11 | April | 2020 | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for April 11th, 2020

Progressive Poem with Janet

Posted in Writing on April 11, 2020| 30 Comments »

I am so happy to be here today! The Progressive Poem has always brought me joy, despite sometimes offering my line with a bit or more of trepidation. This year is no different. I am able to participate thanks to Margaret’s generous offer to host me here at Reflections on the Teche. For most of the years of the Progressive Poem’s existence, Irene has taken blog-less me under her wing. I am grateful to both poets and friends.

While my participation at Poetry Friday ebbs and flows, I am always captivated and inspired by the community I have come to feel so a part of. I look forward to your creative, enriching new works and words. I am intrigued by the newest project or offering. And your books. Oh how I love to read and share them with children. I love when I have the time to devote to joining in. And I am beyond thrilled to have met so many of you in person. You are my people and I feel at home here. Thank you for your continued friendship and inspiration. It really means the world to me.

My friend Donna has started us in a lovely way. Besides swaying daffodils and violets, I am a proponent of choice for children (I taught for 41 years and still sub!) so I like this. Perhaps a little less pressure, I don’t know, but I feel our poem has thus far developed with flair and wonder. And perhaps a metaphor for the times we are living in; our path may be lonely, but there is light and water, music and nature surrounding us. To me that is hope.

Thanks to my friend Matt at Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme I had two lovely lines to choose from.

Sweet violets shimmy, daffodils sway
along the wiregrass path to the lake.
I carry a rucksack of tasty cakes
and a banjo passed down from my gram.
I follow the tracks of deer and raccoon
and echo the call of a wandering loon.
A whispering breeze joins in our song.
and night melts into a rose gold dawn.
Deep into nature’s embrace, I fold.
Promise of spring helps shake the cold

Next I hand the poem to Linda Mitchell’s pen to see where we go:

Hints of sun lightly dapple the trees (choice A)

I whistle, then whisper a snippet of poem (choice B)

Janet Fagal aka Janet Clare F. or Janet F. (Long story how this came to be, but I am too low tech to really change now.) On Facebook I am Janet Clare and I love new friends. My favorite name is Grandma.

A bit about me:
Besides teaching and being Grandma to two sweeties ages 4 and 1, I consider myself to be a poetry advocate for children. I visit classrooms and fill the hours with poetry books piled on desks for children to read and share poems to learn by heart. I have always been met with warm enthusiasm from the children. It is the poetry not me!

I have poems published in various places. My biggest thrill was being asked by my mentor and friend, Lee Bennett Hopkins, to write for the last anthology published in his lifetime, I AM SOMEONE ELSE: POEMS ABOUT PRETENDING which has my poem about wanting to be a mermaid. I have a poem in Pomelo Publishing’s Great Morning!, Best of Today’s Little Ditty 2014-2015, several in books, magazines, and online for the National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW.org), and most recently Clare Songbirds Press’s The Brave.

Here’s where you can find all the contributors to this year’s Progressive Poem. It’s a fine journey and I hope you will leave a comment or two along the way. It is always nice to hear from readers and other poets:

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1 Donna Smith at Mainely Write

2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem

3 Jone MacCulloch, at deo writer

4 Liz Steinglass at Elizabeth Steinglass

5 Buffy Silverman at Buffy Silverman Children’s Author

6 Kay McGriff at A Journey Through The Pages

7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core

8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden

9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link

10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme

11 Janet Fagal hosted at Reflections on the Teche

12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise