Poetry | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

#TenFoundWords: A February Poetry Project

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged #tenfoundwords, Laura Shovan on February 7, 2017| 11 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for the Slice of Life Challenge.

Today marks post #1000 on my blog. Wow! This has happened one word at a time, one post at a time. When I started this blog nearly 5 years ago, I had no idea where this writing journey would lead. I have a wonderful community of friends through my connections with various weekly memes. Slice of Life was one of the first communities I joined. I appreciate all of you who read my musings. Here’s to the next thousand!

Through Poetry Friday, I connected with Laura Shovan. This year marks her 5th annual poem-a-day writing challenge for February, her birthday month. This year she’s hosting it on Facebook in a closed group. The theme is ten found words from current news articles. I check the morning post, copy the ten chosen words into a Google doc, and work on my poem whenever I have a chance throughout the day. At first, I didn’t want to have this much interaction with the daily news, but each article has been different. Not only am I reading poems, practicing writing, building community, I am also learning some amazing stuff.

On February 4th, the article was from earthsky.org, and I learned about the change in the moon’s orbit. Fascinating and certainly not an article I would normally have read. Sometimes the article informs the poetry, but more often the poems come from that inner poet, the one who surprises me constantly.

The axis turns
one rotation at a time
keeping in balance
this ancient path
tilting toward unity.

The gods knew this truth
when they painted pictures
in the night sky.

Our bodies want to return
to balance and knowing
and wandering; we look for a leader,
a shaman, a yogi master.

Analyze the words
of Langston, or Maya,
or Martin, and you’ll
see a common axis,
a dream that crept into each heart.

Spin around.
Face the stars.
Reach out.
Dream on.

–Margaret Simon

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Slice of Life: Finding Solace

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Laura Shovan, Ten Found Words, Women's March on January 31, 2017| 11 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for the Slice of Life Challenge.

j-magnolia-dew

The Hallmark channel is on again. I pour a glass of wine. I search for something positive to say. I’ve always thought of myself as an optimist, but these days are dark. Winter is an apt metaphor for the state of our country. I am carrying a weight of pessimism that I find too heavy and hard.

So I turn to my passion, poetry. Poetry is like prayer for me. I go inside my thoughts and work to make some sense of them.

Laura Shovan is getting ready for her annual February poetry project. She has built a Facebook group. It’s a closed group, but if you ask, you can join. We are a bunch of liberals looking for ways to make sense of the news by taking 10 words from a current news report and writing poetry.

On Saturday, I found an empty journal on my shelf. It is quite beautiful, a gift from someone, I’m sure. The title reads, “Personal Journal with Quotes & Art by Women.” I decided to use this book to pen the poems I am writing for Laura’s challenge. On this page I share below is a sculpture called “Invocation” by Edith Schaller. I wrote a poem for the January 25th warm-up using ten words from Janet Mock’s Women’s March speech. I am not accustomed to being outspoken, political, or radical. I am uncomfortable in this position, but I find solace in poetry, in writing, in words.

invocation

I am my sister’s keeper.
I hold her body.
I am committed to this work
of loving and comforting,
feeling safe and sensitive.

I refuse to crawl deeper into poverty,
refuse to give up all that we have fought for.
I will not be invisible or neglected.

But his words tear at a core
I fear is weak. My liberation
is linked to my resolve
to not be moved, to hold fast.

Why must I turn into a revolutionary?
I once was a peaceful woman,
teaching, learning, writing,
minding my own business.

Why must I be confrontational?
Someone who has written herself
into this story of marches,
signs and petitions?

Sister, help me be this new me.

–Margaret Simon

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Celebrating Poetry and an Invitation

Posted in Books, Celebration Saturday, Poetry, Teaching, tagged Donna Smith, Joy Acey, Kim Urband, Poetry Postcard Exchange, Preaching to the Chickens, Sylvia Vardell, wedding on January 28, 2017| 12 Comments »

Find more celebration posts at Ruth’s blog.

There are those weeks that seem to go on and on, yet offer nothing to be celebrated. Sometimes I have to look harder to find the bright spots. I am actually ashamed that I felt this way yesterday because this morning I looked through my mail and found so much to celebrate.

I signed up for a poetry postcard exchange. I thought the giving and receiving was over, but this week I got three more poetry postcards.

New Year poem cards from Sylvia Vardell with a Wonder Woman stamp.

