Poetry Month: Day 30

Today is the last day of National Poetry Month, and here is the entire Progressive Poem:

P.T. BARNUM'S GREAT TRAVELING MUSEUM, MENAGERIE, CARAVAN, AND HIPPODROME
by Thirty Poets on a mission in the Kidlitosphere 

When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music and
the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.
Your pen starts dancing across the page
a private pirouette, a solitary samba until
smiling, you’re beguiling as your love comes shining through.

Pause a moment in your dreaming, hear the whispers
of the words, one dancer to another, saying
Listen, that’s our cue! Mind your meter. Find your rhyme.
Ignore the trepidation while you jitterbug and jive.
Arm in arm, toe to toe, words begin to wiggle and flow
as your heart starts singing let your mind keep swinging

from life’s trapeze, like a clown on the breeze.
Swinging upside down, throw and catch new sounds–
Take a risk, try a trick; break a sweat: safety net?
Don’t check! You’re soaring and exploring,
dangle high, blood rush; spiral down, crowd hush–
limb-by-line-by-limb envision, pyramidic penned precision.

And if you should topple, if you should flop
if your meter takes a beating; your rhyme runs out of steam—
know this tumbling and fumbling is all part of the act,
so get up with a flourish. Your pencil’s still intact.
Snap those synapses! Feel the pulsing through your pen
Commit, measure by measure, to the coda’s cadence.

You've got them now--in the palm of your hand!
Finger by finger you’re reeling them in—
Big Top throng refrains from cheering, strains to hear the poem nearing…
Inky paws, uncaged, claw straw and sawdust
Until… CRACK! You’re in the center ring, mind unleashed, your words take wing--
they circle, soar, then light in the lap of an open-mouthed child; the crowd goes wild.


Here are the poets who contributed:

April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

It's been fun!  Let's do it again next year!

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Nine

Can you believe how fast this month went?  Tomorrow is the last line of the progressive poem.  Here's today's line.

Poetry Month: Day 29

Walls are everywhere here in Haiti.  They surround people's property and are often topped with razor wire.  Something there is that doesn't love a wall, for sure.  When people's walls fell down in the earthquake, neighbors could glimpse other lives, but for security's sake, the walls went right back up.  Maybe some day I will write a poem about walls in Haiti, and if so, I hope it has a tiny fraction of the metaphoric resonance in this one, by the master, Robert Frost.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Robert Frost

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Eight

Wow!  Laura Purdie Salas nailed it with today's line!  Can't wait to see what the last two poets do. 

The Progressive Poem is Here: Poetry Month Day 27

The 27th seemed like a long way away when I agreed to it, and yet here it is already.  As someone else mentioned, last year's line seemed less daunting since I was so much earlier in the poem,  line fifteen. 

I've worked on this line a long time, scribbling many versions of it.  I knew I wanted some internal rhyme, since I'm the third line in the stanza, and all the third lines in all the stanzas have done that.  And as I read and reread the poem, the image I was getting was more and more of a circus, what with the clown, the trapeze, and of course, all the dancers.  All the rapping and tapping and swinging and singing and fumbling and tumbling is coming to an end, and the group act - the poem itself - is on its way.  The audience is on the edge of its seats.

So here it is.  I hope you like it, fellow Progressive Poets, and especially Laura, who's next.


When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music and
the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.
Your pen starts dancing across the page
a private pirouette, a solitary samba until
smiling, you’re beguiling as your love comes shining through.

Pause a moment in your dreaming, hear the whispers
of the words, one dancer to another, saying
Listen, that’s our cue! Mind your meter. Find your rhyme.
Ignore the trepidation while you jitterbug and jive.
Arm in arm, toe to toe, words begin to wiggle and flow
as your heart starts singing let your mind keep swinging

from life’s trapeze, like a clown on the breeze.
Swinging upside down, throw and catch new sounds–
Take a risk, try a trick; break a sweat: safety net?
Don’t check! You’re soaring and exploring,
dangle high, blood rush; spiral down, crowd hush–
limb-by-line-by-limb envision, pyramidic penned precision.

