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Poetry Friday: Inspiration

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , , , on February 15, 2019| 14 Comments »

 

Poetry Friday round-up is with Jone this week at Check it Out!

I read the above quote in a post from Smack Dab in the Middle. (Image made in Canva) If you are a writer, take a minute to read the post. Darlene Jacobson wrote, “For me, and I suspect for many of us who write for children, EVERYTHING is a miracle.”

I write with children, not just for children, and feel that every time we write together, a miracle happens.  Lately I have been writing skinny poems, multiple skinnies a day.  I’ve gotten into the rhythm.  Starting with a simple line leading to single words is a quick and inspirational way to write.  Like haiku, a skinny poem is a short form, but unlike haiku that focuses on a single moment, a skinny can focus on a single thought or idea. (See more about the form on my PF post last week.)

Taking inspiration from the above quote, I wrote the following:

Everything is a miracle
touched
by
God’s
hand
touched
by
my
holiness
touched
by a miracle is everything.

Today, after a stormy day yesterday, the sky is clear and the sun is shining, a daily miracle.  There are fields of butterweed blooming.

CREDIT:Jeff Lepore/Science Source

Sunshine is a daily miracle
a
meadow
of
gold
a
glow
of
grass
a
daily miracle in the Sun.

 

What miracles do you see every day?  Can you write a simple skinny poem?

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Poetry Friday: Metaphor Dice and Skinny Poems

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged , on February 8, 2019| 27 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Laura Purdie Salas this week.

 

Have you gotten a set of metaphor dice yet?  Here’s a link to them on Amazon. 

I’ve been playing with metaphor dice and the skinny poem form.  To make a skinny poem, roll the dice to find your first statement.

I got “Love is a silent blessing.”  This becomes line one.  Lines 2, 6, and 10 are all the same word.  Other lines are only one word long.  Line 11 repeats the same words as line 1.  Confused?  Try numbering your paper from 1-11.  Write your metaphor phrase in line one.  Choose a simple word for line 2, 6, and 10.  Fill in the rest.

Love is a silent blessing
a
whisper
touch
smile
a
soft
unspoken
wink
a
silent love blessing.

Here are a few student skinnies:

Beauty is a glorified dance
a
midnight
shining
flower
a
gentle
soft
breeze
a
beautiful dance glorified.

by Landon, 5th grade

 

 

The past is a broken wonder
an
old
broken
tree
an
unbelievable
impossible
mistake
an
incredible, broken, wonder
by Daniel, 4th grade

 

We also wrote bug-ku this week inspired by Susan Bruck on her site last week. Check out all student poems on our kidblog site.

 

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Spiritual Journey: Home

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged , , , on February 6, 2019| 10 Comments »


See more Spiritual Thursday posts at Donna’s site, Mainly Write.

 

Donna is gathering our Spiritual Journey First Thursday posts at her blog. Donna recently moved, so she chose “Home” as our topic for today.

We often look to our church as a spiritual home.  But is this the only place where God lives?  Like the saying “Home is where the heart is,” God is where the heart is, too.  Just because you may not have a place to worship, God’s presence does not leave you.  God is in my mind…always.

I also believe that God is in my poetry.  Wherever I am, the world opens and reveals poems.  This week is only the first week of February, but the temperatures have climbed above 70 degrees, and the Japanese magnolias are blooming.  On my early morning walk, I pass a lonely tree in a vacant lot.  It’s obviously not trimmed or cared for and in many ways looks like it’s dead, but not this week.  So I wrote a poem about it. Of course.

The first stanza is a direct quote from The Time is Now, a weekly writing prompt from Poets and Writers.

A Day on Saturn

A day on Saturn
lasts a total of ten hours,
thirty-three minutes,
and thirty-eight seconds,
according to the Astrophysical Journal.

When I pass the Japanese magnolia,
I think it must be dying.
Lichen clusters on its branches;
a hollowed trunk carved like a cave
invites infesting insects.

And yet, there they are
in the middle of winter, pink
blossom buds
point to the sky
spot Saturn

like an astrolabe
aligns the planets,
from a leafless display

balancing a day.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

 

 

 

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Slice of Life: Poems and Art Collage

Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged , , on February 5, 2019| 15 Comments »

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life .

 

Last week I collaborated with artist Marla Kristicevich on a workshop for teachers designed around poetry and art collage.  The workshop was part of the Arts in Education professional development series held at the Acadiana Center for the Arts.

After I presented about finding elements of poetry in my poem “I am a Beckoning Brown Bayou,” Marla shared how she had taken words from 3 different poems from my book Bayou Song, and circled words that represented an element of art.  She then created a magazine collage to reflect those words and images.  While Marla’s complete presentation was in a PowerPoint slide show, the part that touched me were the amazing and beautiful collages she had created from my words.

Marla’s collage from interpreting the poem There is Always.

We had 12 dedicated teachers attend, and they enjoyed the time to sit and create with materials from magazines, painted paper, and other scraps.  The collages were varied and lent new meaning to the poems we worked with.

