WELCOME, FIFTH GRADERS!!!

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💛💙PROMOTION SPECIAL💙💛

with love from Ms. Mordhorst

celebrating nikki grimes

BELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: 

Inspired by others who are granting themselves a wise or well-earned break from activities and practices that feel heavy, I am taking a break from Poetry Friday this summer.
My focus this summer will be on writing--really WRITING-- for submission. 

I'll see you when I next host on August 28th!

Hoopla and huzzah!  Thanks to Irene Latham's thoughtfulness, today we celebrate the achievements the accomplishments the downright gift that is Nikki Grimes, poet, author and leader of the young people's poetry community.

My celebration is of ONE LAST WORD, Nikki's 2017 tribute in Golden Shovels to the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, in anticipation of her forthcoming LEGACY, a companion that highlights women poets of the Harlem Renaissance.  From ONE LAST WORD, here is Nikki's reworking of a line from "The Minor Key" by Clara Ann Thompson.

This poem, like so many of Nikki's, is truer than true, and yet right now in this moment we are all noticing the range of ways we selfsame human folk may itch with anger, sneeze with laughter, crack, peel, sigh.  Same and different, that concept we start working on in PreK and never stop learning.

I enjoy catching up a little with Nikki each year at NCTE, and in Baltimore last year I was lucky enough to spend a whole little dinner with her.  Here's a photo taken by Janet Fagal, who happened to be at the next table.  

As we finished dinner Nikki said, "But you didn't read me a poem." So I read her my collage poems for kindergarteners which I had brought for my session, right there in the Hilton restaurant!  One of the extraordinary things about Nikki is her range, her ability to write for the ears and hearts of our youngest right up to our most adult young adults; she listened with pleasure and respect. 

Hoopla and huzzah once again for our treasure, Nikki Grimes!

Visit Live Your Poem with Irene to find links to the Poetry Friday round-up, and may the wisdom and wonder of Nikki accompany you through the week.

farewell: a sunday swaggers challenge

Back in maybe January, when I set the monthly challenge for our poets' group, the world seemed, you know, normal. Regular. Ordinarily challenging, simultaneously bitter and gorgeous...normal.

Now as we face our June poetry challenge, I think I speak for all of us when I say we are shook.  Yes, through March, April and May we were consumed by the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic quarantine online school family displacement disturbing public discourse--but by the end of May we had, as humans do, come into some place of routine.

And then--not for everyone, some of whom live in this upside down all day every day--the world turned upside down again as we watched in horror as once again, twice again, [threefourtentwentyfifty toomanytocount] Black lives were taken before our eyes.

So now the challenge I set back in January, to write a poem of farewell to anyone or anything--which I thought appropriate to the end of a normal regular school year--has even more possibility built in.  

I wrote a duplex last week which was a worthy challenge.  It's not explicitly a poem of farewell, but it is the beginning of goodbye to the belief that "not being racist" is enough.   The inauguration line is a link to this moment from the TV show Black-ish.

<poem>

But there's so much, so many more, to bid farewell to.  It's time to say goodbye to the 5th graders from my school, many of whom I've known for their whole [school] lives.

I hope this poem captures the odd challenge of this year and the heartfelt connections that will last long past this pandemic.

The Time We've Had

It's hard to say goodbye

      when you haven't said hello 

for weeks and weeks--not really.

I squeeze my own self tight

      and throw a hug through screens--

I mean it but it feels kind of silly.

Kind of silly, kind of sad,

     but this is the year we've had 

and now it's ending--this is it.

And here's the thing I've learned

     from twelve weeks of online learning--

        if you need me, I am here

        if I miss you, you are there

        

and the time that we have shared

      has marked our hearts with burning--

just a bit.

draft © Heidi Mordhorst 2020

Thanks to our own Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for hosting today, and let's see what the rest of the Swaggers decided to bid farewell to!

online lessons

I signed up for MasterClass to get their 2-for-1 deal and so that I could sit at the feet of Billy Collins.  He does things in his poems that I love but that are not my usual style, so I thought I'd learn something new and stretchy.  I was right, and I'm only on Lesson 5 of 19.  You can also see what other members of the family have found interesting!

[poem]

My dear friend Mary Lee is celebrating the triumphant yet sorrowing end of her school year with an expansive post inviting us to a Reading Without Walls challenge.  See you there!

#PoemsofPresence

At the beginning of May Michelle Heidenrich Barnes shared an interview with Margaret Simon on her blog, Today’s Little Ditty. At the end of the interview, Margaret posted a timely challenge to “Write a mindful poem about the present moment.” I got a little motivated by Mary Lee Hahn's suggestion in the comments to make that into a daily challenge. We put out the idea with the hashtag #PoemsofPresence and invited poets to write small poems for each day in May.  Michelle made the gorgeous logo.  My first one quotes Margaret quoting from Mary Oliver.

