of time, money and energy come to fruition leaves (heh heh "leaves") me with a feeling similar to that captured in this poem from Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, which my kindergarteners are currently building at the Pocket Chart and illustrating in their Poetry Anthologies.  She posted it last year and it went straight into my classroom.  Thanks, Amy...and thanks, Maryland!

If you're a teacher and you want a copy of my "Raking" pocket chart, just let me know and I'll send it to you.  The roundup today is over at Think Kid, Think! with Ed DeCaria--jump in!

OIK Tuesday: hand-ear coordination

This afternoon the Mighty Minnows and I spent a lot of time considering our five senses, and there was a fantastic unexpected development when we closed our eyes and used our noses to smell the aromatic Mr. Sketch marker I grabbed.  It happened to be light green, which smells like mint.  Bertrand thought it was toothpaste, Karina thought it smelled like bubblegum, and Janie surprised me by naming it peppermint right away (or maybe not, since her family is Thai). 

As we discussed minty things, I realized that I could walk them right out into our lovelier-all-the-time school courtyard where parent volunteers have planted a Sensory Garden full of herbs.  We danced to High Five's "Five Senses" song and then we lined up and went--the real deal, only two minutes away! (Go Outdoor Education Committee.)

Cora had suggested basil when I asked if anyone knew what plant those minty smells and flavors came from, so first we all sniffed a leaf of basil.  I was happy to find a great clump of flowering mint, so that everyone (all 16--am I lucky, or what?) could have a sprig to crush and sniff and nibble and take home.  On the way back to the classroom we became the Minty Minnows instead of the Mighty Minnows. : )

Later, after the bus riders departed, the rest of us were singing requests--classics like "Twinkle Twinkle" and of course "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."  Tonya had already taught us the sign language version of The Itsy Bitsy Spider, so I wasn't too surprised when Suzee made this announcement:

"I can sing the Alphabet Song in silent language."

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

Listen with Your Eyes

Secret clutched in a closed fist:
If you wait one pinky moment
Letting sounds slide towards your thumb,
Eventually they perch like birds on a fence,
Nesting two together on a quiet egg
Till the egg cracks and a beak of song breaks through

OIK Tuesday: opposites

In the last decade the seven intelligences described by Howard Gardner in the 80's have been updated to include three "new" ones.  One of these new intelligences is undoubtedly the oldest:  "naturalist" intelligence, handy for actual survival throughout most of human history, and the only one of the three to be added to Gardner's original list.

In my class there are a few children who demonstrate marked naturalist intelligence, but none so strongly as Cale.  When we go out for "Outdoor Education," inevitably he's the one who spies a praying mantis on the school wall or digs up a clump of wormy grass roots to bring inside.  He knows a lot about animals, especially dinosaurs, and so as we tried to identify the creature illustrating a math worksheet, I looked to Cale for help. (The worksheet was handed to me by a colleague while we were all in the midst of The Gingerbread Man, so I just assumed that the plump, cheerful figure wearing an artist's beret and holding a paint bucket was a gingerbread man, but on closer inspection I found it to be a rather human-looking seal.)

Me:
At first I thought this creature was a gingerbread man with a raisin nose and a cute cap like the Gingerbread Baby, but then I noticed the hands.  Do you all see what kind of hands it has?

Class:
[confused silence]

Me:
To me those hands look more like flippers on a swimming animal.  What could it be?  It's hard to tell because its body is hiding behind the paint bucket....does anyone know a swimming animal with flippers like that?

Cale:
[finally]  I know!  It's not a...it's a...it's...it's the opposite of a beaver!

