more found objects

I've been hard at work this week trying to keep up with the flow of found objects over at Laura Shovan's blog.  It's true, though, that as with anything, the more you do it the easier it gets, so I did get in a rhythm this week.  Here are drafts of poems for Days 23-26 (all are © Heidi Mordhorst 2016), and thanks to Laura and all the participants for the inspiration!

Traffic Stop

rolling rolling rolling
carry me away
it is my right to copy
it is my right to read

rolling rolling rolling
with the cargo of the mind
defend my right to congregate
defend my right to read
                         officer, please
rolling rolling rolling
carry me on home
home to shelves and piles and stacks
home to libraries

nest

mudwattle
      stuccohung
bugspatter
      mossdangle
birdhuddle            home

we daren’t open that door





The action of attraction

There are screws that hold us tight
there are hooks on which we hang
there are locks that shut us in
there are keys that shoot our bolts

whichever way the waves rise
whichever way the wind blows
whichever way the ship rolls
whichever way the floor jolts

we’re shot, we’re shut, we’re hooked, we’re screwed
our brassy hearts hang hard and cold
waiting for a touch, a hand
waiting for the warmth of skin

and when it comes we leap to it!
we buzz with loosing, waking need
to staterooms, quarters, lockers, deck —
                                                                    and now the crossing can begin.



Sister Sun Sets You Straight

You thought the all-powerful
was a god?  A hot-blazing,
fire-roaring, staff-wielding god?
Helios Apollo Huitzilopochtli
Surya Toniatuh Ra--
                          ha!  I am goddess.

I do not blaze so much as simmer;
I do not roar so much as sing
(some say singe);
I do not wield a mighty staff;
I waft my hair of flame.
I coax the sweetness out with legendary heat:
from soil and branch, maple;
from stem and leaf, strawberry;
from pod and bean, chocolate.
(I do not claim the cookie dough.)

I forgive your errors--
my charms are hard to judge from lowly earth.
So every now and then I descend, all dulcet warmth
and eyelashes, to wink at humankind
from unexpected spots.
                         Don't forget the recycling.

**********************************
Laura's project is hosted today by Michael Ratcliffe, and our Poetry Friday host is Elizabeth Steinglass, who's prompting us to consider process (very appropriate for this Found Objects exercise).  See you there!

out of time

I don't really have a post today, and it's not about poetry.  I've been reading, you see, and watching, and there's only so much time in a person's last month of the school year.

A while back I read  A Wrinkle in Time to Duncan (which turns out not to be such a great read-aloud, but we made it work; any thoughts on that assertion?); then we did Percy Jackson 4 (my favorite so far) and most recently we read, quite slowly, When You Reach Me. 

Simultaneously, and after working to get into it for some weeks, I was reading The Time Traveller's Wife, which has been Daisy's favorite book since the middle of 7th grade.  (We'll go back some time to how I felt when I realized that my barely 13 yo was reading and rereading this adult work of fiction; it felt the same as when I realized she had watched six seasons of "How I Met Your Mother" before I even knew that show existed. Oy.)  Alongside THAT, I've been watching "HIMYM" with Daisy, which is essentially a time-travel experience, and the modern "Doctor Who" with Duncan.

So I have no poetry post today, only a report about how I can't stop thinking about diamond chips on a gold ring and the broccoli patch, Aunt Beast and the Laughing Man and Henry, and whether Rebecca Stead and Audrey Niffenegger have ever exchanged emails, and what it is exactly that Daisy is learning about the art of narrative from Ted (and I hope NOTHING from Barney), and how this whole two-Marcuses or two-Henrys-in-the-same-place-in-time is a slippery concept for me in the same way that subtraction is really slippery for some kindergarteners (including the 5-year-old me).

In the meantime I do have an OIK poem brewing, about the kangaroo's porch...but Calef Brown has probably already written it.

Enjoy Poetry Friday with Jama today!

bedecked with text

I love summer.  Is it because I'm a hot-weather person with a penchant for peaches, or is it because at this time of year I can luxuriate in the literacy activities that form the core of my being?  I love school-times too, but there are so many constraints on what I can read and write then.  Still, something is shifting, and not just because I'm not working (working for The Man, that is, whoever he may be).

