another way to pose the question

Who Am I?

The trees ask me,
And the sky,
And the sea asks me
Who am I?

The grass asks me,
And the sand,
And the rocks ask me
Who I am.

The wind tells me
At nightfall,
And the rain tells me
Someone small.

Someone small
Someone small
But a piece
of
it
all.

~ Felice Holman

finally!

This is rather a good little poem and is even more fun as a song--and it's certainly the right way to begin [ahem-TWO!] new reading classes full of children with first names from Farhan to Manuel, from Dayrin to Bronx, from Fumiya to Jaisa.

How nostalgic it made us, singing it blearily before dawn with my freshly-minted middle-schooler, for the days of nursery school and Dragon Tales...

The Hello Song
from PBS "Dragon Tales"

Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello

When you meet somebody new
The first thing you should do
Is say hello, hello, hello, hello

Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow

Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello

Cause when you wanna make a new friend
Give a great big smile
And say "Hi, hello, my name is
[Zak! Wheezie! Ord! Cassie!]"

And before you know it
You'll have a brand new pal
True-blue, till the end
A brand new friend, say it again

Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow

Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello

Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow

Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello

Hellllllo!

Check out all the goodies at the Poetry Friday round-up, hosted today at Susan Writes by (funnily enough) Susan!

question for the first day of school

"Who are you?"

I've spent time sitting through the "Students at a Glance" meeting and talking with other teachers about the children who are coming my way this year, but the fact that there are brand-new ones coming in always reminds me that even those we think we know are brand-new to each new year, new teacher, new class.

And yes, I want to know when their birthdays are, and their favorite colors and their pets' names, but even more I want to listen to who they tell me they are OFF the "All About Me" sheet.

Here's a poem to remind all of us teachers that part of the essential beauty of our students is in what they
don't say.


The Hand
by Mary Ruefle


The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.


I would have liked that to say "fall is in the air," but it is as it is and it's a perfect way to wish all you teachers a Happy First Day of School!

Poetry Friday is at Book Aunt today with Kate Coombs and a marvelous selection of poetry for and by teens.

can't help myself

Those of us who thrive in the classroom environment have now been out of school long enough to be thinking of "next year." (Actually we were probably scheming about how do everything Better, Stronger, Slower before school was over, or that might just be me.)

So I woke up this morning (too early; bad cat!) thinking about the sense (or not) in a class mission statement, which led to a picture of me and my new reading class of 2nd graders making our silent and stealthy way ("Your mission, should you choose to accept it...") through the halls of our new school building, occupying and exploring our new room, and in the background was playing the theme from Mission Impossible (click to get the effect), which vision only works if you participated in Pallotta TeamWorks AIDS rides of the 90's, the motto for which was (and here finally is today's poem, a brilliant one-word piece of punctuation genius)--


I'mpossible.


I think my second-graders just became the I-Team. Poetry Friday is at Irene's Live. Love. Explore! blog today.

the badnesses of this world

My preference is usually for "uplifting" poetry, that which (along with everything it does for cognition and imagination by sounding good to your ears and feeling good in your mouth) leaves me with a reverberating sense of wonder at the goodnesses of this world, kind of like the ones I posted back in January that suggested some animal spirituality.

I'm having trouble therefore understanding why the poem below keeps me coming back to it. I received it courtesy of The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day service. The pain barely contained in it is enormous and frightening and wonderful.

Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72
by Charles Harper Webb

May there be an afterlife.

May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.

May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with razor-
blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat stopped
at a red light, spike the rifle butt, and the concrete on which you'll
fall.

May the needles the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, "Please don't
shoot me. Please."
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away;
Then may he take you with bare hands.

May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive a nail
and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw....

Take a deep breath and read the complete poem here. Poetry Friday is hosted today by Breanne at Language, Literacy, Love.

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!

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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!
*******************************************************************
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!

how could I forget?

Yee-haw! By special arrangement with Mary Lee over at A Year of Reading, the Poetry Friday Round-up will be HERE next week. See you on the 16th!

poemusic

I've been a fan of Natalie Merchant since near the beginning, and many of her songs with the band 10,000 Maniacs are in my top 50 of all time (however, do not ask me to list my Top 50 of All Time; I'm nowhere near ready to commit. But "These Are Days" is in the Top Ten). Today I'm finally getting around to enjoying a (March) birthday present from my mother: Natalie's new project, Leave Your Sleep.

Leave Your Sleep is a collection of 26 songs, all of them composed around poems by a wide variety of well- and lesser-known poets including Rachel Field, Jack Prelutsky (the only one still living), Ogden Nash and Eleanor Farjeon. The year-long project "represents parts of a long conversation I've had with daughter during the first six years of her life."

The two CDs come packaged in a fetching small book which includes short biography and a black-and-white portrait of each poet--a treasure trove for anyone who has wondered, like me, why more popular songs aren't set to poems.

Easily my favorite so far is "maggie and milly and molly and may"--lyrics by e. e. cummings, a poet also dear to my heart. Click here to listen to a snippet of this lovely piece that gives, as my own read-alouds often fail to do, a seemingly simple narrative poem all the glow and gravitas in the atmosphere as it has inside us.

maggie and milly and molly and may
~ e. e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

blasted poets!