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

slender and sleek
not round and fat

lightly downed
not thickly furred

tiny useless tail
no water-slapping paddle

sharp fish-shredders
no tree-felling chisels

nature-boy is right:
a seal is the opposite of a beaver

Heidi Mordhorst 2012

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!

annual honeysuckle poem, ahead of schedule

you! I wrote your poem already
last year and the year before that...
but this afternoon
blue blasts through the cloud cover;
I round the corner, bent on an ordinary errand,
shoot through a fleet scent
like a warm spot in the sea
and stop, stock-still:
what was that streak of happy?

stepping back the smell swells;
goodmorninghellohappynewyear it's you!

slipping the stamens (forgiving the
gajillion green raindrops of the week)
lights fireworks inside my face
and each white or yellow trumpet blossom
gets under my tongue and under my feet
giving me nectar-fueled jetboots
that blast me above cloud cover,
let me hover over May, over today,
and sight the fence of a far-off June
where I learned to suck honeysuckle

Is it crazy to be walloped so soundly every year by the same short-lived miracle? I stood yesterday enjoying my son's enjoyment, remembering my daughter's (see previously published ode below), but selfishly relishing my own surrender to The Sensory Power of the Honeysuckle Experience. (Ooh, and when I play in a band, after we finally negotiate an 8th day of the week, it will be called The Honeysuckle Experience.)


Honeysuckle Hunting

It could be anywhere.
We stand stock still and sniff
the green breathing of daisy, vine and leaf.

Ears pricked and noses high,
we listen for the drowsy hum
of yellow golden honey.

There, on the fence!
We'll steal it from the bees,
pluck a tiny trumpet blossom,

pinch the end with finger and thumb,
like biting the vanilla-dripping tip
of an ice cream cone.

Slowly, slowly, draw it out--
pull the stamen through, tongue poised
to catch one crystal drop of sweetness.

~Heidi Mordhorst
from Squeeze: Poems from a Juicy Universe, 2005

Join Julie at The Drift Record for this week's Poetry Friday roundup!

the middle is the end and the beginning

In our school district, teachers have been teaching (and testing) for 9 weeks straight without a day off, and if you count all the way back to January, for 15 weeks with only a couple of 3-day weekends to catch a breath. This middle day of April is the end of one butt-kicking passage of time, and the beginning of the most exciting, most needed Spring Break I've had in...in...in EVER. We're going to Costa Rica!

I'm thankful that I'll still be a presence during NaPoMo, thanks to TOMORROW's post by Gregory K featuring "The Playroom Floor Writes a Novel" at 30 Poets/30 Days, and thanks to Laura Shovan at Author Amok, who is including a new poem of mine in her NaPoMo project featuring Maryland poets TODAY!

For now, in honor of both the wildlife I hope to encounter in Costa Rica and the lifestyle I hope to enjoy there, a classic by Theodore Roethke:

The Sloth

In moving slow he has no Peer.

You ask him something in his Ear,

He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word

There, upside down (unlike a Bird),

He will assume that you have Heard--

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.

But should you call his manner Smug,

He’ll sigh and hive his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,

Still swaying gently by his Toes,

And you just know he knows he knows.

~ Theodore Roethke

Today's roundup will find us all wrapped up in noodles by Diane Mayr at Random Noodling.

winter eyes

Every day on the morning announcements at my school, there's a "Did you know...?" Yesterday's was, "Did you know it might SNOW tomorrow?"

Personally I could live without most of winter, but around these parts real snow comes seldom enough that it brings real magic when it does. On the other hand (and I'm convinced this is due directly to climate change), the 5- to 7-year-olds that I teach have grown up in a mid-Atlantic region with considerably more snowfall than I ever enjoyed as a kid, where we tended to get one snowfall of 10-12" a year sometime in January--never in time for Christmas!

So the kindergartners do know what it's like to cross a landscape something like that in Jan Brett's The Mitten, and the first-graders know something about venturing out into hills and expanses of snow like Peter in The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. Today is Poetry Friday in my classes and Douglas Florian has something for both groups! His 1999 Winter Eyes (Greenwillow) is so full of goodies--and really no two the same, kinda like snowflakes--that it's hard to choose.

