Progressive Poem, Line 7

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium deposits of the delta.
Shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.
Hands faster than fish swing at the ends of bare brown arms. Her hair flows,
snows in wild wind as she digs in the

indigo varnished handbag,

pulls out her grandmother’s oval cuffed bracelet,

strokes the turquoise stones, and steps through the curved doorway.

Tripping on her tail she slips hair first down the slide… splash!

Wow!  This is a twist!  Our persona has a tail!  She's not a mermaid - we've already seen her bare feet.  Hmm...  Now I'm trying to picture her in my head, but I can't get too invested in any ideas I may have now, because my line doesn't come for more than another week!

If you want to go directly to the blogs of the people writing lines, you can follow the links.  I'm not including them in every post, but if you scroll down you'll see I have included them quite frequently.  

Reading Update

Book #12 of 2015 was Big Little Lies, by Liane Moriarty
Book #13 was A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned When Editing My Life, by Donald Miller
Book #14 was The Wife, by Meg Wolitzer
Book #15 was Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide, by Jane Reichhold
Book #16 was Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger
Book #17 was Unexpected Gifts: Discovering the Way of Community, by Chris Heuertz
Book #18 was The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander
Book #19 was Marriage Illustrated with Crappy Pictures, by Amber Dusick
Book #20 was Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, by Anne Rice
Book #21 was First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen, by Charlie Lovett

Progressive Poem, Line 6

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium deposits of the delta.
Shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.
Hands faster than fish swing at the ends of bare brown arms. Her hair flows,
snows in wild wind as she digs in the indigo varnished handbag,

pulls out her grandmother’s oval cuffed bracelet,

strokes the turquoise stones, and steps through the curved doorway.

Progressive Poem, Line 5

The poem so far:

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium deposits of the delta.
Shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.
Hands faster than fish swing at the ends of bare brown arms. Her hair flows,
snows in wild wind as she digs in the indigo varnished handbag, pulls out her grandmother’s oval cuffed bracelet

2015 Kidlitosphere

Progressive Poem

1 Jone at Check it Out

2 Joy at Poetry for Kids Joy

3 Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe

4 Laura at Writing the World for Kids

5 Charles at Poetry Time Blog

6 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page

7 Catherine at Catherine Johnson

8 Irene at Live Your Poem

9 Mary Lee at Poetrepository

10 Michelle at Today's Little Ditty

11 Kim at Flukeprints

12 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche

13 Doraine at DoriReads

14 Renee at No Water River

15 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge

16 Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town

17 Buffy at Buffy's Blog

18 Sheila at Sheila Renfro

19 Linda at Teacher Dance

20 Penny at A Penny and her Jots

21 Tara at A Teaching Life

22 Pat at Writer on a Horse

23 Tamera at The Writer's Whimsy

24 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect

25 Tabatha at The Opposite of indifference

26 Brian at Walk the Walk

27 Jan at Bookseedstudio

28 Amy at The Poem Farm

29 Donna at Mainely Write

30 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme

Photo a Day Prompts for the Rest of April

I've been really enjoying posting a daily photo on Facebook during Lent.  I've been using these prompts at Rethink Church.  But on Monday, the day after Easter, the prompts will be over.

My daughter to the rescue!  She created this graphic of daily prompts for the rest of the month.  Why don't you join in with me and post a photo a day using these?

Let me know in the comments or on Facebook if you'll be participating!

Progressive Poem, Line 4

Here's the poem with today's line added. Be sure to visit Laura's post to read about her thinking in creating this line.

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium deposits of the delta.
Shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.
Hands faster than fish swing at the ends of bare brown arms. Her hair flows,
snows in wild wind as she digs in the

Poetry Friday, Good Friday

Judas, Peter

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves
but if we find grace
to weep and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break our hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me

Luci Shaw

Here's today's roundup.

Progressive Poem, Line 3

See the post here.

Here's the poem so far: 

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium deposits of the delta.

Shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.
Hands faster than fish swing at the ends of bare brown arms. Her hair flows 

Progressive Poem, Line 2

Here is the poem so far, with line two added:


She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium deposits of the delta,
shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.

Yes, it's time for the Progressive Poem again!