At the ALA in Washington Monday, on the way from Gianormo Convention Center Building #1 to Gianormo Convention Center Building #2, I asked directions to Room 144A, scene of this year's Poetry Blast, and then heard two stylish and colorful women behind me doing the same. As we crossed the street together, one commented on my own pink-with-orange ensemble. I did not realize, until we all reached the front row of chairs where the Blasting poets were gathering, that I had been complimented on my chromatocombo by Lois Ehlert herself!

I have participated in three what you might call "national" poetry readings now, and every time it is such a thrill to meet and hear in person writers who have existed for me only as names on a book jacket. And I was so relieved to hear famous* children's poets greeting other famous* children's poets saying, "I've heard your name but I'm not familiar with your work," since I often feel terribly ignorant of all the excellent work out there. I guess we all have a blanket of acquaintance with the work in our chosen field, and then, as someone put it, we have "deep shafts of knowledge" here and there.

I shall be digging some deep new shafts next week (once the blasted public charter school appeal is done) to know more about Debbie Levy (what range!), George Ella Lyon (what delightful diction!), Tony Medina (what humor!) and Carole Weatherford (what living history!).

Thanks to all at the Blast for another great show, especially Barbara Genco and Marilyn "Six Stars" Singer!

My lame but heartfelt reverso about the Poetry Blast...

You
had to be
there
to catch every nuance
but
it was worth the effort,
traveling!

Traveling:
it was worth the effort
but
to catch every nuance
there
had to be
You!

working for it can be fun

Today (behind the times as always) Kay Ryan is my hero. The poem below is what made me go looking for more; it's one of those included in Poetry Speaks to Children. When I included it in a collection for my first-graders--whom I thought would appreciate the bear-forest-wolf-stick fairy-tale flavor--they were generally baffled, and a couple even said they found it creepy. And it's true that when I went looking for another of Ryan's poems that might speak to younger children, I couldn't find what I was looking for.


Bear Song

If I were a bear
with a bear sort of belly

that made it hard
to get up after sitting

and if I had paws
with pads on the ends

and a kind of a tab
where a tail might begin

and a button eye
on each side of my nose

I’d button the flap
of the forest closed.

And when you came
with your wolf and your stick

to the place that once was
the place to get in

you’d simply be
at the edge of the town

and your wolf wouldn’t know
a bear was around.


But there's something about her style that we who write for children can learn from. Her poems are compact; they look tame and accessible on the page, written in complete sentences and in a conversational register. Read "The Fabric of Life," though, and see how dense and challenging it is, and how she encourages engagement with the big ideas by skillfully passing them through a prism of humor, and how that bent light opens our eyes.

The Fabric of Life

It is very stretchy.
We know that, even if
many details remain
sketchy. It is complexly
woven. That much too
has pretty well been
proven. We are loath
to continue our lessons
which consist of slaps
as sharp and dispersed
as bee stings from
a smashed nest
when any strand snaps—

hurts working far past
the locus of rupture,
attacking threads
far beyond anything
we would have said
connects.

From the biographical note at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/: "Ryan has said that her poems do not start with imagery or sound, but rather develop “the way an oyster does, with an aggravation.” " They may not start with imagery or sound, but listen to this irregular gorgeous turtle music:

Turtle

Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
she can ill afford the chances she must take
in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
a packing-case places, and almost any slope
defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
she's often stuck up to the axle on her way
to something edible. With everything optimal,
she skirts the ditch which would convert
her shell into a serving dish. She lives
below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
the sport of truly chastened things.

I'm all inspired, not least to think that this Poet Laureate taught "remedial English" for 30 years. Can't you tell that she's a brilliant teacher? "I know great," Ryan said. "I do not know where great comes from." We could all use some of this remediation.

work song in the key of f

Well. Sooner than we expected, the school system reviewers and the Superintendent made their recommendation against approval to the Board of Education, and in a whirlwind of events our public charter school application was denied on Tuesday. There was no way to catch my breath in time for Poetry Friday--these are the last days of the school year, after all--so here I am today with a poem that reflects (not sure how, but it does) a little of the hollow feeling that lurks beneath a determination to try again.

Work Song
~ Joshua Mehigan

This fastening, unfastening, and heaving--
this is our life. Whose life is it improving?
It topples some. Some others it will toughen.
Work is the safest way to fail, and often
the simplest way to love a son or daughter.
We come. We carp. We're fired. We worry later.

That man is strange. His calipers are shiny.
His hands are black. For lunch he brings baloney,
and, offered coffee, answers, "Thank you, no."
That man, with nothing evil left to do
and two small skills to stir some interest up,
fits in the curtained corner of a shop.

The best part of our life is disappearing
into the john to sneak a smoke, or staring
at screaming non-stop mills, our eyes unfocused,
or standing judging whose sick joke is sickest.
Yet nothing you could do could break our silence.
We are a check. Do not expect a balance.

That is a wrathful man becoming older,
a nobody like us, turned mortgage holder.
We stay until the bell. That man will stay
ten minutes more, so no one can complain.
Each day, by then, he's done exactly ten.
Ten what, exactly, no one here can say.