To the kindergarteners, who are as a whole a snappy group, I could offer "Winter Tracks," about the same meadow mouse that figures in The Mitten, or "Winter Burrows," which would echo yesterday's discussion about how Jan Brett eschews the boring popcorn words "go" and "went" to make the animals "burrow," "wriggle" and "nose" their way into the mitten. But because of Nicki's white mittens on white snow, I'm going to give them "Winter Wear."

Winter Wear
Douglas Florian

The weasel wears a coat of white.
He always keeps it zippered tight.
It helps him weasel out of sight.

The snowshoe hare from head to toe
Wears white wherever she may go
To help her hide against the snow.

The snowy owl perched in a tree
On snowy days is hard to see.
I don't see him but he sees me.

In our white coats we come to peek.
On winter wildlife we sneak.
We play a game of hide and seek.

How simple, how pleasing! To the first-graders, who as a group benefit from taking things more slowly, I'll offer "Sled," a concrete poem that climbs the left side of a two-page spread just like Peter climbs "up a great big tall heaping mountain of snow," and then speeds down the right side just like Peter sli-i-i-des all the way down.
Here's the text:

Sled
Douglas Florian

First
you
budge
then
slowly
trudge
your
sled
to
the
top
and
then (here's where the poem meets the gutter of the book)
you
s p e e d
you
s a i l
you
w h i z
you
w a i l
and
start
all
over
again.

I don't usually show children the book or illustration with the poem I'm sharing at the first reading, but this is one where I'll be holding up both Winter Eyes and The Snowy Day so that the children can make the visual connection. I love Poetry Friday!

Join in today at Live. Love. Explore! with Irene.

in case anyone has never

What is it about pumpkins? We went to choose pumpkins at a local "patch"--no time for a trip to an actual farm this week, and my kids know very well how pumpkins grow--but even just being in a large sunny yard strewn with pumpkins gave us all a rotund feel of earthy well-being.

At school today, following the kindergarteners' visit to a pumpkin farm yesterday, we'll celebrate our first Poetry Friday together by carving a pumpkin while simultaneously reading the following tour de force by the great Valerie Worth. To me this poem (with many of hers!) serves as a definition of "poetry" for kids: a piece of writing that distills experience into a handful of words that work musically together. (Want to watch me try to explain that to 5-year-olds?) In any case I think it will make a fine complement to our work with "Five Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate" next week.

Pumpkin

After its lid
Is cut, the slick
Seeds and stuck
Wet strings
Scooped out,
Walls scraped
Dry and white,
Face carved, candle
Fixed and lit,

Light creeps
Into the thick
Rind: giving
That dead orange
Vegetable skull
Warm skin, making
A live head
To hold its
Sharp gold grin.

~ Valerie Worth (1933-1994)

You can dig in to more at a wrung sponge with Andi this week.

autumn summer pumpkin butterfly

What's your favorite season? It's an important question; in my family we seem to review our preferences, with revisions, on a regular basis (just like we keep having to come back to the food question: "If you could have only one carbohydrate for the rest of your life, what would you choose? only one fruit? only one vegetable?").

I find it very easy indeed to pick summer, but this early fall time is a close second because of piquant overlaps like the one I tried to capture in the opening poem of last year's Pumpkin Butterfly (Boyds Mills/Wordsong). My school is full of painted lady and monarch butterflies because of the second-grade science curriculum, and the pumpkins are already on their way in, all under the mellow October sunshine. Don't forget to watch for ghosts.


Ghosts


we haul our wagon to a patch of hilly earth
weighed down with deep orange
with bigbellied, cumbersome pumpkins

“This is the one”
“And this one”
we say

we cut the tough vines and turn to load them up

behind our backs
a gust of butterflies rises and tumbles
on hot October air

yellowgreen tinged with orange
wings as weightless and angular
as the pumpkins are heavy and round:

the ghosts of our pumpkins untethered from earth

~ Heidi Mordhorst 2009

come on in; the water's fine

Welcome to my first-ever Poetry Friday host post! I'm thrilled to have the honor and let me say it was no small thing to get a slot--this community is full of eager beavers, swimming through the hot dams of summer to get in line for this job. Thanks to Mary Lee for sharing.

