five fridays and a year

 As Catherine Flynn said last week in her host post, "Wasn’t it thoughtful of April to begin on a Thursday this year, so we have five Fridays to celebrate National Poetry Month?"

 

It's never too late to join our private Facebook group, PARADISE PAVED, if you need a place to park your daily (or intermittent) drafting practice and get a little feedback.  Just let me know if you want an invitation.  Today a poem video of mine is featured at the Poetry Boost website, thanks to Michelle Schaub, and today the Progressive Poem concludes at  More Art 4 All with Michelle Kogan!

Matt is our host for today at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme--see you at the grand finale!

happy earth week

 PSA #1:  My April NPM project, inspired by the excellent experience of participating in Laura Shovan's February Poetry Projects on Facebook, is to host a group called PARADISE, PAVED, for the purposes listed below. All are welcome to participate--just let me know in the comments or by sending me an email.

"We are poets who need a place to park the results of our daily writing practice. We're looking for accountability, community and feedback. It may not be grand or glamorous, but it's practical--and private. There are just two rules, beyond the basic rules of civil discourse and internet decency:
1) Any day that you post a poem, please offer comments to at least three other poets.
2) If you used any kind of prompt, share! 

It's private so that our efforts can't be considered previously published on the web (which prevents submission to many journals and anthologies)--but it's open to whomever.  We'd love to have you if you need a place to post! Just drop me a note and I'll invite you. 

 PSA #2: It is Earth Week, of course, and I am grateful to our new administration for centering the climate emergency in its virtual summit of world leaders where President Biden called combating climate change “a moral imperative.”  I'd call it equally moral and PRACTICAL, and although it's easy to feel the daily overwhelm (for example, I can't find a way to get sufficiently out from under plastic waste in my life), just as we are beginning to feel a sea change in racial justice, there is a LOT positive going on in climate rescue too.  Here's a newsletter from the Washington Post that I receive weekly called THE OPTIMIST: STORIES THAT INSPIRE, and here's this week's leader: 

"You may have noticed that I’ve included a lot more stories about climate change in this newsletter lately. If you’re new, you might find that odd — isn’t that a rather depressing subject? It can be, certainly. But at The Washington Post, we’ve decided to invest in both news and solutions coverage; we’ve hired new people to write about visionaries trying to save the planet, how individuals can lessen their carbon footprint and the organizations tackling our biggest challenges. And that’s not even mentioning our incredible reporters relentlessly covering the politics and science of climate."

I encourage everyone to look out for the visionaries--my favorite as of last night's truly delicious Beyond Meat burger are the people who are trying to help us all eat more plants and less meat--and feel uplifted and inspired by their efforts!

And now for the poetry...PreK wrote collaborative poems this week about the parts of the Earth they are finding especially beautiful.  It bothers my eyes but this formatting is how I make sure that 4-5's are connecting those capital letters we keep practicing with meaning in writing.

We Love You, Plants

a poem by AM Pandas

 

Could You Please 

Grow, Sunflowers?

Grow, Corn?

Grow, Beans?

We Will Put Water

En Las Semillas

We Will Call "Sun, Hello!

Shine Down On Our Flowers!" 

 

Dogs

a poem by PM Pandas

Soft For Hugging

We Give Them Naps

We Give Them Food

We Give Them Water

(The Babies Drink Milk)

We Give Them Squeaky Toys for Playing

Una Pelota Para El Perrito

Enjoy the round-up with Catherine at Reading to the Core, and let's all check in with the progress of the Progressive Poem over at Salt City Verse with Janice!

kidlitosphere progressive poem lands here!

And here in no time at all falls this year's group poem & labor of shared love...I'm pleased to be following on after so many fond friends (and thanks for herding us, Margaret!) and directly behind a new friend, Wendy Taleo.  Thanks for joining this game!

Wendy continued the pattern and gave me two "playing and making" lines to choose from:

OPTION 1:
Just a wide open field, calling 'play, play, play'

OPTION 2:
What could we make, with leaves and litter?
 

Read on to see which one took my fancy!

I’m a case of kindness – come and catch me if you can!
Easily contagious – sharing smiles is my plan.
I’ll spread my joy both far and wide,
As a force of Nature I’ll be undenied.

