Today is the last Friday of September. Time for the Poetry Sisters’ challenge. I was inspired this month to play around with their challenge to write a diminishing verse. The basic idea is to remove a letter from the end word with each line.
Layers We are only stardust holding on with unsteady trust painting layers, repairing rust.
Margaret Simon, draft
My students wrote Zeno poems to This Photo. I was impressed with how well they tackled this difficult form. Kim Johnson wrote one, too, and is featuring it on her blog Common Threads today.
Fall here in South Louisiana doesn’t offer much color change of the trees. The oaks stay green. The cypress turn brown. Crepe myrtles are still blooming. I found this yellow beauty near a sweet-gum tree. I picked it up and pressed it into my notebook.
I invite you to think about fall with all your senses.
One of my favorite forms is the zeno created by J. Patrick Lewis. Based on a mathematical sequence, the syllable count is 8,4,2,1,4,2,1,4,2,1 with all the single syllable lines rhyming. I usually decide on the one syllable rhyming words and write the poem around them.
As sun’s glow fades through purple clouds, I walk alone seeking fall. A yellow leaf beneath sprawls, beckons to hear barred owl’s call.
Margaret Simon
Write your own musings in the comments and leave encouraging comments to others. With my students, today I plan to make Zeno Zines. Here’s a video of me sharing a Zine.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Where did I read that we should be teaching living poets in our classrooms? I try to include poetry every day. This is a goal, but some days, as you well know, don’t go as planned. I’ve made a Google Slide Show for a Poem-a-Day, so I have a place to save poems I want to explore with my students. When I announced yesterday that we had time for poetry, my students were excited. I love this about elementary gifted kids!
First we read the poem through. Then I ask, “What do you notice?” I ask my students to notice 3 things about the poem. Using annotation on the smart board, I underline what they see and if they don’t, I name them.
I presented Danusha Lameris’s Small Kindness. I invited my students to write. They could borrow a line, make a list poem of small kindnesses, or write about their own topic using free verse.
I’ve long held the belief that I should write alongside my students. I also welcome their critique. Usually they just say, “I like it.” Then I know we need to work on how to offer critique with specifics such as “I like the way you used personification or metaphor or rhyme.” Naming the specific poetic elements.
Yesterday I was surprised when a student actually said, “I think it’s too clumped up.” As I questioned him further about what he meant, I realized that I read it like a paragraph, no line breaks. Danusha Lameris’s poem uses enjambment masterfully. She understands line breaks. It is definitely a skill I want to work on, and this student nailed it.
So I worked on it, revised, and will share today the current working draft.
Small Kindness
after Danusha Lameris
I’ve been thinking about the way when I open a car door, and a little kinder kid jumps out, how the driver says, “Thank you.”
How on the way to school, a white suburban slowed to let me merge ahead. How cinnamon bread, a gift from my neighbor fills the kitchen with sweetness.
I want to believe everyone is kind and thoughtful. I want to find grace
in the corner of the parking lot waiting for me to notice her.
I’ve had a wonderful week getting back into the classroom. I have some new students as well as the ones I taught last year. I teach gifted ELA pull out for two elementary schools. The hardest part of the job is packing up the cart and moving to the next school. Once I am there, though, all is right with the world. I am meant to be a teacher!
On Wednesday I led my kids through “This Photo Wants to be a Poem.” We use Fanschool and I place the same photo from my blog post to Fanschool. The kids write their own poems in the comment section. Two of my students who signed into gifted this week had never written a poem before. I find joy in the process. I think I spread that passion to them. Their responses were amazing.
This week was Ethical ELA’s Open Write. I wrote about one of my students in response to Barb’s prompt here. A comment from Kim Johnson gave me an idea for the ending metaphor. This is a wonderful community of teacher-writers. Join us in October, 21st-25th.
Volleyball Team
Last year in fourth grade she would skip recess awkwardly reading in a corner of my classroom.
Fifth grade offered a volleyball team. She arrived with a brightly colored volleyball, tossed it with confidence, leaning on it while writing.
“I’m on the volleyball team this year.” We talked about the serve I could never master. She showed me how it’s done now– from the palm-up wrist rather than the thumb.
A flower blooming through a crack in the concrete, hoping to find its way to shine on the court.
Moonflower in the butterfly garden, by Margaret Simon
In May, my student Avalyn took on a project to create a butterfly garden at her school. When I returned to school this week, she couldn’t wait to show me how the garden was doing. It was full of flowers. The largest was this moon flower. My friend Mary had donated a small plant in the spring and now it is huge! Yesterday we found a fat green caterpillar on it and researched. The caterpillar is a tobacco hornworm and will become a moth. We also found gulf fritillary caterpillars on the passion vine. They’ve eaten it all. I have a passion vine in my own butterfly garden that hasn’t been touched. I will bring some cuttings to help these little prickly cats along. Raising butterflies is a Joy!
Today write your own poem in any form about the moon, this flower, garden pests, butterflies, etc.
Tobacco Hornworm Nonet
Moon flower night bloomer bright white fragrance among the children feeds tobacco hornworm. Watch how he chomps on the leaves; Aggressive eater, camouflaged soon will burrow to emerge as moth.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Have you ever loved a dog? Or the more important question, has a dog ever loved you? Dogs tend to love without any conditions. Of course, they want their treats. Charlie would almost hyperventilate when it was pill pocket time. And how did he know to tell time? 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM, he would start with the begging.
“Lord, help me be the person my dog thinks I am.” I bought this bumper sticker years ago and taped it on the utility room cabinet. Charlie thought I was delicious. He wasn’t a face licker, but show him your bare toes and he would lick till it tickled.
Strangers were new friends to Charlie. The repairmen that visit our house look for Charlie so they can toss him the tennis ball. He would play ball 24/7 if you let him.