 

2015 Kidlitosphere

Progressive Poem

1 Jone at Check it Out

2 Joy at Poetry for Kids Joy

3 Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe

4 Laura at Writing the World for Kids

5 Charles at Poetry Time Blog

6 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page

7 Catherine at Catherine Johnson

8 Irene at Live Your Poem

9 Mary Lee at Poetrepository

10 Michelle at Today's Little Ditty

11 Kim at Flukeprints

12 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche

13 Doraine at DoriReads

14 Renee at No Water River

15 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge

16 Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town

17 Buffy at Buffy's Blog

18 Sheila at Sheila Renfro

19 Linda at Teacher Dance

20 Penny at A Penny and her Jots

21 Tara at A Teaching Life

22 Pat at Writer on a Horse

23 Tamera at The Writer's Whimsy

24 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect

25 Tabatha at The Opposite of indifference

26 Brian at Walk the Walk

27 Jan at Bookseedstudio

28 Amy at The Poem Farm

29 Donna at Mainely Write

30 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme


And here's the first line, courtesy of Jone...

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium deposits of the delta

Poetry Friday: Chocolate Cake

I can't seem to find any poems about the college application process.  Odd, because it has certainly inspired plenty of emotion, both joy and anguish.  The highs and lows of March with my daughter and her classmates have been dizzying.  We are ready for a calmer interlude now that all the responses are in, and it's time to choose among the yeses, and soothe away the nos.

National Poetry Month is coming!

It's time to eat some poetry.  Preferably brownie-flavored.



Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Tears

The school counselor told me today that I am known by my colleagues as a person who can cry.  He also said that's not a weakness.  I'm not thrilled with my tendency to burst into tears, or the red eyes and nose I'm left with after I cry, but I'm trying to see my tears the way he said he does.  His words reminded me of a poem I wrote a few weeks ago, based on something my eye doctor said to me.


Tears

The optometrist suggested eye drops
Because in people my age,
The eyes make tears less effectively.

This has not been my experience.

My eyes make tears quite effectively still,
And in fact, better than when I was younger
And with less experience of all there is to cry about.

I can cry multitudes.

I could donate tears to others,
Less fortunate people “my age”
Whose eyes have somehow lost the ability to produce liquid
When they wail and sob and mourn.

My tears are a salty ocean,
Spilling down my face.
Tears for loss, for goodbyes too often said,
Tears for suffering, my own and others’,
Tears for commercials, greeting cards,
Tears for onions, chopped and diced.

Like the nine-foot version of Alice,
I too can cry a puddle large enough to host a Wonderland swimming party
Of mouse, lory, duck, dodo, and eaglet,
And several other curious creatures.
In my case, perhaps loggerhead turtles (not mock),
Unicorns, a tiger or two,
All carried off in the torrent of my weeping.

Tears that soak handkerchiefs and pillows and shoulders,
Rivers and cataracts and seas of tears,
Tears flowing freely through the hallways and streets,
Rising to the window,
Where I sit looking out at the passing sailors
With these wet, aging eyes,
Eyes that have seen much, and cried about most of it.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday

Publication dates, due dates, whatever you call them - today I'm facing huge mounds of student writing, plus big weekend plans.  I hope to be back to posting next week (we'll see), but in the meantime, here's what everyone else is posting for Poetry Friday.

Poetry Friday: Oenone

Source:  http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/paton/22.html  Scanned image and text by George P. Landow.

Today in eighth grade we reached the part of the story in The Trojan War where Oenone resurfaces.  Oenone, as you may remember, is the nymph girlfriend of Paris while he is living as a shepherd on Mount Ida, unaware that he is really the prince of Troy, cast out of the city by his parents when the prophecy said he would destroy Troy.  (Honestly, don't these people ever learn?  You can't undermine prophecy!)

Paris abandons Oenone when he heads off, panting, to meet Fate and Helen, after Aphrodite promises him the most beautiful woman in the world to marry him, in return for Paris choosing Aphrodite in the beauty contest whose prize was the golden apple.  But at the end of the story, Paris is wounded by a poisoned arrow, and guess who is the only person who can heal wounds from poisoned arrows?  Yep, it's Oenone!

Paris goes back to Oenone on a stretcher, and she asks him why she should help.  Can't Helen help?  Maybe she's too delicately beautiful to be much use in time of poisoned-arrow-induced suffering?  All Paris has to do, for her to help him, is to tell Oenone that she is just as pretty as Helen.  Oenone is waiting...

But Paris just can't do it.  He dies instead, while being carried back on his stretcher to spend his last few minutes with Helen.  Of course, as soon as he leaves Oenone, she is sorry she refused her aid, and she rushes to Troy, arriving too late, and then getting accidentally killed by the javelin thrown by a Trojan sentry.


Middle school lesson: nasty breakups can come back to haunt you years later.  Be nice.

I found out today that Tennyson wrote a poem about Oenone.  It's not about the incident we read today, but about the beginning of the story, when Paris has to choose among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite to be the recipient of the golden apple.  In the poem, Oenone begs Paris to choose Athena:

Here she ceas'd

And Paris ponder'd, and I cried, 'O Paris,

Give it to Pallas!' but he heard me not,

Or hearing would not hear me, woe is me! 

He just can't resist Aphrodite. He chooses doom, for himself and for Troy, and for Oenone.

Here's the whole poem.


Or you could listen to it read aloud, if you have nearly ten minutes to spare.  Those Victorians liked their long stories as much as the Greeks.  (And before you ask, no, I'm not planning to read the Tennyson with my eighth graders.)

But, you guys, what a great story the whole Trojan War saga is!  And it's amazing how many eighth graders are drawn into it.  I heard Rick Riordan speak at IRA about how middle school is the perfect age for mythology (I wrote about that talk here), and I really think he's right. 

Today's roundup is here.  Happy Poetry Friday!

Poetry Friday: A Lemon

My daughter made me a lemon cake for my birthday this week, so in honor of that perfect cake, I present Pablo Neruda on the lemon.

 "Still Life with Lemons on a Plate," Van Gogh, source wikiart.org

A Lemon
Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Poetry Friday, Ash Wednesday

A friend posted this on Facebook for Ash Wednesday this past week.  It was appropriate for the strange week I had.  We had the week off for Carnival, and then early Tuesday morning there was a horrible accident that resulted in the rest of the festivities being cancelled.  Instead of celebration, the government called for three days of mourning for the sixteen who died.  Yesterday, I spent the day with pregnant women, observing prenatal care, teaching on breastfeeding - thinking about beginnings.  And of course, through the whole week, I watched the international news, horrified by brutality and suffering.  "This day - like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received."  Yes, every day is unpredictable, often overwhelming.  We are marked by ashes, and yet there is also hope. 

Marked by Ashes
by Walter Brueggemann

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
halfway back to committees and memos,
halfway back to calls and appointments,
halfway on to next Sunday,
halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned toward you, half rather not.
This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.
We are able to ponder our ashness with
some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.
On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

Today's roundup is at TeacherDance.

Poetry Friday: Festival of Sugar and Hormones

I wrote the following poem after Valentine's Day in 2011, and today promises to be more of the same. The middle school hallway is already strewn with rose petals and earlier in the week I heard seventh grade girls bewailing the ways of seventh grade boys. It's going to be one of those days.

Valentine Poem

In the courtyard
Outside the eighth grade English class
On Valentine's Day
Two senior girls are holding armloads of red roses.
Sadly I am not one of the senior girls
Or even one of the eighth grade boys staring at them
But instead the teacher of the English class
Standing in the front of the room
And droning on.
How can I compete with the graceful flower-laden goddesses?
How can anything I have to say on Valentine's Day
Interest an eighth grade boy
When such girls exist
And when other girls exist
For whom one might buy roses,
At least in theory?
And how can a poem about love
Rival love itself:
This real girl in the next seat
Smiling secretly
At the thought
That some of those roses
Might be for her?

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com



Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Reading Update

We had a day off school today because of political unrest, transportation strikes, burning tires in the streets, and such.  I got to do some reading and writing, which was welcome.  Here's the latest reading update:

Book #5 of 2015 was Cress, by Marissa Meyer.  This is the third book in the Lunar Chronicles, science fiction (way more fiction than science) with a fairytale twist.  I enjoyed it very much and am eagerly anticipating the fourth book coming out in November.  I have quite a few students who have been enjoying these books, too.

Books #6 and 7 were Boxers and Saints, graphic novels by Gene Yang about the Boxer Rebellion.  A quick read and it was so interesting to see the two sides of the situation, as we followed the stories of young people in the Boxer camp and the Christian camp. 

Book #8 was Absolute Truths, by Susan Howatch.  This is my favorite book in a favorite series.  I have read all of them at least four or five times.

Book #9 was a Kindle Single, more of an essay than a full-length book, I Murdered My Library, by Linda Grant.  This true tale of moving into a smaller place, and having to get rid of many many books out of a library acquired over a lifetime, resonated painfully with me.  And if you could see my bookshelves, you'd know why.

Book #10 was another short one, Stories, by Rich Bowen, my brother.  I really enjoyed this collection of a few of my brother's stories, and recommend you check it out, too.

Book #11 was Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging, by Marilyn Gardner.  These essays, by a TCK who grew up in Pakistan, touch on loss, culture clashes, identity.  I cried my way through this book. 

Poetry Friday: Keats and Me

It's funny that since choosing "Unafraid" as my One Little Word for 2015, I've done a lot of thinking about fear.  All kinds of fear.

The other day I was thinking about how short life is, and how fast it goes, and how little we leave behind us.  How little I've done, and how little I will leave to my children.  The opening line of Keats' sonnet "When I have fears that I shall cease to be..." came to my mind, and I looked it up.  I had the window open the rest of the week, and the way my laptop abbreviated the title, combined with the poet, did make me giggle a bit.

Ceasing to be, that's one thing.  Ceasing eats...well, that's something else.

Seriously though, I've already lived more than twenty years longer than Keats did.  Turns out he was right to worry about ceasing to be, long before he had written all that he had in him to write, and long before he could share a life with his love.

And yet...Keats recognized there was more than Love and Fame.

Here's the poem:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pil'd books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love: -- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

When Keats had fears like that, he wrote, and writing helps me deal with fears too.  There's something about organizing words that makes me feel more in control.

I've been working through a retelling of the Iliad with my eighth graders, and this week I wrote a poem about Thetis, Achilles' goddess mother, who wanted so much to ensure the perfect safety of her son, and just couldn't, because that's one thing about being human - we cease to be, at least this life we're living ends, and we lose and grieve.  I found this photo of a statue of Thetis (made by Thomas Banks and housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum) dipping her infant son in the River Styx to make him invulnerable.

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thetis_dipping_Achilles_in_the_River_Styx_by_Thomas_Banks_02.jpg

Thetis

Thetis has a simple desire for her baby Achilles:
Immortality.
Not just a baby book with all his milestones carefully entered
Not just professional portraits taken every month
But real immortality.
That’s how she ends up at the entrance to Hell
Where, let’s be honest, we’d all go for our babies.

She looks as though she hasn’t even had time to get dressed,
But just wrapped herself in a sheet before rushing out her door
To do this urgent task,
This ultimate baby proofing.
Her face as she dangles her naked baby in the River Styx is calm and determined,
A bit like a mother gripping her screaming child during a vaccination,
A mother saying, “This is for your own good.”

Oh, Thetis,
If only you realized that as you clutch his little ankle
You are keeping one place from those waters
Which would make him unassailable.
Not only won’t he live forever,
But he’ll die young, as the prophets have foretold.
All your efforts to keep him safe:
Rubbing him down with ambrosia,
Burning away his mortality,
Hiding him in a dress in someone else’s court -
They will all fail.

He will win everlasting fame, of course.
But that is no consolation.
None.

I tell my students that Thetis controls Achilles
And make much of that scene where he goes to her whining,
“If I’m going to die young, the gods owe me whatever I want.”
But in reality, my sympathies are entirely with Thetis,
A mother grieving in advance
The obscene truth
That being human
Precludes invulnerability.

Thetis doesn’t care about Helen or Paris or any of those people in Troy.
She doesn’t care about the horse or the burning towers
Or Homer’s bestseller that will make untold generations sigh over her beautiful, spoiled son.
She simply holds her breath in that eternal moment
When Paris’ arrow pierces Achilles’ heel,
And loss becomes all she has.

by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's this week's Poetry Friday roundup.  

Poetry Friday: Cats Sleep Anywhere

I posted back in October that we got a cat.  We have very limited experience with cats, so we have been figuring out Pangur Ban as we've gone along, from the way she would hide at first so that we thought she had run away to her weird behavior lately that sent us to Google to figure out - oh, in heat already?

This poem, "Cats Sleep Anywhere,"  is one of the first ones my now senior in high school daughter memorized, not because anyone asked her to, but because, sitting in her grandmother's lap, she heard something she loved, and wanted to repeat, and own forever.  I have to confess that I rarely see our cat sleep.  Mostly I see her climbing and stalking and scampering and jumping.  I take blurry photos of her moving, and only occasionally catch her sitting still, let alone sleeping.

But apparently, cats sleep anywhere.  I wish I had a recording of my daughter, at three or even younger, saying in her high, sweet voice, "ANYwhere!  THEY don't care!"

Cats Sleep Anywhere

Cats sleep anywhere, any table, any chair.
Top of piano, window-ledge, in the middle, on the edge.
Open drawer, empty shoe, anybody's lap will do.
Fitted in a cardboard box, in the cupboard with your frocks.
Anywhere! They don't care! Cats sleep anywhere.

Eleanor Farjeon


What poems have you memorized, just because you wanted to keep them forever?

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: NPM Poster

It is always exciting every year when the new National Poetry Month poster is unveiled.  This year's is very different from previous posters.

It will definitely catch the eyes of my middle schoolers.  And the poem, "Eating Poetry," by Mark Strand, is equally fun.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

Here's the rest.

I've been busy all day, and I'm just now getting to post something at almost five.  I'm sure I'm not the first to share the poster!  I'm headed over here to see what everyone else has for today! 