I know because this week I've been reading not one but TWO works of contemporary adult fiction.  I mean actually reading my way through them, not just carrying a book to the pool and in the car and to the beach but reading the same second chapter over and over again without making progress (this was the fate of both Loving Frank last year and The Elegance of the Hedgehog the year before).  I seem to be able suddenly to give myself up to a book like I used to, in the days when I lived mainly to get back to any of the several books I was reading at any given time.

[Around about Monday Daisy asked, "What are you reading now, Mommy?"  "Upstairs I'm reading An American Wife and downstairs I'm reading Room."  "Good for you!" she exclaimed, as though I'd happened upon a uncommon but to-be-recommended practice.  "I do that but my friends don't get it."  Little does she know that I invented that practice, not she, but that was back when.....when I was 13 too.  : )]

This is what else I have had the wide-open pleasure to encounter this week, in the random sort of order which is appropriate to the season:

*The Silver Chair, aloud to Duncan (C.S. Lewis)
*What Color is Your Smoothie?  (Britt Allen Brandon; goes with my new hyperpowered blender)
*my own poems and those of my fabulous new critique group
*An American Wife (Curtis Sittenfeld; having the slightly creepy effect of making me like Dubya)
*Room (Emma Donoghue; finished on Tuesday night and best thing I have read since I can remember)
*IKEA, Crate & Barrel and other online furniture catalogs with my "New House Notebook" alongside
*Chapter 3 of my other critique partner's entertaining middle grade novel
*online documents regarding some shady dealings between our County Executive and our school system on the conversion of an organic farm occupying school land to privately owned soccer fields
*Narrative Magazine (thinking of entering poetry contest)
*Time magazine articles from March and April on The Next 10 Big Ideas and the 100 Most Influential People in the World
*and finally, this poem, which had a similar effect on me to last week's offering.  Its power links to that poem, to Room, and to the process of saying a long goodbye to rooms full of the evidence of younger childhoods.  (That said, only last week Duncan and his friends bedecked themselves with marker lipstick and eyeshadow, dug out wigs and sparkly handbags and videoed themselves acting out a visiting-Santa-at-the-mall skit.  Brave rainbow hearts indeed.)  My dad forwarded it to me.

Bedecked // Victoria Redel (apologies; the formatting is not right, I'm sure)


Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy

store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger.

He’s bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star

choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.

Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says

sticker earrings look too fake.


Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a

boy’s only a boy who’d love a truck with a remote that revs,

battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping

off tracks into the tub.


Then tell me it’s fine—really—maybe even a good thing—a boy

who’s got some girl to him,

and I’m right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in

the park.


Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son

who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means—

this way or that—but for the way facets set off prisms and

prisms spin up everywhere

and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows—made every

shining true color.


Now try to tell me—man or woman—your heart was ever once

that brave.


Among other places, this poem is published in an anthology called 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, edited by Billy Collins.  May we be so brave as he.  The round-up today is with Jone at Check It Out. 

"I am ewnec"

The poetry version of last week's first-grade effort to grasp character traits...

On the outside, you can see my physical traits:
"I have tanish-pinkish sgin."
"I have krly eyelashs."
"my body is tall"
"my hair is shtrayt"
My words and actions show my character traits on the inside:
"I am a little shiy."
"I am prsistent."
"I take care of my frands"
"I have lost of ideas"
"I am ewnec. there is only one me in the wrld."

And an open letter to colleagues:

As we survey our reading asessment results and think about how best to meet the needs of children in our classes, I want to raise a few points that I think sometimes get insufficient attention in our “data-driven instructional model."

The students we work with are 5, 6 and 7 years old. They are all, to a greater or lesser degree, egocentric, and they live in the here and now of their daily experience. They come to us as children first, and no matter what their academic ability they share the fundamental needs we all have: the need for security and comfort, the need to be known (and yes, loved). That’s partly why we have chosen this job, because we’re good at making little children feel at home in our classrooms--their home away from home.

Our students come to us second as individual learners. Each one has his or her strengths and weaknesses, and part of being a good learner is growing into a sense of where you have the power to help others along and where you might need to ask for help. We create heterogeneous classes because that’s what the world is like, and part of a good education is learning to be an effective participant in a diverse community. (In fact, I believe that’s the whole point of public education in a democracy, which is why, even as a reading teacher, I tend to start my planning with the social studies curriculum in mind).