Poem from Donna Smith:
Listen to the sounds
crunching, munching, lunch a foot
Leaves nourishing earth

Handwritten poem and card from Kim Urband:

Summer Storm
Stone-gray clouds steal azure sky
Lightning stabs, singes
Liquid silver glazes hills
Relinquishes to Rhapsody

–Kim Urband

This sweet, uplifting message from Joy Acey:

My body feels electric like new years fireworks
blazing in starlight.
I want to raise my arms
to twirl and dance in the moonlight.
Poetry fills me
and runs out of my pen.
May the force be with your poetry.
–Joy Acey

And an invitation to my daughter’s wedding in March. Here we go again!

This week I read aloud Preaching to the Chickens about John Lewis’s childhood. I wanted my students to know his name and to have a better understanding of the fight for civil rights. This book is beautifully illustrated. One of my students, Madison, was inspired by the paintings to draw her own yard of chickens. I love the personalities of each of her chickens.

Chickens by Madison, 3rd grade.

I didn’t have to look very hard to find these celebrations today. What are you celebrating?

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Poetry Gives

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged Diane Mayr, Irene Latham, Joy Acey, Poetry Postcard Exchange on January 6, 2017| 16 Comments »

Poetry Friday is at Linda’s site: Teacher Dance

Sometimes I sign up for things and then forget about them. So I was pleasantly surprised when I got some poetry mail this week. A while back, Jone MacCulloch asked us blogging poets to sign up for a new year postcard exchange. I signed up and ordered my postcards.

I was so pleasantly surprised this week when I received 3 postcards. I hope there are more coming.

My postcards from VistaPrint haven’t arrived yet, so if you’d like to receive one, send me your address (margaretsmn at gmail). I have the list of 10 that Jone sent me, but I’m happy to send more.

Diane Mayr does a new year postcard every year in the tradition of Nengajo, a Japanese tradition of sending a postcard including a haiku. She writes that this year’s card includes the Year of the Rooster, a reference to fire, and the word first. The background is “Yawning Apprentice” by Mihaly Munkacsy (circa 1869). She will be posting the digital version on her blog today. Here is my camera image.

In the same batch of mail, all the way from Hawaii, Joy Acey blessed me with a lovely original painting and poem. She is such a dear person whom I have never met. Some day I will fly to Hawaii to see her in her garden. Even her sweet note is poetic.

Margaret,

I was lying in bed this morning listening to the blasting rain hit the exterior of my bedroom wall and windows–these are the windows that face east so I could watch the cloud covered Sleeping Giant and the sunrise.

I’m thinking about selecting one word for a guide in the new year and I’m thinking about our poetry postcard exchange for the new year and this haiku appeared with your name written all over it.

painting and poem by Joy Acey

The third card of joyful words came from Irene Latham. She tweeted recently that she had her postcards ready, and I was secretly crossing my fingers that I would get one. The card looks like an old postcard from Germany, a gift in itself, but it was accompanied by this beautiful verse:

The Coming of Light

And here is the secret
to everything:
when you let the light it,
a river
you thought dried up
or frozen
will begin to sing.

–Irene Latham

Bruckmanns Bildkarte NR

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The Story of a Christmas Card

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Photography, Poetry, tagged #haikuforhealing, haiku-a-day, Illuminate, John Gibson, pointillism on December 31, 2016| 14 Comments »

Find more celebration posts at Ruth’s blog.

For the last 13 years my father has created a drawing for my parents’ annual Christmas card. In 2013, I published a small chapbook of his drawings along with poems that I wrote. The book, Illuminate, seems to still be available on Amazon.

Earlier this week I visited my parents and talked to my dad about this year’s card. This summer, my husband Jeff was building a pirogue in our carport. When he was close to finishing, I took a picture and posted it on Facebook.

The artist in my dad saw this image.

He emailed me and asked for the picture. Then he blew it up and printed only the trees from the background. These are crepe myrtle trees that are actually on the front of our house.

The photograph became the inspiration for his abstract drawing. My dad works with pen and ink in pointillism. Each drawing is a miracle. I celebrate this creative gift.

John Gibson, 2016

Haiku #31

Happy New Year’s Eve!
Even trees have a party.
Sparks of light illume.

Thanks to Mary Lee Hahn for the haiku-a-day challenge. I celebrate:

We lightened the world with our words.
We grew as a community of writers.
We made it.

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Poetry Friday: Stone Mirrors

Posted in Books, Photography, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged #haikuforhealing, Edmonia Lewis, Hale Boggs Bridge, Jeannine Atkins, novel in verse, Stone Mirrors on December 30, 2016| 18 Comments »

Poetry Friday is at Donna’s site: Mainly Write

In November at NCTE16, I was privileged to finally meet poet Jeannine Atkins. I got a copy of her upcoming book in verse, Stone Mirrors. I didn’t know what this book was about. I just loved the cover.

