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Archive for April, 2019

#NPM19 Reflection on a Month of Poetry

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged , , , , on April 30, 2019| 6 Comments »

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life

 

What a wonderful month full of poetry love!  Looking back over the month, I wrote 28 posts. The thing is to write one poem worthy of publishing on this blog, I had to write more than one poem a day.  Some will stay buried in my notebook.

Thanks to Mary Lee Hahn for inviting me to play along with her this month.  I’ve enjoyed sharing this playtime with Christie, Molly, Jone, and Elisabeth.

One of the perks of my teaching job is I get to write poetry every day with my students, too.  They’ve been working on a poetry project that included writing at least 5 poems and reading a poetry book.  We were immersed in poetry, between testing sessions, that is. You can read their poems at our kidblog site. 

Last night I participated in the #NYED Twitter Chat.  If you have a chance, check out the hashtag.  I made a Padlet of resources to use throughout the year.  It’s public and open for comments and additions.

The Progressive Poem is complete! I am so amazed at the talents of Donna Smith who pulled out a “found” ending and actually put the song to music.  Check it out! 

Another exciting part of this month was being a featured poet-teacher on Today’s Little Ditty.  Being among these poets was an honor: Classroom Connections. 

When you walk in poetry every day, everything becomes a poem.  This morning on my walk I dictated this poem.  The air was sweet with the scent of jasmine, gardenia, and magnolia.  The scents of the southern landscape energize and inspire me.  What do you see, hear, smell while walking?  Make each step into a poem.

Breathe the jasmine air.
Rest in Love,
the love that created you
as perfect as
a star blossom
on the vine of the world.
–-Margaret Simon, draft 2019

 

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#NPM19 Day 28 Lazy Poet

Posted in Poetry, tagged , on April 28, 2019| 6 Comments »

Today I’m tired.  I spent yesterday outdoors in wonderful warm spring air at the Festival International de Louisiane.  Today I am tired all over my body.  We walked, we drank, we ate festival food, and danced.  Too much.  Today I wasn’t going to write, but my friend in this daily poetry game, Christie Wyman, wrote using online magnetic poetry, nature version, because she didn’t want to get off the sofa.  Like Christie, I am writing by moving pieces around on my computer.  Is this really writing?  Thus the title for today’s blog, Lazy Poet.

 

Being an itinerant teacher, I drive from parking lot to parking lot.  During March Slice of Life Challenge, I wrote about the shoe in the parking lot that seemed to be haunting me.  This week, I noticed a tiny wild flower blossoming amidst the stones.  So here’s a little quiet moment to breathe.

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#NPM19 Day 27 Magnets and Metaphors

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged , , , on April 27, 2019| 1 Comment »

The more I play with the poetry tools, the less I trust them.  I want to manipulate the words into something, anything that rings true.  Yesterday I combined magnetic word pieces with metaphor dice.  Both of these poems interested me, but I don’t think either is a great poem.  Let’s just live in the moment for a moment.

 

White misty rose
unspoken kiss
of light wine

True summer echoes
as delicate time lost
my bare feet say-shine

 

 

 

 

 

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#NPM19 Day 26 What the Heart Knows

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged , , on April 26, 2019| 9 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Carol at Beyond Literacy Link.

One of my favorite books in my rather large collection of poetry books is What the Heart Knows by Joyce Sidman. This week I shared the poem Happiness, a chant invoking happiness.  We talked about writing from the perspective of direct address to an emotion.  I directed my students to choose an emotion and to try using imagery to make the emotion personified.  I played along with my kiddos and took out the magnetic poetry cookie sheets.  Finding the word poems mused me to write a direct address to poems.  Karson and I both used the imagery of a monarch butterfly drawing on our experience of hatching and releasing monarchs this week.

Poems,

You hide in shadows
of oak trees.
You whisper words
in the breeze.
You shudder my heart.

Poems,
When we meet eye to eye,
I am amazed
by your strength,
unexpected yet welcome.

Poems,
Your delicate wings
unfold before our eyes
surprising us
with your ease of flight.

–Margaret Simon, draft, 2019

 

Free image from Pixabay.

 

Excitement,

too much thrill can bring confusion
and confusion leads to mystery.
You are like the breeze on the top of a mountain.
When I see the brightness of the moon, I feel you.
You are the feeling when a monarch flies into the distance.

Karson, 4th grade

 

Curiosity,

You are full of forest mazes
that my mind gets stuck in.
My eyes show the way.
You bring me thoughts,
you make me think,
Curiosity

Jaden, 3rd grade

 

 

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#NPM19 Day 25 Ode to a Gel Pen

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged , , on April 25, 2019| 1 Comment »

I bought a new set of gel pens and shared them with my students.  We had fun writing skinny odes (fold your paper in half and only write to the crease mark), and making zines.  My newest student Rylee, who is a bright first grader, wrote an ode to her dog.  She drew a picture of her dog on her journal page and for her zine decided to cut it out into four parts and glue it on different pages.  I don’t question the creativity of a first grader.

