One of our favorite days of the year is Dot Day. Created to celebrate the publication of The Dot by Peter Reynolds, Dot Day encourages creativity and playful art.
My students and I drew dots and wrote Zeno poems. The Zeno form was invented by J. Patrick Lewis. The form uses a syllable count of 8, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1 with each 1 syllable line rhyming. This is a playful form. We folded paper into a zine. To see how to make a zine, go to this post from last year.
Imagining the brightest knot
see the colors
of the dot
colors of the
rainbow
spot
Brightest of the
ones I’ve
got
Breighlynn, 4th grade
It is true that you have talent you are so high in the sky you should always attempt try you are in clouds try to fly
Our Sunday Night Swagger Writers Group has decided to post poems from a prompt on the first Friday of the month. Last month Heidi Mordhorst challenged us to definito poems. This month Catherine Flynn prompted us to write about a box:
Who was the owner of the box?
How did what is inside the box transform him or her?
Having acquired some things from my parents’ home this summer, I knew what box I would write about. My grandmother whom I called Nene died when I was young, between 8 and 10. I remember so much about her, her white-white hair, how she sewed beautiful Barbie clothes and even made doll furniture from cardboard, and how she loved butterflies. She had a pinned collection in a shadow box. But that isn’t the box of this poem. I had never seen this box before. It was tucked inside a cardboard box of mementos from my father’s childhood.
This is Her Box
that touched her hands so many years ago. A small brass box that fits in the palm of my hand. What did these things mean to her?
a tarnished silver spoon, jeweled pin, wire-framed butterfly, silver post earrings–
I put on the charm bracelet; Grands’ names in birth order become my connection to her.
All tucked into her box for me to find fifty years later and remember her touch.
See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life
new baby blanket waiting
My middle daughter, Katherine, is waiting. We are all waiting for her baby to be born. His due date is Sept. 5th, so he will be here soon.
Last summer in August, Katherine had a miscarriage. It was tragic, yet her doctor told her then that she expected she would be holding a baby within a year. The day after the procedure, I took Katherine to a little yarn shop to pick out yarn for a blanket. I have been crocheting prayer shawls and blankets for the last few years. She said, “I’ll pick out the colors, but I don’t want you to make a baby blanket.” That was her sorrow talking. The blanket above is complete and waiting.
One method I often use for finding my way into a poem is to observe outside, then go inside, and back outside. Driving home a few weekends ago following the Mississippi Book Festival, I looked outside and inside and outside for this poem.
So We Must Daily Keep Things Wound (title from a Madeleine L’Engle quote)
I love how the raindrops glisten on glass dotting the landscape green and awake.
I keep the cell phone charged ready for her call when cramps turn to contractions. I wait, want, worry.
I read somewhere that the egg for this child was planted in her womb from my womb– this curious circle of life.
I keep my eyes on the clouds fluffed up and pregnant with rain, more rain. It keeps on coming.
(draft) Margaret Simon
NCTE Note: I’ve registered for NCTE 2019 to be held in Baltimore Nov. 21st-24th. I am looking for a roommate. Let me know by email if you are interested.
See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life
Last week I read my teacher-blogger-writer-friend Molly Hogan’s Slice of Life post. It touched the poet in me. Molly wakes early and goes on photography quests. When we’re lucky, she takes us along on her Facebook posts or blog. Last week she wrote this post entitled A Generous Morning.
Inspired, I copied her words into a found poem. Her generous morning became my generous morning. That’s how it works with creativity; it’s all big magic.
A Generous Morning
Lightening sky in the east as surely as the birds were migrating south, I missed the swallows.
The sky seemed lonely. Then a couple of swallows dart and dive through the air currents, and a bird approaching in the distance-
a heron
Sun rose higher, lit the mist. Cedar waxwings flittered. I watched it all, the generosity of morning.
a found poem by Margaret Simon using Molly Hogan’s words.
The children’s poetry community lost a friend and a mentor when Lee Bennett Hopkins died on August 8th. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but in everything I’ve read about him, he was a gentle leader and proud father of poetry.
Among his many anthologies, I have Amazing Places on my classroom shelf. In it, Lee Bennett Hopkins collected poems about places around our country. His contribution was a poem titled Langston.
Though his professional writing was successful, it was the death of poet Langston Hughes in 1967 that proved to be a spark for Hopkins’s career of anthologizing poetry for children.
By Shannon Maughan | Aug 13, 2019
Amazing Places: Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Lee & Low Books, 2015.
While borrowing a few lines as well as the form of this poem and reading his obituary on Publishers Weekly, I wrote this poem for Lee.
His Dusts of Dreams after Lee Bennett Hopkins “Langston” for Lee Bennett Hopkins, 1938-2019
Who would have known a young boy of divorce, a poor student inspired by a teacher would find his footing in education–
from student to teacher to collector of poems, With greetings to all Dear Ones, he left his dusts of dreams.
Christie Wyman has invited the Poetry Friday community to write about trees this week. I am back in school and have so missed the days of writing alongside my students. Because I am itinerant and teach at three schools, I have three opportunities to write during the day. That gave me time to write, read aloud, revise, write. Not to mention the joy my students felt to be back in the saddle of writing.
We used “That was Summer” by Marci Ridlon as a mentor text. The repetition makes this form an easy one to mimic. I chose to write about the different trees we see each season.
Seasons of Trees after Marci Ridlon “That was Summer”
Remember that time when the rope swing hung from the old oak tree the knot round and rough? You wrapped your skinny legs on tight let someone give you a push your head leaned back tongue out, tasting the breeze. That was summer.
Remember that time you gathered pecans plopping one by one into grandfather’s tin bucket? You held the brown nut to the metal cracker, and turned the handle until Crack! Tasting hickory butter sweetness. That was autumn.
Remember when the wind turned cold, Flakes fell softly on the trees, and you bundled up and walked with your sisters through rows and rows of Christmas spruce, playing hide and seek and searching for the just-right one. That was winter.
Remember how the warm sun rose on the Japanese magnolia prompting firm blossoms to open like helium-filled party balloons? Remember how you walked near to smell the strong rosy scent that could make you sneeze? That was spring.
See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life
Thoughts and Prayers by Kelli Broussard Kaufman
When we don’t know what to say, art can speak for us. This painting was done by Kelli Broussard Kaufman. She’s a Lafayette artist I follow on Facebook. (Her parents are good friends and neighbors.) I asked her permission to post the image here, and she also told me about her process. Her playlist while painting included Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence. Her art, the song, and her process notes inspired this poem.
In the sound of silence, we think no one cares. The words have all been said. Prayers are empty now.
Silence like a cancer grows. The wax burns, drips, soils the flag we want to save us. How many more?
In the naked light I saw a flicker of candles in the wind drawing strength from one another burning bright and singing out–
This is not who we are. This is not our story. We are one people. We are better than this.
I live on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. I love teaching, poetry, my dog Charlie, my three daughters, and dancing with my husband. This space is where I capture my thoughts, share my insights, and make connections with the world. Welcome! Walk in kindness.