Then I led the teachers in writing their own poem by gathering new words from their own collages and selecting a form to use.  My hope is these teachers will take what they learned, their joy of playing with words and art, and bring it into their classrooms, but more than that, my poet’s heart was touched by the way my poems from Bayou Song led to more poems.

Collage from “There is Always” by Cissy Whipp.

 

Cissy’s Poem

Dance/Nature Triptych

I.

My dance is in the way
the leaves calmly curl and crinkle
under my feet.

II.

My dance is in the water
rippling, rising, rushing
around my ankles.

 III.

My dance is in the place
between land and water –
the muddy, mysterious marsh.

 

Finding the poem inside.

 

Kay chose the I Am form to use when her collage revealed things about herself.

Kay’s collage from the poem There is Always.

Hands Up High

Kay Couvillon

I am fiery red in summer beach walks,
I become lavender peaceful
with restorative yoga.

I hold my
hands up high
to the lights of
love, trust, dance, and
cold beer.

I am an
E. Broussard eagle
in awe of the
bald eagle’s nest.

I sway in the
wind of the leaves after
hibernating when I feel like
torn cardboard.

I love red, pink, and scented
geraniums in clay pots from
Mother Earth.

 

 

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Slice of Life: I Am

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching on January 29, 2019| 9 Comments »

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life .

I enjoy learning from other teacher-writers who post on Slice of Life as well as on Poetry Friday.  That’s how I met Molly Hogan.  She blogs at Nix the Comfort Zone.   A few Fridays ago she posted a beautiful original I Am poem.  Her ideas for this poem came from poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge, which is a book I have and value “freeing your life with words.” (Only $3.99 at Abe Books)

When I read Molly’s poem, I decided immediately to use it as a mentor text for my students.  We read the poem and noticed so many metaphors.  Using colored pens to underline the poetic devices, one of my students said, “This is a very colorful poem,” and she meant that literally.

I am granite grey
plain Jane, sturdy and dependable
but sometimes sunlight shoots across my surface
igniting flecks of mica and quartz
into quick showers of sparkles
here, then gone (Read the rest of the poem here.)

Following our reading and noticing and discussing, I asked my students to turn to a clean page and draw circles.  Oh, about 5-7 circles will do.  Then we read the poem again.  In the first part, she says “I am granite grey.”  What is granite grey? A color. Label one circle with color.

As we traveled through the mentor text, we filled in more circles: shape, tree, word, animal, nature, etc. We even made a split circle of inside and out.

During sacred writing time (10 minutes on the Zen Timer app), we filled in the circles with our own ideas and wrote a draft of our own poems.

I know that metaphor is a high-level concept that can take years for younger students to fully grasp, but I dare say that my students got it.  Their poems were long and beautiful.  Having this amazing mentor text helped greatly.  Thanks, Molly, for your inspiration.

Here’s a link to our kidblog site.  Please read and leave comments.  My students feel such pride when you do.  Thanks!

I Am…

I am pink,
chapped and worn,
supple and soft.

I stand on the base of a triangle,
stable, reasonable,
striving for perfection.

In my mind, I criticize–
a checklist of do’s and don’ts
a chapter of why I can’t be.

I am not like the oak
confident in its old age;
I am more of a willow,
seeking, bending in the breeze,
greening in spring.

I search for kind
in your eyes,
your song,
your words.

I do not hunt like the hawk;
I wait and watch like the heron
stepping carefully through the muck.

I am a magnolia blossom
open, fragrant but
easily bruised and brown.

Be soft with me.

(draft) Margaret Simon

 

From Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

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Poetry Friday: Metaphor Dice

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , on January 25, 2019| 13 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Tara at Going to Walden.

 

Taylor Mali developed an innovative set of dice called Metaphor Dice.  I have a set that one of my student groups plays with daily.  They’ve made it into a sort of game to end each class session.  Each of us grabs a set of three dice, white, red, and blue.  Roll. Read the resulting metaphor and talk about how it could work.  Some of them are challenging to find a real connection.  But sometimes you get something intriguing, like “Time is an impossible super hero.”

We also start each notebook writing session with a quote.  This week one of our quotes was “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”  Then I rolled an odd combination: My heart is a well-worn wonder.

These types of activities work well to turn off your critical mind and turn on that right-brain creative soul inside.  This is the poem that came out on the page:

A well-worn wonder like a beaten path
as in
we’ve been this way before
My heart keeps time
with the meditation tone
like a natural wonder,
a miracle of breath
& air
& blood
pumping
beating
living
waking up!

The poem was shaping up to look like a skinny.  I double-checked the rules for a skinny poem.  “A Skinny is a short poem form that consists of eleven lines. The first and eleventh lines can be any length (although shorter lines are favored). The eleventh and last line must be repeated using the same words from the first and opening line (however, they can be rearranged). The second, sixth, and tenth lines must be identical. All the lines in this form, except for the first and last lines, must be comprised of ONLY one word. The Skinny was created by Truth Thomas in the Tony Medina Poetry Workshop at Howard University in 2005.” The Skinny Poetry Journal

My heart is a well-worn wonder like a beaten path
as in
we’ve  been
here
before
as in
natural
miracle
of breath
as in
a well-worn path of my beating heart is a wonder.