Poetry Friday: Late at Night in Bed

Last night I woke with a scary scenario in my head and then lay awake worrying for a while.  Since my word for this year is "unafraid," I probably shouldn't even admit to these fears.  This poem is about the sounds we hear in the dark, and the way we interpret them, and the truth we keep from new parents, which is: even once your baby sleeps through the night, you won't.  Not like you used to.

Late at Night in Bed

By Gregory Djanikian
 

My wife tells me she hears a beetle   

Scurrying across the kitchen floor.   

She says our daughter is dreaming   

Too loudly, just listen, her eyelids   

Are fluttering like butterflies.

What about the thunder, I say,

What about the dispatches from the police car   

Parked outside, or me rolling over like a whale?

She tells me there’s a leaf falling

And grazing the downstairs window,

Or it could be glass cutters, diamonds,

Thieves working their hands toward the latch.   

She tells me our son is breathing too quickly,   

Is it pneumonia, is it the furnace

Suddenly pumping monoxides through the house?

So when my wife says sleep, she means   

A closing of the eyes, a tuning   

Of the ears to ultra frequencies.

(It is what always happens

When there are children, the bed   

Becoming at night a listening post,   

Each little ting forewarning disaster.) 

 

Here's the rest. 

 

I shared this poem before back in February of 2009.  You can see that post here.

 

And here's today's roundup.

Hold Tight, Don't Let Go

I have read very few earthquake books.  We have several on our shelves about the earthquake that struck Haiti five years ago today, but reading them is more than I can handle yet.  (Here I posted my thoughts about the earthquake book by Amy Wilentz.  Earlier I read Kent Annan's book and wrote about it here.)  I almost didn't read Hold Tight, Don't Let Go, by Laura Rose Wagner.  Ultimately, though, I couldn't resist a YA novel (recommended for Grade 9 and up) about the earthquake, and I pre-ordered it.  It came out on January 6th, and I started reading it right away.

"When it begins," Magdalie tells us, "I am shelling pigeon peas, pwa kongo, into a metal bowl under the almond tree in Madame Faustin's garden.  I sit on the low wooden chair, my knees apart, the unshelled peas nestled in my old yellow skirt, so faded it's almost white....Then, out of nowhere, groans a deep, furious noise, a deafening growl and then a terrible shaking.  The sound and the shaking become one sensation - I can't separate the two - and the world collapses. ...

Everything explodes in white: a chalky cloud of cement powder engulfs me, engulfs the house, engulfs the entire city of Port-au-Prince.  With a roar we are all swallowed.  The house is gone.  The city is gone.  The world is no wider than I am.  I can't see more than inches from my face.  Then the sound of the people rising up in prayer and song - the furious, screaming gratitude of the just saved.  Jezi!  Jezi!  and Mèsi Seyè!  Thank you, Lord!  My knees are bleeding.  The blood is warm.  My bare toes flex, scrape the dust.  Somehow, I am not dead.  The pwa kongo are scattered around me."

We follow Magdalie from this point, as she faces both her grief and the enormous challenges of her new life.  Wagner obviously knows and loves Haiti.  (There are many Creole words sprinkled through the book, and a glossary at the end gives definitions.  There's also a note about Haitian history.)  She does a wonderful job of exploring the terrain of recovering from trauma, both the pain of loss and the joy to be alive.  I loved the descriptions of ordinary Haiti, like a scene early in the book when Magdalie and her cousin Nadine have a manicure emergency in the tent camp where they live.  It's such a perfect illustration of how life goes on even when everything has fallen apart.  Here's a description of their tent home:

"A thick band of sunlight splashes across the inside of our home: the swept-dirt floor, the battered suitcases full of clothes, Tonton Élie's half-fixed circuit boards, and a huge wall calendar, distributed by Prestige beer, featuring two women in bikinis on a beach.  All the noise of the camp flows into our private world: the revving of motorcycle taxis, the bleating of goats, the squalling of babies, the sound of a woman washing her clothes and singing an evangelical hymn."  

Recalling her Manman, Magdalie says, "Manman believed in vodou, and she believed in the Church.  She believed in healing plants and she believed in antibiotics.  Manman could believe in everything.  She had a lot of faith."  Following her Manman's example, Magdalie seeks healing from her quake-induced anger in vodou.  She also faces disappointment and exploitation, and finds friendship, as she tries to find other ways to make her life work out.  Will she get a visa to leave Haiti?  Will she find someone to give her a start so she can finance her education?  Will she figure out whom she can trust, as a young girl in a tent camp?  Will she be able to trust in the future enough to get close to people at all?  "Since January 12," she comments (so accurately), "every good-bye feels like it might be forever."

