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Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

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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#NPM19 Day 18 Draft

Posted in Poetry, tagged , , , on April 18, 2019| 7 Comments »

Happy Poem in your Pocket Day!  I am staying close to home today as huge storms are expected, so I will celebrate quietly this year.  I usually carry with me two favorite poems, Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye and Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.

Yesterday I settled into a corner at Fair Grinds coffee in Mid City New Orleans with a vanilla latte and my journal.  Christie Wyman is playing along with poetry this month.  She’d noticed that I often label my poems with the word “draft” and a friend of hers thought that made the poem seem alive.  Working with a stolen line, some paint chips, and that alive poem draft idea, I wrote this draft.

A Draft

Poems are alive
lapping at the sandy shore*
of my notebook.
Splashing in the waves
of hot sauce
sprinkled on my furious fingers.

Out of quarry depths
a draft
spotlights
on
something
worth
waiting
for.

–Margaret Simon (draft) 2019

*line from Christie Wyman

 

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#NPM19 Day 17 Green

Posted in Poetry, tagged , , on April 17, 2019| 10 Comments »

 

My friend Dani Burtsfield teaches kindergarten in Montana. She asked me how she could use the paint chips with her little ones.  I suggested a color poem.  The idea is simple.  Each line begins with the color name.  This is a way for young students to learn about metaphor in a concrete way.  I wrote a poem for her to use as a model for her students.  The pattern is Green is ______ followed by an action.

 

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#NPM19 Day 15 Playtime Again

Posted in Poetry, tagged , , , on April 15, 2019| 5 Comments »

I lost trust in the process of this poetry playtime.  So today I set out to make it work again.  I read Elisabeth Ellington’s post using metaphor dice in a different way.  She set up her rule of play: “I had to use one of each color (concept, adjective, object), and the dice I used had to touch each other. ” I looked at her picture of her box.

I decided to take mirror, silent, and teacher, but use mirror as the object rather than teacher and wrote “The mirror is my silent teacher.”  With the use of a few paint chips, the words flowed again.  I need to be more open to the process of creativity.  It does work on occasion.

The mirror is my silent noisy teacher

babbling on

about this line

and that

showing off

dark spots

and yet

reminding me

that grandma loved

hydrangeas.

She tended her garden

like I tend my face.

Time teaches me

spirit rock lessons–

some hard as stone

some soft as hearth. home

— Margaret Simon, (draft) 2019

I did some editing on this, but now I realize that babbling is not silent.  Perhaps I need to change silent to noisy? And then hearth is really hard, not soft, so maybe home works better.  I wonder how true to the words I am given do I need to be.  Word choice is a challenge set forth by every poem.  What do you think?

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#NPM19 Day 14 One Writer Recommends

Posted in Poetry, tagged , , on April 14, 2019| 4 Comments »

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’ve somewhat abandoned the idea of playing with poetry.  I’ve had my internal excuses, but in reality, I just don’t do well with a prescribed plan.  To me, it doesn’t make me more creative; it gets in the way.  I am still writing at least one poem a day. I’m just not using the tools in the playful kits.

Yesterday, I was reading Poets and Writers The Time is Now and became inspired by a feature called Writers Recommend.  Molly Dektar’s advice this week was unique. This got me thinking about how every expert writer has his or her own advice to writers.  I read writerly advice nearly every day.  And feeling like I was abandoning my own project of “Playing with Poetry,” I wrote this poem.

One writer recommends
a thousand words a day,
another says to sit in words
for 2 hours at dawn.

Try writing while you’re falling asleep.
Let the pen run over the paper
making foreign marks
you will interpret later.

Maybe you should drink
two glasses of wine before writing.
Slur words together in a string
and drink them with a straw.

Molly likes to go to Sephora
and spray on all the different perfumes.
She writes with a tiny perfume bottle
while all her senses are aroused.

It really doesn’t matter.

Words will come.
Words will go.
Writers know this.
Writers count on it.

 

—Margaret Simon, 2019

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#NPM19 Day 13 Collaborative Poem Play

Posted in Poetry, Teaching, tagged , , on April 13, 2019| 4 Comments »

Playing with poetry has led to a playful poetry attitude in my class.  My first class is reading poems aloud on the intercom for morning announcements from Great Morning: Poems for School Leaders to Read Aloud by Pomelo Books.  Each day they pass it to the next-up.  He or she chooses a poem they want to read and go through a quick practice to make sure they know how to pronounce all the words (especially the author’s name).  I am pretty much hands off.  They remember whose turn it is, come by the room to get the book, and just do it.  Their read aloud skills are improving as well as their confidence.  They are also learning that poetry can be fun to read aloud.