With the beach and the pool and camps called "Adventure Island" and "River Ecology," not to mention the family foray Tuesday night out into a drizzle that became a shower that became a torrent complete with lightning and thunder, I'm feeling pleasantly water-logged. Here's a suitably wet poem from my files that I just rediscovered.

Water Becomes You

This water coming into your hands,
it’s old—older than today,
older than you are,
older than the oldest people you know.

This water has been around:
playing over and under the world,
coming up in different wells,
turning through the air into nothing.

This water will make its home in you,
become a part of you,
moving in your very thoughts:
old water welling up in new hands.

~Heidi Mordhorst 2007
all rights reserved

I'm looking forward to whatever you're sending my way, Poetry People.
Leave your links as comments and I'll compile them morning, noon and night!

******************************************************************
Early Birds

Shelley points us in the direction of her "grassroots epic" Rain: A Dust Bowl Story in poems which recreates our grandparents' era. I'll need some time at this site...

Tabatha has returned from Canada with a bilingual poem she found by the cliffs at the end of the trail, The End of Land. I always wish for more "situational poetry" installations, for the chance to be surprised by a poem in an unexpected place.

Little Willow shares Egyptian Serenade by George William Curtis. Nice to meet you, LW, and thanks for leading me to GWC--an interesting guy, especially for us UU folks.

At the Poem Farm, Amy has her own poem about poetry (#8 of 107 in her PoWriYe) as well as a few comments on her free verse inspirations. : )

Charles aka Father Goose has been getting kids going at summer poetry workshops with Riddle Rhyme poems--two of which are perfect companions to Amy's "Flying My Poem"!

Oops--I made a mistake earlier...Laura E. is "out of the office" but leaves us with a piece by Mirabai and her reflections on it at Teach Poetry K-12. I'm grateful for the introduction to a new voice.

Mary Lee at A Year of Reading is contemplating a visit back home to a small town with an exquisite poem by Gregory Djanikian. There is surely another exquisite poem lurking in the detonation of Matchbox cars on the 4th of July...

Toby is buzzing about the thoughts of bees at The Writer's Armchair, just long enough to give her easy-over detective time to get wired for an encounter at the self-storage place. I'm intrigued...both by what bees think and the fate of Emma Trace!

At Author Amok I find that like me, Laura Sh. loves no-poems (which is funny 'cause I think we are both yes-people). No-poems are unrelated to noh-drama, but couldn't we all use a summer like that? Sadly, this is not to be for Laura; see her No-ode to Summer.

Laura #3 of the morning (Laura S.) has a laugh for anyone who may be a beginning writer, a jaded and uninspired writer, or a writer who doesn't know how to take the piss, particularly out of herself: "Do You Have Any Advice for Those of Us Just Starting Out?" by Ron Koertge.

[Report on the experience of hosting: I have nothing--NOTHING--else to do today, so I can follow and wallow to my heart's content in every linky direction y'all are taking me, and it's putting me in a VERY good mood!]
*************************************************
Midday Muses

Diane weighs in with writing advice from Snoopy at Random Noodling, introduces us (or maybe just me) to Eleanor Ross Taylor at Kurious Kitty, and quotes the eminent Eleanor at Kurious Kitty's Kwotes. [Fancy keeping up with THREE blogs!] Personally I think Eleanor deserves an award simply for titling a 1960 collection of poems Wilderness of Ladies, but I'm sure there's more to discover than that.

Over at Dori Reads, Doraine shares Two Voices in a Meadow as a metaphor for the writer's life, an interpretation that adds a new layer of interest to Richard Wilbur's finely tuned milkweed and stone.

Jama whets our appetite just in time for National Ice Cream Day on July 18th with two video scoops of Bleezer's Ice Cream! Sadly, the recommended strawberry-vanilla twist would not crank my freezer; my standard order is mint chocolate chip in a cup, with Coffee Heath Bar Crunch reserved for special occasions. And I have fond memories of Haagen Dazs cappucino flavor back in the 80's...it doesn't exist anymore, but check THIS out, speaking of beezzzz!

