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Archive for January, 2019

Slice of Life: I Am

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching on January 29, 2019| 9 Comments »

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life .

I enjoy learning from other teacher-writers who post on Slice of Life as well as on Poetry Friday.  That’s how I met Molly Hogan.  She blogs at Nix the Comfort Zone.   A few Fridays ago she posted a beautiful original I Am poem.  Her ideas for this poem came from poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge, which is a book I have and value “freeing your life with words.” (Only $3.99 at Abe Books)

When I read Molly’s poem, I decided immediately to use it as a mentor text for my students.  We read the poem and noticed so many metaphors.  Using colored pens to underline the poetic devices, one of my students said, “This is a very colorful poem,” and she meant that literally.

I am granite grey
plain Jane, sturdy and dependable
but sometimes sunlight shoots across my surface
igniting flecks of mica and quartz
into quick showers of sparkles
here, then gone (Read the rest of the poem here.)

Following our reading and noticing and discussing, I asked my students to turn to a clean page and draw circles.  Oh, about 5-7 circles will do.  Then we read the poem again.  In the first part, she says “I am granite grey.”  What is granite grey? A color. Label one circle with color.

As we traveled through the mentor text, we filled in more circles: shape, tree, word, animal, nature, etc. We even made a split circle of inside and out.

During sacred writing time (10 minutes on the Zen Timer app), we filled in the circles with our own ideas and wrote a draft of our own poems.

I know that metaphor is a high-level concept that can take years for younger students to fully grasp, but I dare say that my students got it.  Their poems were long and beautiful.  Having this amazing mentor text helped greatly.  Thanks, Molly, for your inspiration.

Here’s a link to our kidblog site.  Please read and leave comments.  My students feel such pride when you do.  Thanks!

I Am…

I am pink,
chapped and worn,
supple and soft.

I stand on the base of a triangle,
stable, reasonable,
striving for perfection.

In my mind, I criticize–
a checklist of do’s and don’ts
a chapter of why I can’t be.

I am not like the oak
confident in its old age;
I am more of a willow,
seeking, bending in the breeze,
greening in spring.

I search for kind
in your eyes,
your song,
your words.

I do not hunt like the hawk;
I wait and watch like the heron
stepping carefully through the muck.

I am a magnolia blossom
open, fragrant but
easily bruised and brown.

Be soft with me.

(draft) Margaret Simon

 

From Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

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Poetry Friday: Metaphor Dice

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , on January 25, 2019| 13 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Tara at Going to Walden.

 

Taylor Mali developed an innovative set of dice called Metaphor Dice.  I have a set that one of my student groups plays with daily.  They’ve made it into a sort of game to end each class session.  Each of us grabs a set of three dice, white, red, and blue.  Roll. Read the resulting metaphor and talk about how it could work.  Some of them are challenging to find a real connection.  But sometimes you get something intriguing, like “Time is an impossible super hero.”

We also start each notebook writing session with a quote.  This week one of our quotes was “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”  Then I rolled an odd combination: My heart is a well-worn wonder.

These types of activities work well to turn off your critical mind and turn on that right-brain creative soul inside.  This is the poem that came out on the page:

A well-worn wonder like a beaten path
as in
we’ve been this way before
My heart keeps time
with the meditation tone
like a natural wonder,
a miracle of breath
& air
& blood
pumping
beating
living
waking up!

The poem was shaping up to look like a skinny.  I double-checked the rules for a skinny poem.  “A Skinny is a short poem form that consists of eleven lines. The first and eleventh lines can be any length (although shorter lines are favored). The eleventh and last line must be repeated using the same words from the first and opening line (however, they can be rearranged). The second, sixth, and tenth lines must be identical. All the lines in this form, except for the first and last lines, must be comprised of ONLY one word. The Skinny was created by Truth Thomas in the Tony Medina Poetry Workshop at Howard University in 2005.” The Skinny Poetry Journal

My heart is a well-worn wonder like a beaten path
as in
we’ve  been
here
before
as in
natural
miracle
of breath
as in
a well-worn path of my beating heart is a wonder.

–Margaret Simon

What do you think?  Version one or two?

Try a skinny with the phrase “Time is an impossible super hero.”

Matt Renwick is the winner of my extra A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver.

Leigh Anne Eck tried the prompt and posted here. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Slice of Life: Kondo Monday

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , on January 22, 2019| 7 Comments »

Read more slices at the Two Writing Teachers.

 

The advantage of having a big kitchen with lots of cabinets is that you have more places to clutter.  In my kitchen, not only do I have a junk drawer, I also have a junk cabinet.  It’s right at the end of the counter where I place my purse, so it often catches things I take out when I clean out my purse.  It catches mail I want to keep and old cell phones, a gift card or two, and so on.