Wagner doesn't try to hide from the harsh realities of life, but nor does she miss what is beautiful about Haiti.  A trip Magdalie takes to the countryside shows the advantages and disadvantages of city and country living, and how residents of each environment tend to romanticize the other.  Magdalie describes the countryside near Jeremie this way: "There are trees, trees, trees as far as I can see, and a shimmering ocean brighter blue than a Samaritan's Purse tarp."  There is beauty in the city, too: "our camp is beautiful, framed against the dusk, in the darkening pink of the hazy sky."

I think this book succeeds so well because it is such an honest, unblinking portrait of one person's experience.  It doesn't attempt to explain or pontificate, but compassionately shows us Magdalie's life.  The characters are believable, defying categorization just like real people do. While at times the book was painful to read, there was some catharsis through Magdalie's experience.  And I loved it that Wagner ended with a hopeful imagining of Haiti's future in January 2020.  "I am only one witness, of millions," Magdalie says.  "It doesn't matter what I say.  It doesn't change a thing."  And yet her story does help others enter into the depth and complexity of life in Haiti, a country which is so much more than what you see in the news, so much more than "the poorest country in the western hemisphere."

Thank you, Magdalie, and Laura Rose Wagner, for sharing this ugly, beautiful, tragic, redemptive story, and reminding us: "hold tight, don't let go."

This post is linked to the January 16th Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. 

Reading Update

Book #1 of 2015 was Brown Girl Dreaming, a beautifully written verse memoir by Jacqueline Woodson, who grew up in the 60s in South Carolina and New York.  I passed this one straight on to one of my eighth graders, who's enjoying it now. 

Book #2 was The Heart of Haiku, a Kindle Single by Jane Hirshfield.  It's a fascinating and very informative essay about the seventeenth century Japanese poet Basho. 

Book #3 was the new YA novel about the Haitian earthquake, Hold Tight, Don't Let Go, by Laura Rose Wagner.  You can read a review of this book here.

Book #4 was a hilarious and oddly touching "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary novel" called Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn.  The island of Nollop is named for the author of the most famous pangram (a sentence containing all the letters of the alphabet), "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."  When the statue of Nollop begins losing letters, the government decides that each fallen letter must be eliminated from the language.  The characters are forced to compose their letters to one another using fewer and fewer letters.  By the end of the book, the reader understands much better exactly how precious language is, so this charming and funny story makes some clever points about censorship and expression. 

Poetry Friday: Earthquake Vocabulary

Monday will mark five years since the day the earth shook in Haiti and everything changed in our lives.  On January 14th, the first day we got back online, I wrote a post entitled "We are alive."  (You can read it here.)  Over the next several months I told and retold the story on this blog.  (If you look in my archives beginning January 2010, you can read those posts.)  I will be telling and retelling it the rest of my life, in different ways, I am sure.

Everyone is putting out the anniversary articles right now.  I can't bring myself to read most of them.  One has a title like "Five Years After the Earthquake, Haiti is Still on Shaky Ground."  Really?  I can't appreciate clever turns of phrase when thinking about such a heavy, heavy event, and when remembering those who died in that moment.  Forty-seven thousand?  Eighty-five thousand?  Two hundred and thirty thousand?  Three hundred thousand?  All of those figures have been bandied about (see more on that here).  We'll never know how many. 

Here's a poem I wrote back then and posted for the first time in April 2010:

Earthquake Vocabulary

Here are some words I’d rather you not use metaphorically:
seismic,
Richter scale,
epicenter.

Here are some words I used before but shouldn’t have:
devastating,
catastrophe,
disaster.

Here are some words I used to know:
permanent,
stable,
solid.

Here’s a word I thought I knew but really didn’t:
earthquake.

by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


There are times to discuss and evaluate.  But right now it's a time to grieve.  A time to remember that day and the days afterward, when we lived on adrenaline and survivor's guilt and sheer giddy joy to be alive.  A time to mourn those we lost.  A time to marvel that life has gone on for five years, and at the very same moment, to feel that maybe it was yesterday, so fresh are the memories of 4:53 that afternoon.

Tabitha has today's roundup here.

Poetry Friday - One Little Word

I didn't post last week, since we went to Jacmel, in Southern Haiti, for a few days.  We had a beautiful and restful time.  This in-between time, in between years and semesters, is a great time to think back over the past year and the one to come, and I have been spending some time doing that.

Last year I chose the word "Garden" for my One Little Word.  (You can follow links in that post to the other OLWs I have chosen since I started doing this: "Look" in 2009, "Loved" in 2010, "Trust" in 2011, "Heal" in 2012, "Shalom" in 2013.)  I am very dissatisfied with how I did with 2014's word.  I wrote pitifully little last year in general, and hardly any on my chosen theme.  The long, grading-free hours of Christmas break often lead me to think unrealistic thoughts about how productive I'll be in the coming year in my own writing.  So much of my writing energy is focused on reading what my students produce.  I have to write more!  It's on the list of resolutions every single year.

