Poetry | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

NPM #4: Dry Bones

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Bishop Jake Owensby, Spiritual poetry, student acrostic poetry on April 4, 2017| 10 Comments »

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National Poetry Month 2017

For the month of April, I have committed to writing a poem each day. I am not following any stricter rule than that one. Others in the poetry blogging community are doing themed poems. You can see everything that’s going on at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

On Monday, my young student Jacob wrote an acrostic poem on the word faith. He was surprised by his own wisdom. I told him that I think there is a whirl of ideas in the universe and he was open for it.

Finding
An
Invitation
to
Hope

Thinking about Jacob’s inspiring poem and the ideas from the universe, I felt a pull to write a found poem from Bishop Jake’s blog post from Sunday. Jake Owensby is the Bishop of the Western Louisiana Episcopal Diocese. He writes beautifully at Looking for God in Messy Places about how to live a life of love and hope. His post this week “Dry Bones and Living Flesh” inspired this poem.

Dry Bones

uprooted
nothing familiar
fleeing home
to stay alive
they leave behind
bones

Ezekiel had a vision
of those very dry bones.
The victors leave
the dead in an open grave,
a goldmine
of artifacts.

This was personal.
The baker’s daughter
he knew by her fragrance of yeast,
the grandmother rocking her grandchild,
the old stooped mason.

War is always the same.
Death, senseless, helpless
“collateral damage” No, this was personal-
husbands, wives, siblings, grandchildren.

Homes left in ruins,
People without community,
Dry bones
watered with survivor’s tears.

God takes these bones
clothes them
gives them breath.
God promises
through us
to be a new home
for the exiled.
Hear the call.

–Margaret Simon

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NPM #2 and #3: Dancing Clouds and Expectant Blossoms

Posted in Poetry, tagged #imagepoems, #wonderbreak, acrostic poetry, Read Write Think on April 3, 2017| 2 Comments »

This National Poetry Month button was created by my student Lani. If your students are writing a poem-a-day, you are welcome to use this button. My students are posting their poems here.

My Sunday poem came to me during the shower. Because I couldn’t write it down or record it, I kept saying it over and over, like a musical refrain. Then I wrote it on a sticky note. I was thinking about how the clouds seem to be dancers passing each other in the sky. Sometimes poems come whole, and all I have to do is write them down.

On Monday, after my morning walk, I noticed closed blossoms in the flower bed. Such a pleasant surprise. I know they will open up once the sun comes out, so I thought of the word expectant. Since it was our first day of ABCs of poetry in my class, we were writing acrostics today. I found a student interactive on Read, Write, Think.
My student Lynzee helped me write this poem. I wanted to use the word radiant, but it didn’t fit with the letters. We put radiant into the online thesaurus and found emanating.

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NPM #1: Lilies in a Vase Tanka

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Poetry, tagged Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, crayon poem, tanka on April 1, 2017| 6 Comments »

Searching for the muse this morning, I read Amy VanDerwater’s poem for today. She is choosing crayons out of the Crayola box to inspire daily poetry. Today’s crayon was carnation pink. The color reminded me of the beautiful lilies that have opened up, post-wedding, filling up my kitchen with their strong scent. I took out the carnation pink and colored a picture in my journal.

As I wrote about the flower, I played around with word forms, searching flowery terms like pollen, stamen, and anther. Pollinic won as a new word choice. I found that my lines were tending toward the haiku syllable count, so I chose to write a tanka which uses the 5,7,5,7,7 syllable count.

This poetry month I will ~~attempt to~~ write a poem-a-day. I’ll write about my process. The muse will come from other poets or from my own poetic heart.

Jama is gathering the Kidlit blogging events.

I’ll be joining Irene Latham’s Progressive Poem and have posted the schedule in the side bar.

Happy National Poetry Month! Celebrate Poetry!

*The image is a photograph using my phone, enhanced by Painteresque.

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SOL #30: Ode to a Thin Mint Cookie

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Helen Frost, Michelle Heidenrich Barnes, ode on March 30, 2017| 11 Comments »

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Every month, Michelle H. Barnes posts an interview with a poet. Then a Ditty Challenge is given. This month’s challenge comes from Helen Frost.

Choose an object (a seashell, a hairbrush, a bird nest, a rolling pin). It should not be anything symbolic (such as a doll, a wedding ring, or a flag). Write five lines about the object, using a different sense in each line (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell). Then ask the object a question, listen for its answer, and write the question, the answer, or both.

I opened the freezer for a Thin Mint cookie, and thus an ode appeared.

Green-vested Girl Scouts
line boxes on a table outside Walgreens.
Crinkling wax paper opens
to a circle of mouth-watering chocolate.
Mint permeates my senses.
Why are you hiding in this box?
Come on out for my delight,
a refreshing bite.

–Margaret Simon

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SOL #25: Celebrate Art & The Great Rat Escape!

Posted in Blogging, Celebration Saturday, Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged Margaret Atwood, Mary Lacy on March 25, 2017| 15 Comments »

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Find more celebration posts at Ruth’s blog.

Thursday was an adventurous morning, so I created a Slice of Life model post for my students.

When I got to school this morning, I saw a crowd of teachers looking at a wall of the school. In fact, they had their phones out and were taking pictures. I finally saw what they were looking at. A rat!

Ms. Katie wasn’t taking a picture. She was making an emergency phone call to the maintenance department.