Charlie loved a walk. Sometimes he would get out, and the way I coaxed him back was showing him the leash and saying, “Petey’s here!” Petey was my mother-in-law’s dog and we walked together for years after my father-in-law died. These walks made Petey and Charlie best friends, and Anne “Minga” and I grew closer, too.
This week is Ethical ELA’s Open Write. When I read the invitation to write about food from Stacey Joy, I thought of the cinnamon bread my neighbor (and fellow dog lover) left at my back door. Another neighbor who I walk with these days, Shirley and her lab Claire, made me oatmeal cookies. If you’ve had a dog, you can relate to the empty feeling. When I get up in the morning, I go to the back door, turn the lock, and look for Charlie. He’s not there.
Charlie lived a wonderful life. We got him in the fall of 2007 and named him one of our boy names, after my grandfather Charles Liles. It was the perfect name. He was the perfect dog. I miss him, but I have no regrets. He was 16 and in renal and heart failure. He gave me the look that said, “Let me go.” I will sprinkle his ashes in the butterfly garden.
Cinnamon Bread
Lisa brought me cinnamon bread when my dog Charlie died. Shirley made oatmeal cookies as though sweet carbs could fill me, help me forget the lonely
walk without holding a leash, opening the door without the wag of tail.
Can I take a taste inside to keep sadness away?
Can I drop a crumb and not look down for the dog to lick it up?
There are days he lived only to comfort me. Little ankle licks to let me know I was loved.
Familiar becomes foreign until time adjusts us, keeps us upright ready to be crushed again.
This week I have felt nearer to normal. I’ve been thinking about teaching and preparing lessons for my return on Monday. I’m pushing away concerns that I have no control over. Yesterday I invited a neighbor, a retired teacher, to cut and paste magazine words onto Jenga blocks, an idea that originated with Paul Hanks and used by Kim Johnson. (See this post.)
I get a lot of poems in my inbox. Some days it’s too overwhelming to read them all. Some days I find inspiration in a line or a form or an idea. This week I found a first line from Ching-In Chen’s poem Breath for Metal.
Breath for Flesh
This a story I’ve kept inside my soft body. I’ve discovered
breath dissolves fever–practiced pulling in, hold, hold, hold– sigh.
I am being gentle with her, speaking softly through tears like a light rain in fall.
I chose to find beauty every day in the month of September. It’s everywhere, if you look. I’m sharing my photos with #septemberbeauty on Instagram. The photo I chose for today came in a text from my daughter who is overseeing a photo shoot in Florida for her ad agency. She was scheduled to go when Hurricane Idalia arrived.
I am lucky that my three daughters communicate almost daily in a group text with me. They send videos and photos and general check-ins. Last night Martha sent a photo of baby June at 8 months gnawing on a piece of pork. They are in the stage of trying out different foods with her. We all enjoyed the funny image.
Katherine sent a beach sunset photo with the message, “My evening.” We know she is working, so the image is not quite as stress-free as it looks, but I found it beautiful and hopeful.
South Walton Beach, Florida by Katherine Simon
I sit beside you feel your pain; smooth ruffled fur. Loving to the end.
Margaret Simon, haiku draft
I didn’t mean to place my sadness here, but poetry is like that. It pulls it out of your soul. My dog of 16 years is dying. I’m struggling to let him go.
Please write a small poem of your own in the comments. Encourage other writers with your comments.
When was the last time you wrote a card or letter and put a stamp on it and raised the little metal flag on your mailbox? With emails and texts, it’s easy to send a quick message to a friend. But when someone is sick or going through a tough time, many (women for the most part) turn to the old-fashioned card in the mail. I have quite a collection of cards from my multiple health issues. And many of them came from my blogging community.
I recently got a notice from WordPress: Happy 14th Anniversary! I have been blogging for 14 years. When I started, I had no idea what I was getting into. A writer friend was doing it, mostly to review books. So I tried it out. Found Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge and through that community found Poetry Friday. I coordinate the Spiritual Thursday group and This Photo Wants to be a Poem.
All along the way I thought I was self-serving, getting my writing out in the world, craving comments and recognition. But something entirely unexpected and beautiful happened. I built a community of friends. Friends who see me, know me, care about me, and send me cards when I’m sick.
Today I celebrate You! You are a buoy, a gift of friendship, and my circle. Thanks for the comforting words, the beautiful cards, and especially for the thoughts and prayers. I am healing and taking each day step by step. I believe my experience will help me be a better friend to my widest of circles.
Cards left to right, top to bottom, from Connie Castille, Dani Burtsfield, Michelle Kogan, Linda Mitchell, Laura Shovan, and golden plant butterfly from Jan Annino.
(Message from Jan)
Down near the bottom of the crossed-out list of things you have to do today,
between “green thread” and “broccoli” you find that you have penciled “sunlight”
Creative endeavors are returning to me. It feels good and right. I recently read the poems in The New Yorker of August 28, 2023. The poem What’s Poetry Like? by Bianca Stone was popping out to me as a perfect erasure poem. I enjoy whittling down to essential words. I found another poem here with a slightly different meaning than hers. I hope she is the type of poet who knows the highest form of flattery is imitation.
Poetry
Poets play love essential moment, shared written
resuscitate wildlife disappearing ourselves
Poetry finds deficient words, immortal hunt
you’re trying to get back bittersweet tongue, all the emoting, all the surrender
reckless insight, hidden wisdom slips into truth
the form itself words that sing yet-
unspoken things wafting waiting to be opened.
Margaret Simon, erasure poem from What’s Poetry Like? by Bianca Stone The New Yorker, August 28, 2023
The Poetry Friday round-up today is with Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She teaches gifted elementary students, writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 