Sunshine!

It's been three weeks since Irene Latham nominated me for a Sunshine Award.  Thanks, Irene!  I've had her post open on my desktop ever since, and in that time, although I have graded a bazillion pieces of student work, attended two in-services, taught umpteen classes, hosted a guest in my home, and spent time with family and friends, I somehow haven't gotten around to passing on the sunshine.  So here goes...

Here are the rules...

1. Acknowledge the nominating bloggers
2. Share 11 random facts about yourself
3. Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger creates for you
4. List 11 bloggers
5. Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer and let all the bloggers know they've been nominated.  (You cannot nominate the blogger who nominated you.)

I already did the first one, acknowledging Irene.  I enjoyed reading her post and learning more about her. 

Eleven random facts about me?  Hmm...

1.  I drink at least one cup of tea a day, usually two or three.
2.  I love learning foreign languages.  I've studied French, German, Latin, Haitian Creole, Swahili, and a tiny bit of Greek (a very long time ago).  I speak French and Haitian Creole well enough to use them in my life nearly every day.
3.  I love garlic.
4.  I got a Kindle for Christmas just over three years ago, and while I didn't think I would like it very much, I now do a huge amount of my reading on it.  I am hooked on how easy it is to get books immediately when I want them, without shipping costs and customs charges.
5.  Related to #4: I am addicted to books.  In addition to the many on my Kindle, I have piles of them on my bedside table and two deep on bookcases around my house.
6.  I love music and usually have some playing.  Right now I think my favorite is the Civil Wars.
7.  I have lived in five countries (defining "lived" as at least a month, which allows me to include France, where I studied for nine weeks when I was in college).
8.  I once spent a night on a houseboat in Amsterdam.  (It was a lot less scandalous than it sounds.)
9.  I love snails in garlic butter.  (See #3.)
10.  I don't like heights, but I love to fly.
11.  I like to shop at Goodwill with my daughter.

OK, now to Irene's questions.

1.  Favorite food to bring to a potluck event?  Something my husband made.   We often take inarizushi. 

Source: http://japanese-kitchen.net/inarizushi-recipe/

2.  What do you do to relieve stress?  Drink a cup of tea, read, write, cry, ride my exercise bike.

3.   Favorite quote?  Oh, goodness, I don't know.  I've been reading a lot of Walter Brueggemann lately, and here's something from one of his Christmas sermons that I love: 

"The skies are always filled with bombers, but Christmas is the incredible affirmation that the skies at the important moment are not filled with bombers, which is our symbol for weary business as usual.  Just then the skies are filled with angels, voices of another announcement about something God has decided.  That is what Christmas is about, the perception that the skies are not filled with bombs, but with angels."

4.  What is the story behind your name?  I am named after both my grandmothers.

5.  Chore you abhor?  Cleaning out the fridge.  My husband always does it.

6.  Cinderella or Snow White?  Definitely Cinderella.  

7.  Do you plan blog posts ahead of time, or real-time posts only?  Both.  I really like to plan a bunch ahead, when I have time.

8.  Other social media you enjoy?  I love Facebook.  I wrote here about what a lifeline it was after the earthquake.

9.   Introverted or extroverted?  On the Myers-Briggs I came out right in the middle.  I play an extrovert in my classroom, and I do often find myself energized by people.  But I would definitely classify myself as an introvert.  Teaching takes a lot out of me and I need plenty of down-time to recharge.  

10.  Title of the last book you gave as a gift?  I gave lots of books for Christmas.  One, to my husband, was Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, by Tom Mueller.  This is the kind of book he enjoys - he likes to learn about subjects in-depth, and especially food-related subjects like this one.  

11.  Happiness is...a big mug of chai, a book to read, and no grading to do.

Eleven bloggers I'd like to give the Sunshine Award:

1.  Jessica at One Wild and Precious Life

2.  Janet at Across the Page

3.  Laura at Author Amok

4.  Sarah at Sister Sarah's Excellent Adventure

5.  Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup   

6.  Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference

7.  Carie at Practicing Sanity  

8.  Monique at Crumpets in Camelot

9.  Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe

10.  Linda at TeacherDance   

11.  Ashley at Steps in Haiti

These are all blogs I like to read, and if nothing else, there's a list of great blogs you can check out.  But I don't know that they'll thank me for nominating them, because this post is taking me a LONG time to write...

Anyway, here are eleven questions for these bloggers, should they choose to participate (no pressure):

1.  What's your favorite song right now?

2.  What made you decide to start blogging?

3.  What's your favorite post you've ever written?  (Link, please!)

4.  What's a book you've given (or loaned) to multiple people because you love it so much?

5.  What Hogwarts house would you be in?

6.  What's your comfort food of choice?

7.  What book character would you like to have lunch with?

8.  What's your favorite podcast?

9.  What's a movie you've watched many times?

10.  What are your favorite clothes to wear?

11.  What's a book on your wish list?  

Now I'm going to hit Publish and then go inform all my lucky nominees!     

Poetry Friday: Surprise!

Yesterday as part of our weekly mail delivery, I got an unexpected package.  Since my birthday is coming up, I thought maybe it was a  birthday present, so I had my daughter pre-open it, just in case.  "No," she said as she studied it, "it looks like a present, but not a birthday present.  I think it's from a poetry person."

It was!  Irene Latham sent me this:

It looks kind of like a box of seeds, but this is what it really is:

Irene said she found this puzzle while she was cleaning out her basement, and immediately thought of me because of my One Little Word this year, garden.  She also sent two poems, beautifully printed on a bookmark and a postcard.  Here's the postcard poem, and it will be my offering for today's Poetry Friday:

Irene's surprise gift made my day, and I love her poem.  She is definitely someone with a "deliberate, unmittened heart."

Happy Poetry Friday!  Check out the roundup here!

Poetry Friday: Green Garden

My daughter sent me this song this week, saying she thought I'd like it.  I do.  People up north are longing for green because the ground is covered in snow; here, we're longing for green because it hasn't rained since who remembers when, and the ground is covered in dust.  So as we all dream of green, here's Laura Mvula.



Here are the lyrics:

Take me outside, sit in the green garden
Nobody out there, but it’s okay now
Bathe in the sunlight, don't mind if rain falls
Take me outside, sit in the green garden
Oh ah, oh ah oh
Oh ah, oh ah oh

And I’ll fly on the wings of a butterfly
High as a tree top and down again
Putting my bag down, taking my shoes off
Walk on the carpet of green velvet

Dance in my garden like we used to
Oh ah, oh ah oh
Dance in my garden like we used to
Oh ah, oh ah oh

Take me outside, sit in the green garden
Nobody out there, but it’s okay now
Bathe in the sunlight, don't mind if rain falls
Take me outside, sit in the green garden

I’ll go wherever you go
Wherever you take me, I’ll go
I’ll go wherever you go
Wherever you take me, I’ll go

Take me outside, sit in the green garden
Take me outside, sit in the green garden

And I’ll fly on the wings of a butterfly
High as a tree top and down again
Putting my bag down, taking my shoes off
Walk on the carpet of green velvet

Dance in my garden like we used to
Oh ah, oh ah oh
Dance in my garden like we used to

Take me outside, take me outside
Take me outside, sit in the green garden

I'll go wherever you go
Wherever you take me, I'll go


Here's today's roundup. 

Poetry Friday: The Snowman

I'm thinking about gardens this year, but I decided it's time to acknowledge, on behalf of my northern friends who keep posting snow photos, that many gardens are dormant right now.  I don't have the mind of winter; I'm a tropical girl all the way.  But when I read this poem, and imagine having been cold a long time, I think I start to see what Wallace Stevens means.  At least a little bit.
 
The Snowman

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

Here's today's roundup.

Reading Update

Book #1 of the year was The Kingmaker's Daughter, by Philippa Gregory.  I don't get into these Wars of the Roses books as much as I do the Tudor ones, mostly because I am far more familiar with the Tudor history.  But this was worth reading.

Book #2 was a book I've been wanting to read ever since I saw that it had come out: Amy Wilentz's Farewell, Fred Voodoo.  I enjoy Wilentz's writing about Haiti; she loves this country, and her writing style is colorful and evocative, full of telling details.  Her most famous book is The Rainy Season, which came out in 1990.  I read it before I came to Haiti for the first time.  She has written countless articles on this country.  Her blog is always worth reading.  In this book she is less confident; she seems to be floundering, trying, like all of us, to come up with ways to live with the fact of the earthquake and its aftermath.  She questions everyone's motives (her own too, in powerful passages), and sometimes this got to be too much for me.  I found myself alternately sad, angry, and defensive.  She spends a lot of time trying to figure out what draws outsiders to Haiti and what holds them here.  I think all of us foreigners who live here do the same.  I can't argue with lots of her conclusions, but I couldn't stomach her suggestion that aid workers were gleeful to find out about cholera, because they could stay longer in their fancy Port-au-Prince digs: "it sounded breathless, almost eager: beyond the sadness of 'tragedy upon tragedy' is the possibility of more funding for aid organizations, more jobs, longer stays in this fascinating, troubled place - in nice new apartments, driving those big, air-conditioned Land Rovers.  It's not as if humanitarian workers are in the business for the big cars and nice apartments, but the sweet stuff comes with the territory, and the crisis caravan is used to it."  She seems obsessed with Sean Penn, and keeps coming back to him and what he's actually doing in Haiti.  She admits (rather grudgingly) that he has achieved a lot.  It's typical for journalists to be critical of those they write about, but I kept wondering, as she almost mockingly described one effort after another: what are they supposed to do, then?  (She doesn't know, she admits in a couple of places.  And honestly, nobody does.)  She says that people who complain about the corruption of the Haitian government are at least partly motivated by racism, but then in the next breath, gives examples of the corruption.  She is absolutely right that change has to come from within, not imposed by outsiders.  I found this book pretty painful to read, but probably much of that was the state I am in rather than anything wrong with the book itself.  The fourth anniversary of the quake rolled around last week, and I am less capable than ever of summing it all up, figuring it all out.  Wilentz feels the same, to a certain degree, and I think the best writing in this book is in the sections where she admits just how overwhelming it all is. 