On Monday, I had the day off.  I didn’t have much planned, but I definitely wasn’t planning to clean out the cabinet.  I’ve been hearing about the art of tidying up as professed by Marie Kondo.  I watched a few episodes at my daughter’s house.  I haven’t bought the book or embarked on any life changing goals of being more organized.

However, I was looking for something.  Tickets to an event this week.  I was sure they were in there, but when I started looking, stuff started to tumble.  And before I knew it, I was looking at a pile of “junk” on my kitchen counter.  I couldn’t leave it there, and I couldn’t put it all back, so I had to sort it all out.

Before…

I found some trash: receipts from two Christmases ago, expired credit card, punch cards from out of business yogurt shops, etc.

I found some treasures: a can of cash that we were collecting for our food pantry, the tickets I was looking for, a gift card to a nice restaurant, and a pair of earrings I had bought for a gift.

Sorting, tossing, finding, remembering…

This was cleansing and satisfying.  A really productive winter afternoon.  This weekend, the bathroom cabinet.

Do you enjoy cleaning out or do you put it off, like me, until the task forces itself upon you?

 

After.

 

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Poetry Friday: Mary Oliver

Posted in Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , on January 18, 2019| 16 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is at The Miss Rumphius Effect

Mary Oliver has died and the whole world is mourning.  I checked my Facebook page at the end of the day and found that most of my “friends” were posting Mary Oliver’s words.  Every one of them connected me to her, to the natural world, and to these people.  It was like our own wake, of sorts.

I was introduced to the poetry of Mary Oliver by my good friend Nettie who died this past fall.  I imagine they are both writing poems on the clouds.  When I was at a crossroad in my teaching career, Nettie sent me the poem Wild Geese.  I listened to it over and over and have most of the lines memorized.  This poem saved me at a time when I needed to be saved.

 

 

I looked on the poetry shelf in my study and pulled out my collection of Mary Oliver books.  I found that I have two copies of A Thousand Mornings.  If you would like a copy and live in the continental US, leave a comment.  I’ll let you know by email if you are the winner.

Mary Oliver had a way of placing you in the moment with her and in a sense, saying a prayer.  This poem from A Thousand Mornings places me with her, thinking through things, and noticing with pen in air.

I Happened to be Standing

I don’t know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can’t really
call being alive.
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep.  Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,
I don’t know why.  And yet, why not.
I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don’t.  That’s your business.
But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be
if it isn’t a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.

–Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings. The Penguin Press, New York, 2012.

 

I do not presume that my poetry is in any realm of comparison to Mary Oliver’s, but I was moved to write this morning, a way of expressing how her words are written on my heart.

 

A Misty Mary Morning

I’m walking through a misty world
thinking of Mary.  Her words turn
night to day, day to night,
an answer to prayer, a comfort to loss.

She taught me to notice things
like the bird breaking dawn with song.
She would notice the sound
and sing along.  I hold hands

with every poet and poetry lover
across the world. We are united
in our collective breath
wishing with Mary for a resurrection

of amazement.

(c) Margaret Simon, 2019

 

Nikki Grimes wrote this post on Facebook (and gave me permission to repost.)

Mary Oliver, Sister of my heart, how I will miss you! Your absence feels impossible.

IN PASSING

A poet passes
soul rising heavy as ode,
or light as haiku.
Who knows? But You, the Author
whose words are for her, alone.

(c) 2019 Nikki Grimes

 

 

 

 

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Slice of Life: Vision Board

Posted in Blogging, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged , on January 15, 2019| 9 Comments »

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life .

 

What is your vision for 2019?  We really can’t know what the future holds, but we can think about what we want to do and be in the coming year.  I’ve never done a vision board before, and I can’t say that I am any kind of expert. I started when my students were working on One Little Word magazine collages.

Yesterday I made the necessary step to add more yoga into my life.  I signed up and paid for a class beginning in February.  And I put it in as a regular alert on my phone.

I’ve been making smoothies for breakfast ever since the winter break when my middle daughter visited.  She made a smoothie every morning and got me hooked.  My youngest daughter gave me a Magic Bullet blender in which the container converts to a cup with a top, so I can blend and go.  My typical recipe is quarter cup Greek yogurt, quarter cup oatmeal, half cup milk, teaspoon of flaxseed, half a banana, half an avocado (or Kale, if the avocado isn’t riper yet), and quarter cup blueberries (or strawberries). I am amazed at how full I feel after drinking it, and I’m not hungry until lunch.

My students worked this week on their one little word projects. I gave them options for creatively representing their words.  I also invited them to blog about their words.  I was moved by Madison’s post.  This 5th grader has the wisdom that I have longed for all my life.  She is comfortable in her skin.  I hope she will hold onto her values of Possibility.

This year, my word is possibility. I like this word because there is no such thing as completely impossible, they say, but I’ve added on it: but there is such thing as possible. Always try because if you don’t, if you lay down and let others control and use and block you from your goal, leave them. Always try. Never set a true goal that limits yourself- whenever you achieve one, go higher and higher, always trying. Have confidence. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s impossible. The way it’s hard is what makes it a good challenge. Nothing ever comes easy, and it never should, or we’ll all be lazy and fat. Be aware of yourself, and don’t let yourself fall out of shape or routine or such just because you don’t feel like it even though it benefits you.

Because, as hard as it’ll seem…

It’s always

Possible.

(Blog post by Madison: to leave comments, click here.)

 

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Poetry Friday: poetic paths

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , on January 11, 2019| 14 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is Down Under with Kat.

I didn’t have any ideas about what I would write today.  As I read other Poetry Friday posts, I became more inspired.  Matt Forrest Esenwine celebrates the acceptance of a poem for an anthology honoring poet Donald Hall.  Matt’s post included an image of a snowy road.  The image led me down a path to a new poem.

 

Too many things concern me today.
My attention is crowded
with walls blocking out human sighs.

On my screen I click on an image
of a path
along a snowy road
a mountain in the distance
and find a poem.

I kick those hard stones.
Look up to the blue mountain.

My thoughts are
insignificant,
unspoken as a meadow.

–Margaret Simon, 2019

Someone on Poetry Friday suggested the book Getting the Knack by Stephen Dunning and William Stafford. I’m trying some of the poetry exercises with my students.  This week we tried out the recipe poem.

Recipe for a Poem

One blank page–open, lined, waiting…

A colorful pen. Try a different color each day.

Tip-tap your fingers over the lines making multiple dots.
Dots become letters become words.
Top off with a tasty metaphor–
Marshmallow clouds on a snowy day.
Read out loud.

–Margaret Simon, 2019

 

One Little Word 2019

 

 

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Slice of Life: Navigating a Poem

Posted in Teaching, Writing, tagged , , on January 8, 2019| 8 Comments »

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life .

When we returned from our holiday break, I found a poem from Poets.org in my inbox.  I subscribe to Teach this Poem, a weekly lesson plan around a selected poem.  The poem Dead Stars by Ada Limón drew me in, and I felt compelled to teach the lesson. To begin, we looked at pictures of the Orion constellation and made attempts to draw it in our notebooks.

Before we read the poem, I talked about how I love poems that take notice of something in nature then go deeper to something more profound.

We find it hard to settle our brains down, and poetry offers us that silence, that quiet space, and allows us to reconnect with ourselves, or with an idea, or with an emotion. (Ada Limón)

When reading a poem with my students, I let them take the lead.  “What do you notice?” “Are there any words you don’t know?” “What do you think the poem is about?”

Each group of students takes the discussion in a different direction.  With my first group, we discussed an interesting metaphor in this line, “I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.”  Daniel rephrased the line, “Laying eggs of attempt.” Then we noticed that both hearth and nest are places of caring.

With my second group, theme became the focus.  What is the poet trying to teach us? She wants us to rise above the tide (the hard times) and be alive.  Landon wrote a thematic sentence, “Be alive, reach for the stars, and shine!”

In my third group, stars, constellations, and the fact that we are made of stardust became the topic of discussion.  “But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising–” (Ada Limón)

I pulled up an article to read from National Geographic.

Everything we are and everything in the universe and on Earth originated from stardust, and it continually floats through us even today. It directly connects us to the universe, rebuilding our bodies over and again over our lifetimes. (Iris Schrijver)

In response I wrote a septercet, a form created by Jane Yolen with 3 lines of seven syllables each.  The last line is from Ada Limón’s poem “Look, we are not unspectacular things.”

When I work on poetry with my students, I try not to push them to complicated analysis.  There is time for that when they are older.  I hope to expose them to amazing language, to the art and craft of metaphor, and to understand that poetry is always available to them.  Even when they are “rolling their trash bins out.”

A cherita about the stars:

You say look up

Take notice of the stars
Name the one you are

We are the star
dust of many ages
collected as unique thoughts.

(c) Margaret Simon

 

 

 

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A Resurrection Shaped Life by Jake Owensby

Posted in Books, Spiritual Growth, tagged , on January 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Published by Abingdon Press

 

When I first met Jake Owensby, he was being consecrated as the fourth Bishop of the Western Louisiana Diocese of the Episcopal Church in 2012. My first impression of him was presence.  It was a brief exchange, but I felt he was fully present and aware of me.