Words like, “how can I help?” will bloom in the street.
A new girl alone on the playground – let’s meet, let’s meet!
We can jump-skip together in a double-dutch round.
Over, under, jump and wonder, touch the ground.

Friends can be found when you open a door.
Side by side, let’s walk through, there’s a world to explore.
We’ll hike through a forest of towering trees
Find a stream we can follow while we bask in the breeze.

Pull off our shoes and socks, dip our toes in the icy spring water
When you’re with friends, there’s no have to or oughter
What could we make, with leaves and litter?

  

And here's where that line led me...

With acorns and moss could we fashion a critter?

OR

Let's find pine needles, turn into vine knitters!

Et voila, the choices for our next poet in line, the ever-fascinating Tricia Stohr Hunt of The Miss Rumphius Effect--where Tricia will be taking a break from her fascinating found poem series to add the next layer of our collaborative poem. I do hope I've offered her something enticing...

Meanwhile, over at Jama's Alphabet Soup, Jama has prepared her weekly feast of mouth music and eye candy, featuring the Great British Poetry Show known as Carol Ann Duffy and her ars poetica. See you there, and follow along as the Progressive Poem wends its way to April 3oth!

and boy could I use a drink

Greetings, Poets and Poetry Lovers!  Before we get to the main course, I'd like you to know that my April NPM project, inspired by the excellent experience of participating in Laura Shovan's February Poetry Projects on Facebook, is to host a group called PARADISE, PAVED: 

"We are poets who need a place to park the results of our daily writing practice. We're looking for accountability, community and feedback. It may not be grand or glamorous, but it's practical--and private. There are just two rules, beyond the basic rules of civil discourse and internet decency:
1) Any day that you post a poem, please offer comments to at least three other poets.
2) If you used any kind of prompt, share!

It's private so that our efforts can't be considered previously published on the web (which prevents submission to many journals and anthologies)--but it's open to whomever.  We'd love to have you if you need a place to post! Just drop me a note and I'll invite you.

And now:  It was a Big Week: back to In-Person PreK on Thursday after a year of dreading what it might be like to teach 4- and 5-year-olds masked and from 6 feet away.  Technically, the 6-foot distance requirement changed in the last two weeks to "more like 3 feet is good enough," which means that our 9 students became 10 in a large early childhood room.

And guess what?  After I had both a panic attack and a temper tantrum (mainly about having to add a daily commute back in to my day), it went...not so terrible! Except for specials, there's nothing we need to use Chromebooks for, and while our pile of Pretend Play furniture and all the big wooden blocks are languishing in a corner covered by a Christmas flamingoes bedsheet (my para is a consummate thrift-store shopper), these little ones, most of whom had never been to any kind of school, took their individual trapezoid tables and individual Choice Boxes full of manipulatives in stride.

It'll be a while before we get the hang of dashing out of school at noon to get home and teach the Virtual PM group at 1:00--and it is two preparations, after all--but it wasn't awful and sad and difficult.  Check in with me after the honeymoon...

Meanwhile, by 5pm on Thursday I was well and truly wiped.  It was gorgeous out, so I got my turquoise lounge chair from the shed and sat reading BRAIDING SWEETGRASS in the evening sun and drinking a celebratory beer...which reacted unexpectedly strongly with my dehydration and my anti-anxiety pill, so that I when I stood up to make dinner I was well and truly DRUNK.  But not too drunk to cook, and not too drunk to notice that around the corner of the house these beauties had bloomed.

 

So here's my equation poem, inspired by Laura Purdie Salas's SNOWMAN - COLD = PUDDLE. 

 

evening sun + tulip cups + breeze = 

cocktails on a green beach

 

Our host today is dear Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference.  May bebidas en una playa verde ease our swirling bilingual minds!

happy npm! let's celebrate with a challenge

Greetings, Poets and Poetry Lovers!  Before we get to the main course, I'd like you to know that my April NPM project, inspired by the excellent experience of participating in Laura Shovan's February Poetry Projects on Facebook, is to host a group called PARADISE, PAVED: 

 

"We are poets who need a place to park the results of our daily writing practice. We're looking for accountability, community and feedback. It may not be grand or glamorous, but it's practical--and private. There are just two rules, beyond the basic rules of civil discourse and internet decency:
1) Any day that you post a poem, please offer comments to at least three other poets.
2) If you used any kind of prompt, share!