The beauty of this book is on the inside and the outside. Jeannine tells the story of Edmonia Lewis, a Objibwe-Haitian-American woman, who in 1862, had the rare chance to attend Oberlin. While there, she became mixed up in a controversy over poisoning. She was acquitted, but forced to leave the school. Her future took her to Boston and Italy where she became a successful sculptor.

The facts, however, are not the important aspects of this story. What I found intriguing was Jeannine’s unique way of writing story in verse. As I read, I was drawn in by the melody of the language as well as the fascinating story. I loved following Edmonia through her growing confidence as an artist and as a woman. I wonder how Jeannine got into the mind of Edmonia. How did she know the feel of the stone she carved? “She hammers out stillness, holding a life in mid-speech or stride, like a deer between danger and trust.”

Intertwined into the story of Edmonia Lewis are lines of wisdom, carved into Jeannine’s poems like the images Edmonia carved in stone.

Broken Colors

Edmonia carves the smokey smell of drawing pencils,
like a burned-down fire, and hardening clay,
with its whiff of a pond bottom. She goes to the art room,
where each mark on paper offers a new chance.
She has nothing left but hunger for beauty,
small as the tip of a paintbrush.

She wishes the stove were lit,
though if smoke rose she might not be alone.
She smashes ice that sheathes
a jar of water to rinse a paintbrush.
She no longer draws goddesses, gods,
or anyone in transformation.
White people think metaphor belongs to them.

She opens a cupboard with boxes
printed with names, none hers.
She reads them as if studying a map
of places no one expects her to see.
The shelves and boxes are divided
like classrooms where walls come between
art, poetry, and myth. In history class,
teachers separate the dead from the living.
All through the school, lines are drawn between
right and wrong, white and colored, rich and poor,
truth and lies, facts and dreams, courage and fear,
what belongs to one person and what doesn’t.
They forget that every time the wind blows,
the world asks everyone to bend.

from Stone Mirrors, Jeannine Atkins, January 2017

On a recent trip through New Orleans, we crossed the Hale Boggs Bridge. My daughter was driving, so I could take this amazing picture. As the time changes over to a new year, I contemplate what may lie ahead.

Towers reach for time Carved into parting clouds Tuning my future Margaret Simon #haikuforhealing

Towers reach for time
Carved into parting clouds
Tuning a future
Margaret Simon
#haikuforhealing

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Persephone Haiku: Day #29

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Writing, tagged #haikuforhealing, haiku-a-day, Poets & Writers, red on December 29, 2016| 4 Comments »

Inspiration for today’s haiku came from my weekly email from Poets & Writers:

Poetry Prompt

“In the red room there is a sky which is painted over in red / but is not red and was, once, the sky. / This is how I live. / A red table in a red room filled with air.” Using these lines from Rachel Zucker’s “Letter [Persephone to Demeter]” as inspiration, write a poem where everything in the environment is red, as though the speaker is looking through red glass.

red-leaves

We search the dry land
for Persephone’s
majestic red shoes

–Margaret Simon

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Daily Haiku #28

Posted in Photography, Poetry, tagged #commonplacemarvels, #haikuforhealing, haiku-a-day on December 29, 2016| Leave a Comment »

: Little blackbird fly;
Find in me a soaring joy
filling up the sky.
Margaret Simon
#haikuforhealing

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Slice of Life: Walk on Dover Lane

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged #commonplacemarvels, #haikuforhealing, Dover Lane, haiku-a-day, nature, walking on December 27, 2016| 6 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for the Slice of Life Challenge.

Before the rain on this grey winter day, I took a walk down Dover Lane where my parents live. Taking a walk in a different place makes me more alert to the #commonplacemarvels. I was also looking for writing inspiration. On this 27th day of Mary Lee Hahn’s haiku challenge, my inspiration is waning. I know as a writer and because Mary Oliver says so, we must pay attention.

I stopped to capture images to later inspire writing. Haiku can be challenging in its constraint of 5, 7, 5 syllables, but in that constraint, I can find a nugget that says everything.

Old, cracked, leaning in
open to new life, fresh roots
nature’s the sculptor

Tar trails twirl around
dancing on this walking path
road repair art

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Thoughtful Promise Haiku #26

Posted in Photography, Poetry, tagged #haikuforhealing, haiku-a-day, Sahale snacks on December 26, 2016| 2 Comments »

Inspiration for writing can come from unexpected places. My brother-in-law’s family lives in Seattle, WA. His wife sent snacks for all of us. Sahale Snacks. Today’s haiku is a found haiku from the bag of pomegranate vanilla flavored cashews. Not only do they inspire poetry, they are yummy, too.

Happy Boxing Day!

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