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, Writing | Tagged #playwithpoetrynpm, haiku, magnetic poetry, metaphor dice | 1 Comment »
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, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing | Tagged chant poems, Joyce Sidman, What the Heart Knows | 9 Comments »
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 #NPM19, #playwithpoetrynpm, skinny odes | 1 Comment »
After yesterday’s wood duck egg disappointment, I have a hopeful life-filled poem today in response to what happened this morning in our classroom. I decided to try a Sedoka form. Matt Forrest Esenwine shared one on Friday and linked to this resource.
I looked up monarch information on this site and found two wonderful vocabulary words, eclose (emerge as an adult from the pupa stage) and hemolymph (a fluid like blood in most invertebrates).
From a chrysalis
monarch wings eclose
pump hemolymph of colorWatching miracles
with the wonder of a child
classroom butterfly garden–Margaret Simon
Posted in Poetry | Tagged Matt Forrest Esenwine, monarch, sedoka | 1 Comment »
See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life
If you’ve been following our wood duck house, there is sad news. None of the eggs hatched. After nearly 40 days, we thought it was time to give up, even though the hen was still sitting on them. What do you do with such a life lesson? Write a poem about it.
Nature can be a cruel teacher.
Eggs in a nest box,
how a silly duck hen
will sit for days and days.
Could she smell the rotting?
Did she see the gray shadow growing
cold? Some days nature is so violent
whole trees fall. They block the road.
They tell us we don’t belong.
Why on earth are we all here?
When birth is so random,
so dependent on the stars
sprinkling miracle dust,
declaring life.
Not today. When we take the eggs
out of the box, I forget to count.
Toss them into the water,
an afternoon snack for an evil snake
grabbing anything it can for survival.
Survival is not for everything
God makes. Some days
you just have to clean out the box,
add new shavings in,
Begin again.
— Margaret Simon, draft, 2019
Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life | 11 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 Poetry, Writing | Tagged Earth Day, haiku, nature | 2 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
Posted in Poetry | Tagged Acadiana Center for the Arts, ekphrastic poetry, Marla Kristicevich | 4 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 bloomswith 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.
Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday | Tagged Eudora Welty | 18 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
Posted in Poetry | Tagged #NPM19, #PlayingwithpoetryNPM, Christie Wyman, Paint Chip Poetry | 7 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.
Posted in Poetry | Tagged #NPM19, #PlayingwithpoetryNPM, color poem | 10 Comments »
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