It's private so that our efforts can't be considered previously published on the web (which prevents submission to many journals and anthologies)--but it's open to whomever.  We'd love to have you if you need a place to post!

The time is upon us: both for the poetry fest which is April in the US of America, and for the monthly challenge of our Sunday Swaggers critique group.  Today we are swagging from a source within a source:  Linda Mitchell has directed us to a post at Jama's Alphabet Soup honoring Pat Schneider, a favorite of Jama's, who sadly passed this year.

Linda asked us to use Pat's poem "The Moon. Ten Times" as a model for seeing one thing many ways.  It is a wonderful catalog kind of poem and worthy of emulation.  I struggled--first to find a subject, and then to imagine it sufficiently from all angles.  What I've ended up with is kind of a chronology of concepts.

I can't even tell you now how I chose milk.

 

 

I'm excited to see what my fellow Swaggers have come up with, and you can too, at their blogs listed below.

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

Our first host of National Poetry Month is Mary Lee at A Year of Reading, where she introduces the Progressive Poem for this year and her Haiku Dairy I mean Diary for 2021. Party on, Poets!

slps 6: brevity with valerie and nikki

Here's early morning quiet and early spring damp, 63* at 6am. A rabbit is galloping giddily around my backyard where the last two days of rain have sent some--not all--of the grass shooting up, so that the lawn, which yearns to be a field both on the ground and in my mind, is a shaggy, ragged yellowgreen. It's windy today too, the community of clouds is rolling by, charging eastward past the sunrise, clearing out for the sunny day that's on its way.

I'm alone here with the patio door open just enough to feel it all, abandoned to the birdcall and the smell of suspense on the air.

 grass | Valerie Worth

 

 

 

A Community of Clouds | Nikki Giovanni

Busy this weekend--not planning to make the PF rounds.  But you never know!  Hosting today is Susan at Soul Blossom Living, who is rounding up all our celebrations of National Poetry Month.

slps 5: katz and piercy

Climate Action Alert:  Is YOUR state legislature attempting to undo some of the damage to our planet?  Mine is, and I have advocacy work to do today, which I know about because of my state's Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry.  Go here to see if your state has a one-stop shop for action alerts on matters of social justice, climate justice in particular.

It's time to return to my  self-led poetry study, in
which I revisit books on my shelf that never received proper attention.  Let's begin with the very first poem in UPSIDE DOWN AND INSIDE OUT: Poems for All Your Pockets by Bobbi Katz.  This little volume has a layered history: it's a 1992 Wordsong reissue of the original 1973 collection, and it's signed by Bobbi herself to someone named Mary Krogness--but it also bears a stamp on the inside and a label on the outside to let us know that this book belongs to the library of Aquita Sanford!  I acquired it hmmmmm from a used-book dealer?  It also has a barcode label that looks rather newer.

I met Bobbi on a few occasions in the 2000's, and she's the person who said, when I mentioned my family was moving to Paris for a year, that she knew a children's poet who lived there, an English woman named Sandra Guy.  Unbelievably, it turned out that Sandra lived LITERALLY ACROSS THE STREET from our exchange apartment in Vincennes--of all the addresses in Paris!  Thanks to Bobbi, I had a faithful critique partner during that year in France.

But I digress...here's that first poem.

 How I Got to Be a Princess: An Autobiographical Note | Bobbi Katz

Yesterday my friend said,
"You look just like a princess.”
I could not believe him.
Was he talking to someone else?
I looked behind me
and
in front of me.
I looked under the bed
and
on top of the closet.
No one else was there.
Again my friend said,
“You look just like a princess.”
He really said it to ME!
I felt all twinkling inside.
That’s how I got to be a princess.

 

This is a pretty unusual poem for Bobbi--most of her work is rhyme-and-meter perfection, playful and very definitely early-childhood friendly, not usually autobiographical. (For those familiar, this volume also includes the original "Things to Do If You Are" form, with "a Subway", "a Flower," "the Snow" and "a Pizza," among others. Bow down to Bobbi!)