My daughter gave me this book for Christmas, and I'm going to continue, while reading it, to pursue the "Garden" idea.  (I just love these beautiful little Everyman editions.)  Maybe I'll choose the same word again in 2016.

But in the meantime, 2015 will be a year of transition for our family.  The same daughter who gave me the book has been applying to colleges.  She's already been accepted into three and deferred at one (they'll look at her again in the spring).  One of the colleges she's looking at (Barnard) asked applicants to write an essay based on a quote from Anna Quindlen, who said that when she was a student there she "majored in unafraid."  When, the prompt asked, have you majored in unafraid?

I really need to major in unafraid this year, as I send my nearly grown-up baby away to another country.  So my word for 2015 is "Unafraid."

Here's a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins, a very old-fashioned poem about a very up-to-date issue in my life, and maybe yours too, Dear Reader.  The video just shows the beginning, used in the movie, "The Mortal Storm," in 1940.




God Knows
Minnie Louise Haskins

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.

God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

Miss Rumphius is hosting our roundup today.   Go take a look at what others have posted on this first Poetry Friday of 2015!

Reading Update

We're back from a few days at the beach in time to celebrate the end of this year and the beginning of the next. Here are the last five books of 2014. If I finish another one today, I'll add it to 2015's tally.

Book #59 was The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann.  I've been reading these sermons all year, and finding them nourishing to my soul.  Highly recommended.

Book #60 was another Anthony Trollope book, the last one in the Barchester series, The Last Chronicle of Barset.  This wraps up some of the story lines we've been following through the whole series.  These books are satisfying to read, and I have many more still, even though this first series is done!

Book #61 was He's Gone, by Deb Caletti.  This was a fascinating examination of a marriage, undertaken by a woman whose husband has disappeared mysteriously.

Book #62 was The Secret Country, by Pamela Dean.  I read this at my daughter's recommendation, and I didn't like it as much as she did.

Book #63 was Speak Love: Making Your Words Matter, by Annie F. Downs.   There's lots of good, encouraging stuff here aimed at teenage girls.

Here are my other Reading Updates of the year:

Books #1 & 2
Books #3-19
Books #20-35
Books #36-49
Books #50-52
Books #53-58

I linked this post to Semicolon's annual post where people can share their reading lists from the year about to end.  Go and see what other people have read this year here.

Poetry Friday: Grief

I can't stop thinking about those parents in Pakistan who are burying their children this week.  And of the parents from Newtown, whose terrible anniversary rolled around last week.  And of parents around the world who are grieving the loss of a child, including some whom I know.  Kay Warren, whose son committed suicide last year, published an article this month about how the cards and letters so many people send this time of year, with photos of their perfect families, cause extra pain. 

Shakespeare, who himself lost an eleven year old son, writes about loss in the play King John.  This speech comes from Constance:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.
I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!

I read a news story in which one of the women in Peshawar spoke of her son getting up and getting ready to go to school to take his exams - and then not coming home.  She mentioned that her husband had already died.  And now her "widow-comfort," taken too. 

It is no comfort that this pain crosses boundaries of time, nation, religion - but how is it that we never learn, and that losses that we human beings could prevent continue to happen?  They happen, and then all we can do is try to give "better comfort."

Buffy, who is hosting this week's roundup, is focusing on light in darkness.  I'm afraid I've added more to the darkness than to the light with this week's contribution, but go and read what other people have shared, and I'm sure you will find something more festive!

Reading Update

The year is winding down, and it's almost time for the end-of-year reading lists.  I don't know how many more books I'll finish, but here's the latest:

Book #53 of the year was Lay It on My Heart, by Angela Pneuman.  I was in college with Angela and was pretty excited to see her new book favorably reviewed in O Magazine.  I found it riveting, disturbing, and unforgettable.  The book skewers the evangelical world in a way that is both uncomfortable and compelling.  The last scene, especially, will stay with me.

Book #54 was a reread, Mystical Paths, by Susan Howatch.  I wrote a bit about the series in this post.

Book #55 was Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You, by John Ortberg.  This is largely a tribute to Ortberg's friend and mentor, Dallas Willard, who died recently.  It is a quick but deep read, worth going back to.

Book #56 was another reread, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen.  The link is to the audio version I listened to while exercising.  It is read by Maureen O'Brien and is wonderful. 