Third on the list, our students come to us as readers--and now they all have a nice fresh label attached. In my first grade class, for example, I have two boys who are alike in many ways—mischievous, not as intrinsically motivated to “do school” as we might wish, and within 6 months of each other in age (which is quite a lot, really, when you’re only 72 months old). They have both moved from Level 5 to Level 8 since the beginning of the year, but I will not be putting them in the same guided reading group, because they are very different learners.

One is wired to decode pretty well, but he has a hard time focusing on the ideas behind the words, and in general his problem-solving skills are not strong. He needs a lot of support in reading for meaning, and a slower pace will also be a benefit as he struggles with some unfortunate family circumstances. I’ll put him with the Level 5/6/7’s because there he can have a chance to shine a little and the comprehension demands will be manageable.

The other boy is much more attentive to life generally, more observant, has shown himself ready and willing to rise to a challenge as long as it wasn’t actual reading. However, he’s been very conscious of his struggles in comparison with classmates, and now that he’s making some noticeable progress, this is the moment to put him with a snappier group of thinkers, to capitalize on his competitive tendency and to maximize his growing investment in becoming a reader. I’ll be putting him with the 10/11/12’s--for now.

And then there are the books. We know that all Level 8 books are not equal, and just because both boys read the Level 8 fiction selection successfully doesn’t mean they’ll do as well with every other book labeled 8. So it’s part of my job to choose books that will be “just right” for each of these boys labeled Level 8, and those “just right” books may be Level 6’s or Level 10’s or not leveled at all. They may be books that speak to each boy where he is right now, like Goggles! by Ezra Jack Keats, which they both love because of the way Peter and Archie put one over on the big boys. This book is challenging for each boy in different ways, but they are both persevering in reading it because it’s meaningful and because it has become part of our classroom culture.

By now you may have guessed what point I'm getting at. Because our students are children first, who need to feel at home in the culture of a classroom (a culture that we work hard to build), individual learners second, and labeled, leveled readers last, I want to advocate against moving Kindergarten and 1st grade children around at this point in the year.

I feel strongly that any instructional gains we may earn by moving a child into a group with other Level X’s are likely to be cancelled out by the emotional upheaval of moving that child out of one classroom culture (that culture that we so carefully build in community with our students) and into another.

Of course, there are always reasons to make considered exceptions, but I think we mistakenly give up some of our professional power if we allow the handheld assessment device to determine a child’s daily experience of school. I believe in the usefulness of data, and I believe that teachers and children are more than interchangeable pegs in a big pegboard. Grouping by reading level tends to turn us all into pegs.

With respect for all you do in the classroom,
Heidi

late for poetry month

April 1 is a very important day for me and it has nothing to do with National Poetry Month--or it has everything to do with National Poetry Month! Back in 1999 I was faced with the fact that while I seemed to be very good at growing a baby, I was not going to be good at pushing a baby out. It was disappointing to think that I had been carrying around those child-bearing hips since age 12 for nothing; on the other hand, it was fun to choose my daughter's birthday, and if you can choose April Fool's Day, whyever would you pick March 31 or April 2?

Thus arrived our little April Fool, two weeks late and by appointment--and shortly thereafter, following a hiatus of 15 years, I felt the urge to write poems again. (More on this funny twist to my writing life in my interview later this month with Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect). This year, on April 1, when I might have been posting for Poetry Friday, we were with our shiny new 11-year-old in Charlottesville, touring Monticello, eating outrageous desserts and swimming in the hotel pool.

Today I post the next two poems included in the public charter school application--the ones about reading and writing. Just see who authored the poem I chose to open the section on the place of writing in our school's curriculum...

The First Book

Open it.

Go ahead, it won't bite.
Well...maybe a little.

More a nip, like. A tingle.
It's pleasurable, really.

You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.

Sure, it's hard to get started;
remember learning to use

knife and fork? Dig in;
you'll never reach the bottom.

It's not like it's the end of the world--
just the world as you think

you know it.

~Rita Dove (who, in a superb coincidence, is a professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville)


While Writing

Let the words come to you
Let the words escape you; flowing through your body to your pen
Let the words lead you through your whole life.

Let the words seize you
Let the words rip you from your world and take you to theirs
Let the words uncover your deepest thoughts

The words make feelings express themselves
The words make real life seem like fantasy
The words make us feel like nothing will ever be bad

And I love the words

~Daisy, age 10 (after Langston Hughes's "April Rain Song" )