 

 

Next I pulled down THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE by Marge Piercy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1980).  I don't know where I got this one either, but I swear, despite knowing of Marge Piercy since I was in college (Wesleyan University, whose press published her first two collections), I don't think I have ever opened this book, considered a "classic text of the feminist movement."  My loss, my goodness!  

Marge (b. 1936) is roughly the same age as Bobbi (b. 1933) and I am. so. fascinated. by the juxtaposition of Bobbi's princess poem and this stanza from Marge's longer poem "Excursions, incursions".

 

                                                        Excursions, incursions  | Marge Piercy

Princess and godmother, girls and women, viewed and twinkled and labeled and priced: may they yet declare themselves queens of their own being?  I hope that both poets, now in their 80s, continue well and comfortable, and I am so grateful for their voices.

Linda at TeacherDance is our host today for Poetry Friday, and she is also exploring time and its nonsense and constancy and how it makes us think about our moments, our long lives, and how old rules don't apply...see you there!

poetry friday is here! birthday numbers, birthday lights

Welcome! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.)

I'm banished from the downstairs where my beloved is cooking me a birthday dinner, a surprise dish that smells excellent.  I do not have my poetry books to hand, so today I don't bring down two from the shelf to explore & match; instead I avail myself of goodness from the Poetry Foundation website.  

From Linda Pastan, "Counting Backwards":

And I must say, I do feel a bit like I'm at a starting line, like the pall of the last year is lifting (oh cross all your fingers!), and also, as our two seniors  graduate and move on, full of all the possibilities that might come to pass in the next stage. Let's tackle childhood poverty head-on! Let's plant trees and spread love! Let's light our birthday cakes with light bulbs!

 

 

No, Calef's Grampa is right...you gotta have the flame and the breath for wishes to come true. (In fact, I've been working for a while on a theory that the invention of the electric light bulb was the beginning of the end for humanity.  Nothing was ever meant to be that easy for us and it's finally catching up with us.)

So I'm lucky to be standing at the threshold of a new era for me and, I hope, for everyone--if we can make it to the end of this school year--and isn't poetry always a door to step through?  Please add your links below, and let us make merry while we March!

P.S. Can you tell I'm a little drunk on the sunshine and 75* we've had here this week?

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

sunday swagger challenge: prompt mashup

It's the first Friday of the month and my critique group--the Sunday Swaggers--despite the wild ride in our classrooms, schools and physical BODIES, is soldiering on with a monthly challenge.  Today Margaret of Reflections on the Teche feeds our delight in the refreshing force that is Amanda Gorman by sending us to find a poem through a scavenger hunt.

That would be enough to get us going, but IN ADDITION we would like to give a nod to today's Poetry Friday host, Kat Apel, who just last week shared a seat-of-the-pants poetry form called the LaMiPoFri.  It's ideal for people like me who are sitting down at 6:30 am to a) write my Poetry Friday post including b) writing a response to my group's challenge. Here's how Kat describes it:

"What is a lamipofri? It’s a poetry snapshot that’s quickly scribed, to give people an insight into the world around you at a given point in time – that point being the last minute as you’re scrambling for a Poetry Friday poem to post! Hence the name: LAst MInute of a POetry FRIday! The trick with the lamipofri is to pause, take a moment to look around and share that moment with others. But don’t take too long, or the moment will pass!"

I've always called such last-minute poems Instadrafts™ but Kat's has the special feature of focusing on the moment.

So here we have it: three words from Ta-Nehisi Coates's BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME. It is taking me months to read this book, so painful is it for me to understand his experience of growing up in a Black body. It takes me 10 minutes and an effort to revisit pages 11 (my 'lucky' birthdate, next week), 22 and 33, but here are the words I choose:

declaration ~ edge ~ suspended

and here is the out-the-window poetry moment they become.

 

Find the rest of our group's responses here:

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

Many thanks to the unwitting conglomeration that led to this AmGorScaHuLaMiPoFri, and thanks and congratulations to our host Kat on her new book A BIRD IN THE HERD (the egret has landed hee hee hee).  May we step, eyes wide open and socks on, toward a warmer Reality.

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

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME (written to his teen son), p. 10-11