And if you should topple, if you should flop
if your meter takes a beating; your rhyme runs out of steam—
know this tumbling and fumbling is all part of the act,
so get up with a flourish. Your pencil’s still intact.
Snap those synapses! Feel the pulsing through your pen
Commit, measure by measure, to the coda’s cadence.

You've got them now--in the palm of your hand!
Finger by finger you’re reeling them in—
Big Top throng refrains from cheering, strains to hear the poem nearing...



Photo Source: GreatestFoolsCircus.blogspot.com

Here are the places the circus act has been already, and where it's going next:

April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland




 

Poetry Friday: To a Frustrated Poet

I believe the technical term for what I'm doing today is Freaking Out.  I started the day with twelve things on my to-do list, and I'm talking Big Things, like three different events at which I have to speak, and fifty-one timed writing prompts to grade.  At this point, five thirty in the afternoon, six of the things are crossed off my list, which I would feel pretty good about, except that there are still six more, and one of them, you guys, is that I have to add a line to the Progressive Poem tomorrow!  Look at it here, and see how Robin casually tosses it to me at the end, saying, "All yours, Ruth!" As though I know what I'm doing.

Breathe.

So anyway, I was looking in Garrison Keillor's anthology Good Poems for Hard Times, and I found this great poem to share today.


To a Frustrated Poet
R. J. Ellmann

This is to say
I know
You wish you were in the woods,
Living the poet life,
Not here at a formica topped table
In a meeting about perceived inequalities in the benefits and allowances offered to employees of this college.
And I too wish you were in the woods,
Because it's no fun having a frustrated poet
In the Dept. of Human Resources, believe me.

Read the rest of it, and find out what happens to the frustrated poet (and what I really don't want to happen to me, no matter how daunting my to-do list) here.

Here's what I've posted since last Friday in honor of Poetry Month:  on Saturday, a Shakespeare sonnet, on Sunday, a Sarah Orne Jewett poem about staying home from church, on Monday a whole mess of excuses, on Tuesday fangirl babblings about meeting Poetry Friday poets at IRA, on Wednesday a celebration of my blog birthday a day late with another Shakespeare sonnet, and on Thursday a Ted Kooser poem on what I later found out was his birthday.

Now off to hyperventilate some more.  I hope to have some time later this weekend to read  today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Month: Day 25

This is today's Poem of the Day at Poetry Foundation, and I couldn't resist it.


In the Basement of the Goodwill Store
by Ted Kooser

In musty light, in the thin brown air   

of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,   

beneath long rows of sharp footfalls   

like nails in a lid, an old man stands   

trying on glasses, lifting each pair

from the box like a glittering fish   

and holding it up to the light

of a dirty bulb.

Here's the rest.

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Five

Here's today's line.



Here's the whole poem so far. I get to add to it on Saturday.



When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music and
the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.
Your pen starts dancing across the page
a private pirouette, a solitary samba until
smiling, you’re beguiling as your love comes shining through.

Pause a moment in your dreaming, hear the whispers
of the words, one dancer to another, saying
Listen, that’s our cue! Mind your meter. Find your rhyme.
Ignore the trepidation while you jitterbug and jive.
Arm in arm, toe to toe, words begin to wiggle and flow
as your heart starts singing let your mind keep swinging

from life’s trapeze, like a clown on the breeze.
Swinging upside down, throw and catch new sounds–
Take a risk, try a trick; break a sweat: safety net?
Don’t check! You’re soaring and exploring,
dangle high, blood rush; spiral down, crowd hush–
limb-by-line-by-limb envision, pyramidic penned precision.

And if you should topple, if you should flop
if your meter takes a beating; your rhyme runs out of steam—
know this tumbling and fumbling is all part of the act,
so get up with a flourish. Your pencil’s still intact.
Snap those synapses! Feel the pulsing through your pen
Commit, measure by measure, to the coda’s cadence.

You've got them now--in the palm of your hand!