Book #57 was Rob Bell's new book on marriage, written with his wife, Kristen.  It's called The Zimzum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage.  I read it aloud to my husband, and while it may not be "a new way of understanding marriage," which is rather a large claim, the zimzum idea is interesting and cool.  We enjoyed thinking and talking about it.  The zimzum could be used to talk about the space between people in any relationship, really, but the Bells focus on marriage in their definition of it as responsive, dynamic, exclusive, and sacred.  I liked the conversational way the book was written, with Rob and Kristen both contributing.  The examples from their relationship were fun.  Probably most of my readers already know what they think of Bell.  Some wouldn't pick up anything he writes.  (Full disclosure: I love to hear him preach.  He's a poet and a master communicator.)  But if you're seeking evidence for his defection from your average evangelical party line, look no further than the first chapter, where we are told: "Marriage has the uniquely powerful capacity to transform you both into more loving and generous and courageous and compassionate people.  Marriage - gay and straight - is a gift to the world because the world needs more - not less - love, fidelity, commitment, devotion and sacrifice."  That is the last time the g-word is mentioned, and the pronoun use throughout is exquisitely careful.  Other than that one line, I really don't think there's much here that any evangelical would quibble at.  The book doesn't go into gender roles at all, and given how dreadfully other marriage books have done at that one, I say, hooray!  It doesn't go much into the gospel, either, though there's a reference to John 3:16, concluding: "Divine love is the kind of love that does something."  Next we're going to read aloud Tim Keller's marriage book that he wrote with his wife (that's a thing right now, apparently, writing a marriage book with your wife - maybe my husband and I will try it!).  I'll let you know how that one goes.

Book #58 is the eighth - yes, eighth! - in a serious of massive books.  And the series isn't over yet!  I borrowed Written in My Own Heart's Blood, by Diana Gabaldon, from a library in the States (I've recently figured out how to do this on my Kindle), but I found the two weeks allotted to read it were not sufficient during a busy time of the school year, and I ended up buying it so I could finish it.  At the time I purchased it, there was a deep discount on it.  I remarked when I read the seventh book (post here) that I kind of had to force myself to finish it, feeling that I'd invested so much of my life in these characters that I was obligated not to give up now.  I didn't feel the same about this one.  It was enjoyable, and I hope it doesn't take five years for the next one to be published!

There are a couple more I'm working on that I might finish before the end of the year.  We'll see!

Poetry Friday: Mark Doty

I shared this poem back in 2011, and I thought it was time for an encore.  I love the way Doty juxtaposes the sublime music and the very ordinary, familiar performers in this local production of The Messiah. 

Messiah (Christmas Portions)

By Mark Doty

 

A little heat caught

in gleaming rags,

in shrouds of veil,

   torn and sun-shot swaddlings:

   over the Methodist roof,

two clouds propose a Zion

of their own, blazing

   (colors of tarnish on copper)

   against the steely close

of a coastal afternoon, December,

while under the steeple

   the Choral Society

   prepares to perform

Messiah, pouring, in their best

blacks and whites, onto the raked stage.

   Not steep, really,

   but from here,

the first pew, they’re a looming

cloudbank of familiar angels:

   that neighbor who

   fights operatically

with her girlfriend, for one,

and the friendly bearded clerk

   from the post office

   —tenor trapped

in the body of a baritone? Altos

from the A&P, soprano

   from the T-shirt shop:

   today they’re all poise,

costume and purpose

conveying the right note

   of distance and formality. 

 

Here's the rest. 

 

And here's today's roundup. 

Poetry Friday: Grading

I can't really think about poetry today, except that written by my middle schoolers, which I shall now be reading (along with their prose), in bulk, for the next several days.  This poem is appropriate, except that my creative, funny, original kids have chosen their own topics, and their writing will therefore be much more entertaining reading than what George Bilgere is avoiding. 

Robert Frost

by George Bilgere

Over there on the dining room table
are just twenty-five of the thousands of essays
on the poetry of Robert Frost
produced this week alone in the USA,
the world leader in essays on Robert Frost.

The essays are about ambiguity
in The Road Not Taken, and also ambiguity
in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

Every year the English majors of America
must read these poems and analyze their ambiguity
or compare and contrast their ambiguity
in five double-spaced pages.

Here's the rest, at the Writer's Almanac.

And here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Praise!

Perhaps what I am most thankful for this Thanksgiving is some rest and time off.  So this poem seems appropriate:

In Praise of My Bed

by Meredith Holmes
 

At last I can be with you!

The grinding hours

since I left your side!

The labor of being fully human,

working my opposable thumb,

talking, and walking upright.

 

Here's the rest.   (Don't worry - it's short.  You'll still have time for a nap.)

Here's today's roundup.  Happy Day After Thanksgiving!