Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged #playwithpoetrynpm, haiku, magnetic poetry, metaphor dice on April 27, 2019| 1 Comment »
The more I play with the poetry tools, the less I trust them. I want to manipulate the words into something, anything that rings true. Yesterday I combined magnetic word pieces with metaphor dice. Both of these poems interested me, but I don’t think either is a great poem. Let’s just live in the moment for a moment.
White misty rose
unspoken kiss
of light wine
True summer echoes
as delicate time lost
my bare feet say-shine
Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged chant poems, Joyce Sidman, What the Heart Knows on April 26, 2019| 9 Comments »
Poetry Friday round-up is with Carol at Beyond Literacy Link.
One of my favorite books in my rather large collection of poetry books is What the Heart Knows by Joyce Sidman. This week I shared the poem Happiness, a chant invoking happiness. We talked about writing from the perspective of direct address to an emotion. I directed my students to choose an emotion and to try using imagery to make the emotion personified. I played along with my kiddos and took out the magnetic poetry cookie sheets. Finding the word poems mused me to write a direct address to poems. Karson and I both used the imagery of a monarch butterfly drawing on our experience of hatching and releasing monarchs this week.
Poems,
You hide in shadows
of oak trees.
You whisper words
in the breeze.
You shudder my heart.Poems,
When we meet eye to eye,
I am amazed
by your strength,
unexpected yet welcome.Poems,
Your delicate wings
unfold before our eyes
surprising us
with your ease of flight.–Margaret Simon, draft, 2019
Free image from Pixabay.
Excitement,
too much thrill can bring confusion
and confusion leads to mystery.
You are like the breeze on the top of a mountain.
When I see the brightness of the moon, I feel you.
You are the feeling when a monarch flies into the distance.
Curiosity,
You are full of forest mazes
that my mind gets stuck in.
My eyes show the way.
You bring me thoughts,
you make me think,
Curiosity
Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged #NPM19, #playwithpoetrynpm, skinny odes on April 25, 2019| 1 Comment »
I bought a new set of gel pens and shared them with my students. We had fun writing skinny odes (fold your paper in half and only write to the crease mark), and making zines. My newest student Rylee, who is a bright first grader, wrote an ode to her dog. She drew a picture of her dog on her journal page and for her zine decided to cut it out into four parts and glue it on different pages. I don’t question the creativity of a first grader.
Ode to my Dog
Oh, how I love my dog.He licks me.
He sits on my lap.He plays with me.
He is the cutest
dog around.My dog had to go
somewhere else.–Rylee, 1st grade
Ode to the Glitter Pen
Oh, the glittery life
of an orange gel pen
dipped in sparkly gems.
You write like
glass across the page,
smooth as a soft
silky scarf.
Ink that glows and flows
like orange lip gloss,
tangerine-flavored
lines that bring
sunshine to
this poem.
–Margaret Simon, draft, 2019
A page from my zine.
Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged Earth Day, haiku, nature 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.
Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged monarch caterpillars on April 16, 2019| 9 Comments »
See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life
My fifth grade students were testing, and since my classroom is a computer lab, I was left with no place to teach my third grader. What does a teacher do when it’s a beautiful spring day and there is no space in the school? Go outside. Kaia and I went to the garden. I had with me paint chips and the book Because of Winn Dixie, so we wrote poems and read aloud. When we took a break and walked around the garden, we discovered a patch of milkweed and counted four monarch caterpillars.
The next day we were offered the French classroom, but we made some time to go out and check the garden. Our count went up to eleven.
On Thursday when we went outside, there was a garden group who comes once a month to tend to the garden, teach 4H students and hold garden club after school. Today there was a naturalist who was speaking on monarch butterflies. She taught us a few things. One thing, do not trust your count because there are always more than you can see.
She showed Kaia how to touch a caterpillar. They do not sting or harm you, but you could harm their delicate feet. Kaia spotted some crawling all the way over on the concrete slab away from the garden. She rushed over to tell the naturalist about this. She explained to us that monarch caterpillars travel away from the host plant when they are ready to pupate. She gently picked these two up and carried them back to the garden area.
I decided to come back after school and gather a few caterpillars to take home. Meadow (yes, the naturalist’s name is Meadow) gave me instructions on how to care for them. It’s a good thing she did. I thought I had only brought home four caterpillars fat and ready for pupation, but as the days went on, there appeared 3 more in the net habitat.