Poetry Month: Day 24

I was babbling so excitedly yesterday about meeting Poetry Friday friends in San Antonio that I didn't even mention the fact that it was my Blog Birthday.  I started blogging on April 23rd, 2006, so yesterday marked seven years.  It was also Shakespeare's birthday, so I decided to post some Shakespeare.  I've shared many of his sonnets here, but never this one, and its references to age seem appropriate.  He says the only thing we can do, faced with the inevitable depredations of time, is to have kids.  When we're gone, they'll be there to carry on.

Not very cheerful, I suppose, but still beautiful, even though the violet is "past prime, and sable curls, all silvered o'er with white."  I think what's making me think this way is that my hotel bathroom in San Antonio had much brighter lights than my bathroom at home.  I was quite startled by how old I looked in the mirror.  

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
      And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
   Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Four

Here's today's line. I'm getting more and more nervous as my day, the 27th, gets closer!





April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

Poetry Month: Day 23

I've been up since three this morning traveling, and now I'm home and exhausted.  But I'm still excited about the chance I had while in San Antonio to meet some Poetry Friday people whose blogs I have been reading for years.

I had posted last week that I was going to the IRA convention and wondered whether any of the Poetry Friday bloggers would be there.  Irene Latham wrote me an email giving me some names of people who would. I went to post a comment on Amy's blog and found that she was doing a session with Sylvia Vardell and Joyce Sidman and Janet Wong, so I planned to go to that. Then Mary Lee sent me her phone number, and when we talked, she told me she'd be at that session too.

I went to the session, which was one of the best of the whole convention.  They were talking about this book:

I had already bought it for my Kindle, but was excited to win another copy at the end of the session. I would much rather work with the paper copy, anyway.  All the presenters talked about simple and non-time-consuming ways to use these poems, while still meeting Standards,  the new be-all and end-all of education.  (The photo here is of the Texas edition of the book; there's also an edition with Common Core standards.)  The anthology is full of beautiful poems.  It was fabulous to hear Janet, Amy, and Joyce read. 

Even better than the session itself, though, was meeting the people who were there.  At the beginning, when Sylvia was asking who was from Texas and who was from elsewhere, Amy shouted out, "Who is from Haiti?"  I waved my arms.

When it was over, we took photos and I enjoyed putting faces to names.   Also there was indefatigable commenter Janet F., soon-to-be blogger and already cheerleader for poetry.

The whole way through the conference I felt I was with "my people": folks who love reading and books and think literacy is among the most important gifts there is.  I felt that especially in the poetry session.  I'm so thankful for the community we can build on the internet, for what I can learn from these amazing poets, and for their kindness to me.  

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Three

Here's today's line.

 

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Two AND Poetry Month: Day 22

Here's today's line.

I have to get up at three tomorrow morning to start the journey back to Haiti, so I am not going to do a full post on today's goings-on (internet troubles and doing touristy things this afternoon prevented posting).  I'll just say that it was pretty exciting to meet several Poetry Friday people today at the IRA conference.  

More on that when I get home. 

Poetry Month: Day 21

At Home from Church

By Sarah Orne Jewett
 

The lilacs lift in generous bloom

   Their plumes of dear old-fashioned flowers;

Their fragrance fills the still old house

   Where left alone I count the hours.

High in the apple-trees the bees

   Are humming, busy in the sun,—

An idle robin cries for rain

   But once or twice and then is done.

The Sunday-morning quiet holds

   In heavy slumber all the street,

While from the church, just out of sight

   Behind the elms, comes slow and sweet

The organ’s drone, the voices faint

   That sing the quaint long-meter hymn—

I somehow feel as if shut out

   From some mysterious temple, dim

And beautiful with blue and red

   And golden lights from windows high,

Where angels in the shadows stand

   And earth seems very near the sky.

The day-dream fades—and so I try

   Again to catch the tune that brings

No thought of temple nor of priest,

   But only of a voice that sings.

I don't know why Sara Orne Jewett stayed home from church, but I know why I didn't go to church this morning.  I was at the IRA convention.  A few times today I thought, "Wow!  Today is Sunday!"  It's an odd feeling to someone who is used to Sunday being special, spent both in going to church and in relaxing at home.