In his new book A Resurrection Shaped Life, Bishop Jake is fully present.  He reveals himself in true reality while showing us how to live with the realities through a relationship with Jesus.

When we repent, we admit that the sorrows, the losses, the wounds, the betrayals, and the regrets of our past have made us into someone we don’t want to be anymore. We die to that self and entrust ourselves to Jesus. From those shattered places in our lives, Christ brings new life; repentance is the beginning of our resurrection.

Reading Bishop Jake’s book was like being present with him, not in the way listening to a sermon would, but like sitting next to him listening and learning how to be a Christian in today’s world.  He accentuates Jesus’s plan for the world, a world of resurrection, in which love displaces fear, “where generosity eliminates deprivation and respect guards the dignity of all.”

Bishop Jake reminds us of who Jesus really is: committed to healing in the world.  Jesus suffered.  We suffer. God does not take away the pain or the suffering; however, through Jesus, we know that suffering is endured out of love and eventually leads to healing.  When we lead a resurrection-shaped life, we live in compassion with imagination and hope.

Jesus changes our mind about God. In Jesus, we see who we truly are as humans.  We are the beloved, not the blameworthy…we slowly begin to exchange our habit of blaming others for the habit of compassion.

Barbara Brown Taylor reminds un that new life starts in the dark. We must go through Good Friday to get to Easter. A Resurrection Shaped Life guides you through the darkness, by wading next to you and showing you the star.

I suggest following Bishop Jake’s blog: Looking for God in the Messy Places.

 

 

 

 

 

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Let’s Write 2019

Posted in #TeachWrite, Writing, tagged , on January 5, 2019| 3 Comments »

Click to follow Let’s Write 2019.

Leigh Anne Eck is inviting bloggers to join a new community of writers.  The purpose is for us writers to share and celebrate our writing goals. Click the image above to read more about Leigh Anne’s invitation.

Somehow writing down a plan for writing makes it more real.  WordPress sent me a notification that I have made 1,337 posts.  I’m not sure why that number is significant to WordPress, but it made me realize that I write an average of about 200 posts per year.  I don’t plan to make that a goal, but I do plan to continue to participate in these writing challenges and blogging round ups:

  • March Slice of Life Challenge (and weekly during the other months)
  • April Poem-a-Day
  • December Haiku-a-Day
  • Poetry Friday
  • Laura Shovan’s poem-a-day in February (her birthday month)

I work with two writing groups.  These monthly and bi-monthly meetings keep me writing and working toward publishing goals. In 2018, I celebrated the publishing of my first poetry book for children, Bayou Song.  I am currently working on Swamp Song.  I hope to finish this manuscript in 2019.

Hitting the Send button on submissions takes courage and vulnerability.  I’m trying to get better at it and take rejections in stride.  After all, don’t we read over and over about famous writers getting multiple rejections.  It’s all part of the process.  I hope to be more brave in 2019 and submit more often.

The third goal for my writing life is to write a poem a day.  I do this as part of challenges like the December #haikuforhope and in April as part of National Poetry Month.  Why not do this every day? Using my scrap paper art journal, I am invited to just write without judgement.

I have found a writing home in poetry.  Poetry fits me and is comfortable.  Maybe too comfortable?  One of my writing goals for 2019 is to try a different genre.  I’ve written fiction, but I’ve shied away from memoir.  Two of my writing group partners are writing memoir, so I’m intrigued and inspired.

Writing in a community of writers both strengthens my writing and urges me on to write more, submit more, and to be more.  Would you like to be a part of Let’s Write 2019?  There’s always room for one more at the table.

 

 

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Poetry Friday: 100% Chance of Rain

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , , on January 4, 2019| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Sylvia at Poetry for Children.

 

 

It was one of those all day rains.  One of my last days of  our holiday break, and I was bored.  I cleaned out cabinets, watched shows on Netflix, made a fire in the fireplace, and played around with magazine collage.  During the hectic days of teaching, I crave this kind of time.  Funny how our minds work.  On this day, I was restless and wishing for the rain to stop.

100 % Chance of Rain

(with a borrowed line from Robert Frost “Revelation”)

Wind blown ripples
the water,
whipped like frothed cappuccino,

Rain slants, shower bending,
branches leave the trees.
Saturated earth bleeds
muddy moisture.

Oh, the agitated heart.
The lemons hang, ripe and wet.

But I am still today,
quieted by the storm.
Listening, longing
for the sun.

(c) Margaret Simon

Art Journal collage for my 2019 One Little Word, Grace.

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