In the spirit of playing with poetry, I pulled out the individual white boards and proposed a game of collaborative poetry.  They quickly changed the title to “Friends Poems.”  Each friend wrote a line in the poem as we passed the boards around.  The originator of the first line got the poem back and could add to it if they felt it needed more.  This was fun and playful and built a sense of a writing community.

This one was written by Karson, Daniel, Breighlynn, and Jaden

I love the color of the midnight sky
shining stars
dawn and dusk compete
to meet eye to eye
the night is complete

 

I played along with my second group.  We’ve watching monarch caterpillars in the garden.  One day we counted 11 caterpillars.  I’ve brought some home for spring break, but I’ll share more about this later.  Here’s my collaborative poem with Kaia, Landon, and Jayden.

In the spring-sprinkled garden,
Listen as the bird tweets.
Watch the water run and flowers sway.
Look closely at monarch caterpillars.
Praise this amazing day!

 

 

 

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#NPM19: Day 12 Progressive Poem is Here!

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged on April 12, 2019| 27 Comments »

 

Poetry Friday round-up is with Irene at Live your Poem.

 

Irene is gathering Poetry Friday posts today.  She is the originator/ organizer of the Progressive Poem.  I’ve participated for four years.  Each year, the poem progresses through different blogs as line by line, we build a poem for children.  This year, Matt Forrest Esenwine started us off with found song lyrics.  The trend continued, and we have this high energy, happy poem about summer.

I am a fan of musicals.  This appreciation runs in my blood.  I passed it on to my middle daughter.  We’ve enjoyed Wicked, Moulin Rouge, and Waitress together and hope to see Dear Evan Hanson this year.  My husband is not such a fan, but earlier this year he appeased me and went to the movie Mary Poppins Returns.  He liked La La Land, so why not?  We were both totally entertained.  I downloaded the soundtrack the next day.

When I’m out walking my dog in the early mornings, some days I just listen to the birds, but a few days ago in anticipation of this required line, I listened to Mary Poppins Returns.  Oh, the joy that music brings to my heart.  A quick search for lyrics online found a just right line for today.

 

Endless summer; I can see for miles…
Fun, fun, fun – and the whole world smiles.
No time for school- just time to play,
we swim the laughin’ sea each and every day.

You had only to rise, lean from your window,
the curtain opens on a portrait of today.
Kodachrome greens, dazzling blue,
it’s the chance of a lifetime,

make it last forever–ready? Set? Let’s Go!
Come, we’ll take a walk, the sun is shining down
Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eyes
Tomorrow’s here. It’s called today. 

 

Found Lines:

L1 The Who, ‘I Can See for Miles’ / The Beach Boys, ‘Endless Summer’
L2 The Beach Boys, ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ / Dean Martin, ‘When You’re Smiling’
L3 The Jamies, ‘Summertime, Summertime’
L4 The Doors ‘Summer’s Almost Gone’/ Led Zeppelin ‘Good Times, Bad Times’
L5 Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine “You had only to rise, lean from your window,”
L6 Joni Mitchell, “Chelsea Morning”
L7 Paul Simon, “Kodachrome,” “Dazzling Blue”
L8 Dan Fogelberg, “Run for the Roses”
L9 Spice Girls, “Wannabe”/ Will Smith, “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”
L10 The Beatles, “Good Day Sunshine”
L11 The Carpenters, “Top of the World”
L12 Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Underneath the Lovely London Sky” from Mary Poppins Returns

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#NPM19: Day 10 So Much Depends Upon

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged , , , on April 10, 2019| 4 Comments »

National Poetry Month 2019: I am playing with poetry alongside Mary Lee Hahn, Jone Rush MacCulloch.Christie Wyman, Molly Hogan, and Catherine Flynn.

William Carlos Williams’ poetry has something to teach us about imagery and noticing the ordinary.  His famous poem about the wheelbarrow describes a specific image.  My students immediately imagined the setting as a farm.  Using magnetic poetry words, we found images to create our own “So Much Depends Upon” poems. 

The fifth graders are in state testing this week.  They test on computers.  Since my classroom is in a corner one of the computer labs, I had to find another place to teach.  It was a gorgeous spring day, so we went outside to the garden.  Kaia wrote this magnetic poem:

So much depends upon
a misty garden
spring smell symphony
near the white sea.

We were looking around the garden and found four monarch caterpillars eating the milkweed.  Kaia talked about all she was learning in science about the caterpillars.  Gathering words from the air (not using any toys), I wrote the following poem:


So much depends
upon

the tall
milkweed

dotted
with sunspots

feeding
hungry caterpillars

in
the school garden





You can read more student poems at our Kidblog site. 


(A word about WordPress.  I am having trouble with formatting my posts.  They look correctly aligned to the left margin in the editor mode, but when published, everything changes to centered.  I am getting frustrated with this and don’t know how to fix it.  Does anyone reading this post know what’s going on with the wordpress editor?)



 

 

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