I'm planning a post about the IRA sessions I attended once I get home and can reflect some. 

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-One

Here's today's line. My time to participate is getting closer...



April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

Poetry Month: Day 20

The first day of the IRA conference was great; I'll post more later about the individual sessions.  When thinking about what poem to post, I recalled that the most commonly used words today were "power" and "powerful."  Reading is powerful, connections with texts are powerful, teachers have power to affect students in ways that may not become apparent for years.  Here's Shakespeare's take on the power we have and how we choose to use it.

Sonnet XCIV: They that have Power to Hurt and will do None

By William Shakespeare

 

They that have power to hurt and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:

They rightly do inherit heaven's graces

And husband nature's riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,

Others but stewards of their excellence.

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet

Though to itself it only live and die,

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. 

Here's to using our power as teachers wisely, doing no harm.  Here's to the joy of reading, and talking about what we read.  Here's to going to bed after a long and busy day of learning!

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty

Here is the twentieth line of the poem!

Poetry Friday: The Alamo

It's my first time in San Antonio, and Jean, the teacher I'm traveling with, is here for the first time too. So what did we do today? We went and picked up our registration materials for the IRA conference we're attending, and then we went to Target.  When you live in Haiti, and you're in the States for five days, there are just some things you have to buy.  We're hoping to go to the Alamo this evening before it closes.  In the meantime, here's a poem about it.

Are any of you Poetry Friday people going to be here at the International Reading Association conference this week?  If so, it would be great to meet you.  Leave a message in the comments!

Within the Alamo

He drew a straight line
Across the dirt floor:
Within, it was death-still--
Without, was a roar
And a scream of the trumpets:
Within, was a Word--
And a line drawn clean
By the sweep of a sword.
No help was coming, now--
That hope was done.
No more the free air,
no more the sun
Bright on the blue leagues
Of buffalo-clover.
Travis drew a line
And they all crossed over.
Travis had a wife at home,
Travis was young;
Travis had a little boy
Whose tight arms clung,
But Travis saw a far light
Shining before:
Travis drew a sword-cut
Across the dirt floor.

And now the old fort stands
Placid and dim,
Blinking and dreaming
Of them and of him;
And now past the Plaza
Other tides roar,
since Travis wrote "Valor"
Across the sand floor,
And the guns they will rust,
And the captains will go,
And an end come at last
To the wars that we know,
But as long as there travails
A Spirit in man,
In a war that was ancient
Before Time began,
Here will the brave come
To read a high Word--
Cut clean in the dust
By the stroke of a sword.

Karle Wilson Baker

Here's are my Poetry Month posts since last Friday: on Saturday I shared "The Love-Hat Relationship," by Aaron Belz, on Sunday I missed a day (I was sick and we had electricity issues at home), on Monday I linked to Robbie's posting of Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "Boston,", on Tuesday I mentioned the poetry reading I'd participated in that evening, on Wednesday I shared Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Pied Beauty", and on Thursday I was leaving on a jet plane, complete with video. Bonus: a link to Edwidge Danticat's beautiful essay about the Catholic cathedrals in Port-au-Prince, the one that was destroyed in the earthquake, and the one that is going to replace it. And the lines to the Progressive Poem, of course. Today you can find it, and the roundup, at Irene Latham's blog here.

Progressive Poem - Line Eighteen

We traveled all day, for almost 18 hours, but I had to make a quick stop in before going to bed to link you to today's line. Glad to be in San Antonio. Back tomorrow for Poetry Friday!

Poetry Month - Day 18

Yep, I'm leaving on a jet plane today, headed for the IRA conference in San Antonio.  I've been singing this song my whole life; my parents tell me that when I was four, it was my favorite.



I do know when I'll be back again - next week.  I'll try to keep posting while I'm there, but I'll be pretty busy attending great sessions and book signings and taking hot showers and shopping in the U.S. of A. 

(I'm pretty sure that's #10 Downing Street in the video. That's not where I live, by the way.)