I was on car line duty, so I could watch the whole adventure take place. Mr. Rat stayed in place in the crook of the corner for a while. Then there was Mr. Leonard with a black trash can.

The rat scurried around the corner and the chase was on!

Not long after Mr. Leonard and Ms. Katie disappeared around the side of the school, the cafeteria side which was smelling strongly of syrup, the maintenance department trucks (there were 2) showed up. I didn’t see the action, but I assumed the ratty rat was caught and disposed of.

As we walked back into school, Mrs. Delahoussaye reminded me, “We are taking over their environment, the canefields. They have every right to be here.”

I’m not sure I agree.

One of my students started drawing a picture a day on the whiteboard. Here’s a collage of her drawings:

Speaking of art, the mural is complete. Here’s a picture of the completed gator mural by Mary Lacy.

Today is my oldest daughter’s wedding. Talk about a celebration. She wants me to read a Margaret Atwood poem at her ceremony. It’s not sentimental (not Maggie’s nor Margaret Atwood’s style), but I still hope I can get through it without choking up.

Habitation
by Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire

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SOL #24: The Trouble with Poetry

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Billy Collins, student poetry on March 24, 2017| 22 Comments »

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Poetry Friday is with Catherine at Reading to the Core

Happy Birthday, Billy Collins! His 76th birthday was on March 22nd.

I introduced my students to the poetry of Billy Collins with this poem, The Trouble with Poetry. The poem gives good advice about writing poems.

“The trouble with poetry is…
it encourages the writing of more poetry…
the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.”

I asked my students to steal a line and write their own poem.

The trouble with reading poetry is
that it’s so fun to read you can’t stop.

The trouble with poetry is
that you are to sit in the dark room
and wait for a flame of idea to pop up.

The trouble with poetry is
that Mrs. Simon makes us look for
what the poem means which is super hard.

The trouble with poetry is
thinking about ideas which is like hitting
yourself in the head with a rock.

The trouble with poetry is
that sometimes people steal ideas
and don’t give credit.

The trouble with poetry is
that you think your idea is bad
when it is really good.

The trouble with poetry is
that you can have a writer’s block.

The trouble with poetry is
that you have to read it out loud to find mistakes.

by Andrew, 4th grade

Poetry Fills Me With Joy
Making me Float Above The Clouds
Like A Hot Air Balloon Soaring Above
After Being Filled With Hot Air
Like A Plane Being Filled With Fuel
And Taking Off
Like The First Letter Of Each Of These Words
Trying To Soar Off of The Screen

poetry fills me with sorrow
making me sink below the ground
like a balloon being popped
and crashing in the sea
like a plane crashing and burning
like the letters of this poem
trying to sink off the screen

By Kaiden, 6th grade

Billy Collins sarcastically expresses the feeling I get when I read poetry, and the reason I read poetry with my students. Poetry breeds more poetry. And I can’t think of anything better that a poem might do. Thanks, Billy Collins, for encouraging my students to steal a line and try their own hands at writing poems.

“ And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.”

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SOL #21: Slant of Light

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Karen Benke, Naomi Shihab Nye, notice, small things on March 21, 2017| 17 Comments »

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Catherine Flynn, who blogs at Reading to the Core, recommended a book for writers, Rip the Page: Adventures in Creative Writing by Karen Benke. I bought the book. On page 31, one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye, wrote a note to the writer. She writes, “Nothing is too small to notice.” So I take notice.

I notice the light,
how today
the first day of spring,
the light is brighter

reflecting off the shiny Grumman canoe
propped against the satsuma tree,
reddening the shasta daisies
that just opened today
in time to say “Welcome spring.”

This light
intensifies the green,
illuminates Spanish moss
that hangs like abandoned spider webs.

This light ripples the bayou
in gentle wrinkles.
No rain in days,
so I water.

The spray from the hose
rainbows–

I remember…
how she loves rainbows.

That’s how this light is:
full of itself, showing off,
making love with life.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

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SOL #15: Revise for Your Readers

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged revision poem on March 15, 2017| 9 Comments »

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Yesterday I posted about the SCBWI conference in New Orleans this weekend. Dr. Mary Howard wrote this message on Facebook, “I’m dying of curiosity about the revision techniques.” So I looked back at my notes and created a poem.

Why are you writing this?
Do you know?
What kind of story do you want to tell?
Do you know?

I need to make some decisions.
Whose story am I telling?
What change does my character make?

Purpose will inform your premise.
One sentence tells the whole story.

Start the stitching,
word by word,
you will make something beautiful.
Readers will thank you.

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SOL #4: Celebrating Time to Look out the Window

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Bayou Teche, Elsie, nature poetry on March 4, 2017| 11 Comments »

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Find more celebration posts at Ruth’s blog.

From my window, I see a stately oak
and the bayou beyond
flanked by cypress knees
sticking up like toy soldiers.

Sometimes, a heron happens by
stealthily stalking a wayward minnow.

Sometimes, the sun beams down
in a spotlight directing my gaze
to the intricate design of trees.

And some days, I don’t have time
to look, watch, or listen,
But I know my bayou
is always near
keeping me grounded,
showing me faithfulness,
bringing me solace.

–Margaret Simon

This Slice/ Celebration idea came from Elsie. She wrote “Outside my Window” for her Day 2 Slice of Life.

I’ve been on break all week. Such a gift to be able to look outside, take walks with Charlie, and lunch with friends. I celebrate this time to look out the window.

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