                                               horns and a cowbell

                                          https://spoti.fi/2ZEnvW3

walking widdershins

Thanks to all who are making this a very satisfying (and doable) project! Our host today is Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link, who has been joining us in some #PoemsofPresence and shares them in a new gallery of illustrated poetry.  Wishing you wondering and sending you mending, should you need it.

nothing to see here

No, literally and actually, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.  It's a weekend to properly read around the posts.

I read this for my book club.  It's good.

Thanks for hosting, Jama!

#poemsofpresence #shelterinpoems

This mouse is how
I reach you
roll   point    click
This screen is how
I touch you
flat    cold     far




Teacher hat on today: The state of Maryland has put out suggestions about what school may look like when we return to our school buildings:

"Today, daily school operations will likely include increased health and hygiene measures such as wearing masks, temperature checks, hand-washing, frequent sanitation, and social distancing, especially for elementary students. In addition, elementary playground areas may be marked for social distancing along with areas within schools. ...
Reduced class sizes may be expected to become the norm, consisting of students placed in the smallest classes possible with desks that are placed six feet apart. ...Special areas such as art, health, and physical education may be offered remotely via video chat along with parent/teacher conferences, discipline conferences, 504, and IEP meetings."

As my friend Jake Russo points out, this will be not only unworkable, but detrimental if not abusive to young children. THE MAIN POINT of school is "social studies"--learning to live in community to develop the skills needed to participate in the society. Even if you cynically admit that we care less about social studies than a) every other content area and b) school as state-provided child care to support employment and economic functions, it is impossible to effectively teach elementary students without physical closeness including touch. 

It's now 4pm and getting late for Poetry Friday, so I'll stop hoping that I can add anything uplifting or sheltering---WAIT!

Here's the #shelter part:

click on this:
the certainty that
not one of us will participate
they can't fire us all


Thanks to Michelle for hosting us today at Today's Little Ditty.  Be as well as you can, friends.

sunday swaggers challenge: epistolary poems

It's awfully nice that just as National Poetry Month ends, May swoops in with a fresh new Poetry Friday! (Because Poetry Month is every month, right? which is good news for those of us who MAY have fallen behind in our National Poetry Month projects...)

Today our critique partner Molly Hogan has asked us to turn our hand to epistolary poems, pretty straightforwardly defined at poets.org as "poems that read as letters. As poems of direct address, they can be intimate and colloquial or formal and measured."

After a period at the start of The Quarantine of "no dreams," I've been having lengthy, vivid dreams that lurk and leap out at me bit by bit all day--how 'bout you?  I've also restarted a book called The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall. One sentence in the introduction caught my attention. I set it as the striking line for a Golden Shovel, and here's how it came out.

“Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”

                    Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal  

[poem]

Not sure how to sign that letter, but there you have it. It's addressed to all of you.

Visit each of the other Swaggers to see whom--or what--they've addressed, and visit Liz at Elizabeth Steinglass, who's hosting our exhausted Poetry Friday with aplomb and a video!

-Catherine at Reading to the Core
-Linda at A Word Edgewise -Margaret at Reflections on the Teche -Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone

npm2020: poetry videos day 26 "Something Dangerous"

My National Poetry Month Project 2020 is to record a short video each day in April, presenting my published poems to poetry lovers of all ages.

Today's poem is stormy, wet and dangerous in more ways than one, and although it's a June poem, goes with any rainy night you might find yourself in.

Something Dangerous

Nine o’clock midnight

storm pitching rain like

the first of forty days

Lie down in the street

in the middle of the street

in the middle of steaming June

streaming asphalt

shedding its day’s heat

Halfway home

soaked right through

in a shirt full of holes

Lie down in the rain

lie down in the road

look up into the streaking sky

lie down

look up

Heaven might be

heaven might be this

dark and wet and dangerous

npm2020: earth day 22/23 "Smaller Than I Thought" & one more

day is every day

[I'm recycling this Earth Day post from Wednesday, in the spirit of reusing our resources wisely!]

In 2009 I was teaching in what I named "The Afternoon Room," a windowless former broadcasting studio where I had been hired to work .3 of a full-time position teaching math, science and social studies to 2nd-graders, all in 90 minutes. For those 2nd-graders I planned an Earth Day Party, bought tiny mini-cupcakes iced with blue, green and white, and wrote this poem.

Smaller Than I Thought

Here at the Earth Day Party in the park

they’re cutting the Earth Day Cake:

rich chocolate to stand for the soil,

swirls of green and blue frosting

to represent land and water.

The white icing at the Poles

is melting under the

unseasonably hot April sun.

The cake is smaller than I thought.

The pieces are small, too.

There’s no point in asking for seconds.

In fact, there isn’t enough to go around.

Some of us will have to share

one slice of Earth Day Cake between us.

I don’t know the kid who comes

to sit beside me on the lawn.

“Let’s take tiny nibbles to make it

last longer,” she suggests.  I nod,

and we gingerly dig our two forks

into one small slice of the blue Pacific.