And in a graceful transition, we flow from cappucino ice cream to free verse coffee in a cup: Stenhouse offers a mentor poem from Liz Hale.

Alison extends us a "don't be creative" creativity challenge in the form of a photo at Wistful Wanderings. I'm thinking that we need an expression like "Break a leg" for writers who need encouragement to get on with our creative work but who might be stifled by that often vacuous "Be creative!" command....

Linda of Write Time reminds us that all those disused objects we hang onto DO have an important use, with a couple of poems about objects that hold memories.

This morning I the early-bird managed to sleep through a 3.6 magnitude earthquake here in Maryland. It was just a rumble under the bed, but I was sorry I missed it--until it hit me that with Haiti's 6-month tribulation in mind there might be something wrong about wishing to experience an earthquake. And now look who has dropped by to bring weight to this feeling: Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town, who lives and teaches in Haiti, and who shares earthquake poems by Haitian poets. I stand shaken. I hadn't met Ruth before; hello to you!

I'm also pleased to meet B.C. of The Small Nouns, who shares a brave-indeed poem about the lost habit of flying, plus some sources for those looking for a poetry stretch. I'll be heading to ohboywhatfun Big Tent Poetry so that I can fail to muster up any response to those as well as Tricia's Monday Poetry Stretches at The Miss Rumphius Effect. *sigh*

And now a sigh of satisfaction at the romance and gravity of a wedding: over at Wild Rose Reader, Elaine's daughter is now married! Today she shares her wedding poem for (and some great photos of) the new couple, inspired by a Margaret Atwood work. All good wishes for this new beginning!

Always happy to meet another fan of Mary Oliver ("poet laureate of UU's"). Nancy at Maine Mornings joins Poetry Friday for the first time and shares a poem that "more or less//kills me/with delight" called "Mindful". Scroll down to read a very mindful visit to Nancy's garden for dinner. Bliss.

Andromeda is in today with a review at a wrung sponge of African Acrostics by Avis Harley. Ya gotta love a reviewer that can inject poetry into her description itself: "These poems can be drunk in quickly in long droughts of gold and dusk or drawn out lazily ..." Because of their ritual abuse in classrooms across America I have held acrostics in low esteem, but I can see that I have been hasty...just compare this zebra example to the wild stripes included in Andi's review!
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Evensong
[Hm. 10:40 pm. Guess I did have a few other things to do today.]

Janet has Mouse Mess for us at All About the Books, a favorite read-aloud for early grades.

At Check It Out, Jone shares her progress through and response to Ted Kooser's Poetry Home Repair Manual. As if that weren't enough, she has a response to this week's Poetry Stretch at Deo Writer!

Theresa at Looking for the Write Words shares thoughts on how to be a good friend today--and stay that way!

Until I read the Richard Wilbur poems over at Dori Reads today, I didn't know I might like to listen to Richard Wilbur talk. Karen makes it easy at The Blog With the Shockingly Clever Title (TBWTSCT?) by directing us to The Web of Stories, which looks like a cool place to hang out, too. Very cool.

Barbara of the Write Sisters fogs up the place with a steamy poem from Pattiann Rogers which brings new meaning to the idea of "the birds and the bees."

Linking nicely to Linda's poems about memorial objects, Jeannine writes today about Stuff and Silence and choosing both what to keep in your house and in your writing. And indeed, the mess gets worse before it gets better!

Erin's posting for the first time today with a poem every child should know (what a good idea for a modern series too!) at Little Kid Lit. I like the old-fashioned idea that poetry is a duty as well as a delight.

Kelly finishes up with a not very "cheatery" post that leads to some good basic reminders on going beyond the polished poem to a polished manuscript. Nothing like a little practical advice.

Thank you, thank you to all who participated today! And now I shall follow that most reliable piece of practical advice and Go To Bed. See you next Friday!