–Margaret Simon

What do you think?  Version one or two?

Try a skinny with the phrase “Time is an impossible super hero.”

Matt Renwick is the winner of my extra A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver.

Leigh Anne Eck tried the prompt and posted here. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Poetry Friday: poetic paths

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , on January 11, 2019| 14 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is Down Under with Kat.

I didn’t have any ideas about what I would write today.  As I read other Poetry Friday posts, I became more inspired.  Matt Forrest Esenwine celebrates the acceptance of a poem for an anthology honoring poet Donald Hall.  Matt’s post included an image of a snowy road.  The image led me down a path to a new poem.

 

Too many things concern me today.
My attention is crowded
with walls blocking out human sighs.

On my screen I click on an image
of a path
along a snowy road
a mountain in the distance
and find a poem.

I kick those hard stones.
Look up to the blue mountain.

My thoughts are
insignificant,
unspoken as a meadow.

–Margaret Simon, 2019

Someone on Poetry Friday suggested the book Getting the Knack by Stephen Dunning and William Stafford. I’m trying some of the poetry exercises with my students.  This week we tried out the recipe poem.

Recipe for a Poem

One blank page–open, lined, waiting…

A colorful pen. Try a different color each day.

Tip-tap your fingers over the lines making multiple dots.
Dots become letters become words.
Top off with a tasty metaphor–
Marshmallow clouds on a snowy day.
Read out loud.

–Margaret Simon, 2019

 

One Little Word 2019

 

 

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Poetry Friday: 100% Chance of Rain

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , , on January 4, 2019| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Sylvia at Poetry for Children.

 

 

It was one of those all day rains.  One of my last days of  our holiday break, and I was bored.  I cleaned out cabinets, watched shows on Netflix, made a fire in the fireplace, and played around with magazine collage.  During the hectic days of teaching, I crave this kind of time.  Funny how our minds work.  On this day, I was restless and wishing for the rain to stop.

100 % Chance of Rain

(with a borrowed line from Robert Frost “Revelation”)

Wind blown ripples
the water,
whipped like frothed cappuccino,

Rain slants, shower bending,
branches leave the trees.
Saturated earth bleeds
muddy moisture.

Oh, the agitated heart.
The lemons hang, ripe and wet.

But I am still today,
quieted by the storm.
Listening, longing
for the sun.

(c) Margaret Simon

Art Journal collage for my 2019 One Little Word, Grace.

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Slice of Life: Happy New Year!

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , on January 1, 2019| 10 Comments »

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life .

Happy New Year!  On Friday, I posted about my art journal that I am using for scrap paper poems.  Often I am inspired to write while out and about.  This weekend I was driving to my parents’ home in Mississippi listening to On Being and watching for birds on the highway.  The muse hit, and I scratched out this poem in a tiny notebook I keep in my console.

We are all dizzy
tilting this way and that
speeding through our days
at 75 miles per hour.

We distract ourselves with distractions.
We cover noise with sound.

So look
at the egret, still and patient.
He flies on white wings
dragging his long stick-like legs
behind him.

(c) Margaret Simon

My wish for you in 2019:

Slow down.

Watch the birds.

Savor the sunset.

Speak to the moon.

Hold your loved ones close.

Know when to let go.

Live each day.

Laugh more.

See more.

Be more.

 

 

 

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Poetry Friday: Scrap Paper Poetry

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , , , on December 28, 2018| 20 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Donna at Mainely Write.

 

My husband gave me a new-old art journal for Christmas.  My artist friend Marcie Melancon made it from an old book.  Inside are all sorts of paper from other books, maps, a small bag, etc.  Once I opened it, I was inspired to write.  The first page is a sketch of a woman.  I started writing a poem in my car in a little notebook.  Aha! I could fill the journal with scrap paper poetry! I’ve already taped in 5 poems.  I don’t think I’ll continue at this pace, but I’m enjoying the process.

Art journal by Marcie Melancon.

 

 

I wrote the above poem, Emily Saw More, as a #haikuforhope in response to amazing beach pictures my friend Grace Krauss posted on Facebook.

Tell me how the sun rose
Ribbons rising above the tide
Emily saw more…

Margaret Simon
#haikuforhope

Last week, Amy VanDerwater posted a suggested line for a poem, “Today you will find me…” As most of you know, I am a new grandmother.  I’m spending time with the sweetest, most amazing baby boy.  So that is where you will find me.

Today you will find me
smelling new skin,
soft fuzz of a newborn’s head,
holding a swaddled bundle,
memorizing his small ear,
round nose, and mouth
of many expressions.

Today I will stay a while,
feel present to Wonder,
hold Love
like it will never
let me go.

(c) Margaret Simon, 2018

 

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