©Heidi Mordhorst 2009

It's a gentle little poem in which you can assume that the Earth Day cake was served on "disposable" plates and eaten with "disposable" forks, just like the mini-cupcakes in The Afternoon Room.  Those poem party organizers, those cake-eating kids in the poem were just like me in 2009, understanding the Inconvenient Truth that Earth was WAY smaller than I had grown up thinking it was, that there hadn't been "enough to go around" for a long time--but not what the implications were for my own daily life.

I love this poem I wrote more than a decade ago.  I'm still proud of it.  BUT IT LACKS URGENCY.  The very generation of kids it was written for, kids who are now 19 and 20, who are the age of my own children--they have been watching their adults at the charming Earth Day Party in the park and wondering what the hell we are doing sitting on the lawn eating cake when the world is on fire.

planet earth is blue and there's something we can do

  **********************

And now I revisit my post from Friday, March 13, the day I sent my students home to quarantine--not from catastrophic climate change, but from catastrophic pandemic virus.  Here's what I wrote on that day.                                                                                                     

"...the members of our  human community once again have a challenge before us: 

we are now entering a period during which daily life as we know it cannot be sustained.  The inconvenience, the disappointment, the sorrow are monumental.  People are feverish with virus and anxiety, and the contagion can barely be contained. Our fear for our own lives and those of our neighbors has spurred us into immediate and collective action, with or without the wise or courageous leadership of our elected officials.

This, friends, is the response the young people have been looking for in the face of catastrophic climate change.  The planet is feverish with emissions and wild weather, and the reckless squandering of resources has not been contained.  Our fear for our own lives and those of our neighbors has not spurred us into immediate and collective action, despite the wise and courageous leadership of our youth, our scientists and our public policy experts.

But now that can change.  

Now we see that what must be done, can be done, 

if we have enough fear.  The governor of a state can go on TV and simply declare that 

you may not keep dumping your food waste into the same bin as your trash, starting 
tomorrow.  

A school system can spend a short amount of time and, to the best of its ability, redirect its resources and transform operations to make school transportation greener, starting
today.
Churches, nonprofits and individual families can cooperate to reverse global warming
now,
if we accept that "business as usual" is no longer sustainable.

Friends, be careful out there. Be wise and courageous IN there. And when we have moved through this challenge, don't forget that we proved we can move through the next infinitely bigger challenge."

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

I included the beginnings of a poem that I'm finishing today, with an urgent reminder that when the pandemic of coronavirus passes, we remember what we learned can be done.

[poem]

Here's a "freestanding" poetry video that includes both these poems, part of my National Poetry Month project.  Enjoy; maybe share, and as all the YouTubers say, "Don't forget to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE!"

Our hostess with the most interesting bird mnemonics--not to mention today's Progressive Poem lines--is Christie at Wondering and Wandering.  While you're poeting, you could also join the 3-day Earth Week livestream to learn more and show support for environmentally-friendly candidates and policies.

npm2020: poetry videos day 21 "Guest List: Charles Darwin's Garden Party"

My National Poetry Month Project 2020 is to record a short video each day in April, presenting my published poems to poetry lovers of all ages.

Today's poem celebrates, in rhythmic rhyming list form, just a few of the many extraordinary plants, creatures and natural features of our Earth.

Guest List:

Charles Darwin's Garden Party

balsam fir

spotted dolphin

pink verbena

garter snake

fragrant white water lily

grizzly sow

Crater Lake

gnarled pinyon

Painted Hills

tag alder

red bat pup

beebalm and bluebonnets

mountain lion

fungus cup

swallowtail

coneflower

Death Valley

prairie dog

Virginia creeper

Keyhole Arch

black-browed albatross

Moose Creek

paperbark

columbine

tiger shark

npm2020: poetry videos day 20 "Cauldron Full of Compost"

My National Poetry Month Project 2020 is to record a short video each day in April, presenting my published poems to poetry lovers of all ages.

Today's poem is the first in a series for Earth Week. It's the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday, and I'll be sharing some poems like this one, with some extra-earthy themes.  Also possibly my longest poem...

Cauldron Full of Compost I’m raking for dollars when I find it— my red kindergarten lunch box, buried deep under leaves and tangled ivy between the playhouse and the herb garden. I guess plastic really does last forever. I fixed a lot of food in this lunch box: boiled summer cauldrons full of onion-grass spaghetti, mixed pans of mudluscious spring brownies, scooped great heaping mountains of snow cream sprinkled with sugar, garnished with icicles. And once, on Uncle Mark’s birthday, I filled it with oozing mulberries and tiny wild strawberries tossed with encourage-mint. Everyone ate that for real. Who knows what I last cooked in here? Now nature’s doing the brewing: a dark sludgy soup, a decomposing mess of dead plants laced with worms. A few of the leaves are new enough— I can tell which are walnut, tulip, maple— But most have moldered here so long they’re part of the primeval stew. I stir it with a wooden spoon gone greenish with moss, drag up a dripping clump, spread it wetly at the foot of the maple, richer and thicker than syrup. With this dead soup I feed the tree.