Ode to my Dog


Oh, how I love my dog.

He licks me.
He sits on my lap.

He plays with me.

He is the cutest
dog around.

My dog had to go
somewhere else.

–Rylee, 1st grade

 

Ode to the Glitter Pen

Oh, the glittery life
of an orange gel pen
dipped in sparkly gems.

You write like
glass across the page,

smooth as a soft
silky scarf.

Ink that glows and flows
like orange lip gloss,
tangerine-flavored

lines that bring
sunshine to
this poem.

–Margaret Simon, draft, 2019

 

A page from my zine.

 

 

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#NPM19 Day 24 Monarch Ecloses

Posted in Poetry, tagged , , on April 24, 2019| 1 Comment »

After yesterday’s wood duck egg disappointment, I have a hopeful life-filled poem today in response to what happened this morning in our classroom.  I decided to try a Sedoka form.  Matt Forrest Esenwine shared one on Friday and linked to this resource. 

I looked up monarch information on this site and found two wonderful vocabulary words, eclose (emerge as an adult from the pupa stage) and hemolymph (a fluid like blood in most invertebrates).

 

From a chrysalis
monarch wings eclose
pump hemolymph of color

Watching miracles
with the wonder of a child
classroom butterfly garden

–Margaret Simon

 

 

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Slice of Life: Cruelty of Nature

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life on April 23, 2019| 11 Comments »

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life

If you’ve been following our wood duck house, there is sad news.  None of the eggs hatched.  After nearly 40 days, we thought it was time to give up, even though the hen was still sitting on them.  What do you do with such a life lesson?  Write a poem about it.

Nature can be a cruel teacher.
Eggs in a nest box,
how a silly duck hen

will sit for days and days.
Could she smell the rotting?
Did she see the gray shadow growing

cold? Some days nature is so violent
whole trees fall.  They block the road.
They tell us we don’t belong.

Why on earth are we all here?
When birth is so random,
so dependent on the stars

sprinkling miracle dust,
declaring life.
Not today.  When we take the eggs

out of the box, I forget to count.
Toss them into the water,
an afternoon snack for an evil snake

grabbing anything it can for survival.
Survival is not for everything
God makes. Some days

you just have to clean out the box,
add new shavings in,
Begin again.

— Margaret Simon, draft, 2019

 

 

 

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NPM19 Day 22 Earth Day

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged , , on April 22, 2019| 2 Comments »

Over the weekend I bought a new magnetic poetry kit, The Edgar Allan Poe version. Lots of words spread out on a cookie sheet. I created an Earth Day haiku.



A discovery walk near our hotel led to a path along Purple Creek, the very creek that ran behind my childhood home. Along the shore were two Canada Geese with 5 little goslings, an Easter morning miracle.

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#NPM19 Day 20 Nest

Posted in Poetry, tagged , , on April 20, 2019| 4 Comments »

In January I taught a workshop about combining poetry and art with Marla Kristicevich at the Acadiana Center for the Arts. This week Marla posted on Facebook her installation for an art show for PACE artists.  She explained that she gathered material around the Bayou Teche.  Her inspiration for the piece combined the nostalgia for place as well as meditation on nature in art.  The image does not show the scale of the work.  Imagine the height of the walls are the size of a person. Today I’m sharing an ekphrastic poem, a poem inspired by art.  You can see the exhibit at the ACA through June 8th.

Nest by Marla Kristicevich

 

An Invitation

Come into my nest.
Enter on a woven path.
Stop for a sip of living water.

Leave nothing
behind.
Just pause,
reflect,
release,

Then move on
so someone else
can move in.

–Margaret Simon (draft) 2019

 

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#NPM19 Day 19 Eudora’s Garden

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged on April 19, 2019| 18 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Amy at The Poem Farm.

Part of playing with poetry is finding poetry everywhere in every way.  I was reading The Writer’s Almanac on Eudora Welty’s birthday, April 13th.  In the article, there was a list of the seasonal flowers that bloom in Eudora’s garden that was diligently tended by her mother, Chestina.  I collected the flower names and crafted a poem around them.

 

Photo from Calla Lily Dialogues

Walking in Eudora’s Garden

For Eudora Welty, 1909-2001

The optimist’s daughter steps into a garden
of larkspur, writes stories among hollyhocks,
gathers courage from snapdragons.

When summer comes, she celebrates phlox
and zinnias and blue salvia.
Even in autumn, her garden blooms

with asters and chrysanthemums–
a name that rolls from her southern drawl
like creamy froth on café au lait.

Her garden never dies. Winters charm
with camellias and pansies.
The sounds of birds rejoice all year long.

–Margaret Simon (draft) 2019

Author’s note: I grew up in Jackson, MS during Eudora Welty’s lifetime. I once heard her read and was given the opportunity to interview her for a high school project.  She was an elegant, kind woman.

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