The four made chrysalises on the plastic top of the container, but I’ve had to feed the three that appeared. I’ve been gathering (stealing) milkweed from our church school’s garden to keep them fed. I hope I haven’t brought home even more caterpillars unknowing. So far, so good. I’ll post updates on my Instagram and Facebook pages.
The science of nature fascinates me. I think I’d like to be a naturalist like Meadow when I grow up.
Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged Progressive Poem 2019 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
Posted in Writing on April 11, 2019| 1 Comment »
Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged #NPM19, magnetic poetry, monarch caterpillars, NaPoWriMo on April 10, 2019| 4 Comments »
Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged #NPM19, #PlayingwithpoetryNPM, #SOL19, after William Carlos Williams, Books along the Teche Literary Festival on April 9, 2019| 5 Comments »
See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life
This weekend I had the exciting privilege to participate in the third annual Books along the Teche Literary Festival. Early on Saturday morning, I spoke on a panel with my publisher Josh Caffery from UL Press, Carol Stubbs co-director of our local SCBWI, and fellow authors Denise Gallagher and Jess Butterworth. My friend, author illustrator Paul Schexnayder, moderated the panel. We had more than thirty people in the early morning crowd. We talked about writing and publishing for children.
Following the panel, ten children’s authors and illustrators joined me in Church Alley for story time, book signings, and a bookmaking workshop. My former student teacher brought her sons and their cousins to make zines with me. What fun to have these kids successfully write a Things to do poem and illustrate them in little zines. Look how proud they all were!
Another highlight of my day was when a former student came by. I taught her in my early years of teaching, some 30+ years ago. She’s a mother now, and she brought her 6 year old to meet me and get a book signed to him. Later, he drew a picture for me from one of the illustrations in Bayou Song. His mom texted me the picture. Oh, joy!
With Pam and Port at the Books along the Teche Literary Festival
This was a day to remember and treasure. My favorite part of this whole author business is making connections to kids (and reconnecting with their parents.)
For National Poetry Month, I am writing a poem a day. Today we are borrowing William Carlos Williams’ line “So much depends upon.” I played with magnetic poetry to create this one:
So much depends upon
a diamond rose
rising
from still raina thousand fiddle
symphony
rising
from birds in the trees–a lazy spring moment.
–Margaret Simon, (draft) 2019
Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged #NPM19, Books along the Teche Literary Festival, Darrell Bourque, Mary Ardoin Broussard, metaphor dice, NaPoWriMo, Paint Chip Poetry on April 7, 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.
This weekend in New Iberia was the third annual Books along the Teche Literary Festival. On Friday, I attended a reading by former state poet laureate and one of my mentors, Darrell Bourque. He brought along accordion artist Mary Ardoin Broussard.
Mary Broussard plays the old Creole style of Zydeco music known as La La music. Darrell’s poems from his book Where I Waited (Yellow Flag Press, 2016) are written in the voices of early Cajun and Creole musicians from the 1930’s and 40’s. Cajuns and Creoles in Louisiana spoke French. I don’t speak French, so sometimes I have a hard time following along. I love this music for its dancing beat, but I can’t sing the lyrics and rarely know what they mean.
Darrell wrote about the song Quoi Faire in his poem for Golden Thibodeaux with the title “Here and Here.” Mary said quoi faire means “Why you broke my heart like that?”
Darrell then spoke of the energy in Golden Thibodeaux’s music. I, however, listened to the energy between Darrell and Mary, making their own kind of music by echoing and honoring the voices of the past.
I played in a different way with my own poetry finding new lines within the lines of Darrell’s poem Here and Here.
Our address on the Bayou Teche
Order on Amazon.
April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise at https://mrsdkrebs.edublogs.org/
April 6 Buffy at http://www.buffysilverman.com/blog
April 7 Jone at https://www.jonerushmacculloch.com/
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha at https://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/
April 10 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities | Rose's Blog
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainly Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita at TanitasDavis.com
April 22 Patricia Franz
April 23 Ruth at There's No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout at http://lindakulptrout.blogspot.com
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan at: https://moreart4all.wordpress.com/
April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors
Reflections on the Teche 