Poetry Friday: Evacuation

Four years ago yesterday, I left Haiti for the United States, five days after the earthquake.  I blogged back then about all the reasons we made the decision, and about my guilt over leaving Haiti when there was so much need for help.  But that was what happened: my husband stayed and did relief work, and I left with the children. 

A few weeks after arriving in the United States, I got a phone call from a doctor friend who had also left Haiti after the earthquake, after working around the clock for days and days with no rest.  He was going back, but meanwhile he wanted to see how I was.  He and his family were going through this for the second time; they had left Rwanda during the genocide, expecting to return to their home in a month.  They never went back.  He started talking about packing his bag to leave Rwanda, and how he had packed underwear and socks, and later wished so much he had packed things that mattered, instead. 

Later, my own experience and that conversation turned into this poem.


How to Pack an Evacuation Bag

So you're going to be evacuated in eight hours
And you can just take one small bag.

Don't worry about a toothbrush -
You can buy one of those on the other side.
But you'll need the bracelets you like to wear
And your kids' baby pictures.

Don't pack underwear and socks -
They have those where you're going.
Instead, take the vaccination records
And the birth certificates and passports
And all the proof that you exist.
Because believe me, you're going to feel as though you don't.

And let me tell you what you're really going to need during the months of exile:
The smell of garlic
The way the sun feels on your back
The sounds of generators and roosters and kompa music
The taste of sos pwa
And your husband's kiss.

But I forgot;
You can just take one small bag.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's today's roundup. 

Anniversary

Four years ago today, an earthquake changed my life, and the lives of millions of others.  It ended the lives of many thousands.  On this anniversary, the depth of the pain takes me a little bit by surprise, given how much we have all moved on.  I go days without thinking of the earthquake now.  But although the literal aftershocks stopped long ago, the metaphorical ones continue.

Dear Haiti, we will never forget. 

Poetry Friday: Paths

I love the particularity of this poem by John Montague, in which he remembers the two gardens of his childhood, gardens of which he was the "small guardian."  One was a flower garden, and the other a vegetable garden: "the front for beauty, the back for use."  This poem captures so many small details that I feel as though I can wander through these gardens with him in his memory.

Paths
John Montague

We had two gardens.

A real flower garden

overhanging the road

(our miniature Babylon).

Paths which I helped

to lay with Aunt Winifred,

riprapped with pebbles;

shards of painted delph;

an old potato boiler;

a blackened metal pot,

now bright with petals. 

 

You can read the rest here. And you can see today's roundup here.

My Garden

I have some free time on Tuesday mornings, which usually is great, but today, as I wait to see my kids for the first time since their Christmas break, I am at loose ends and strangely nervous.  I started thinking about this passage in The Wednesday Wars, by Gary Schmidt, a book I read with my seventh graders back in the fall.  A seventh grader is speaking about his teacher and their class:

"It was early spring and we were her garden, and she was starting to see the bulbs and seeds that she had planted in us last fall coming up.  She raked away our dead leaves, spaded new soil around us, and watered and fertilized.  And we grew fast and green, let me tell you."

I'm ready to get back to the gardening!

Poetry Friday: God's Garden

The fourth stanza of this poem is very familiar, since it appears on many garden signs. I found this one on Ebay.

I'm not sure, though, that I had ever read the rest of the poem.  I found out that Dorothy Frances Gurney wrote this originally in a guest book, after she had enjoyed a stay with a friend who had a beautiful garden.  In fact, it was this garden, Penshurst Place in Kent.  Having a garden like that requires rather a large staff!

This may seem a bit of an inappropriate poem for this time of year, but here in Haiti where I live it is still beautiful weather, though a bit chilly right now, at 75 degrees.  It is supposed to get up to 93 later today.  (Do I sound smug?  Sorry.  I just can't help it sometimes.)  I don't have to go back to work until Monday, so I'm savoring these last few days and a little more ease for the soul.

God's Garden

THE Lord God planted a garden

In the first white days of the world,

And He set there an angel warden

In a garment of light enfurled.



So near to the peace of Heaven,

That the hawk might nest with the wren,

For there in the cool of the even

God walked with the first of men.



And I dream that these garden-closes

With their shade and their sun-flecked sod

And their lilies and bowers of roses,

Were laid by the hand of God.



The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,--

One is nearer God's heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth.



For He broke it for us in a garden

Under the olive-trees

Where the angel of strength was the warden

And the soul of the world found ease.



Dorothy Frances Gurney

 

The roundup is here today. Enjoy the first Poetry Friday of the year!

New Ambassador for Young People's Literature

I just read that the new Ambassador for Young People's Literature has been named.  It's Kate DiCamillo.  Here is some more information about her, and here you can see my post about attending a panel discussion including all three of the previous ambassadors. 

One Little Word for 2014

I didn't post much about last year's OLW (you can see the post here where I introduced it, and if you follow the links in that introduction, you can see the other OLWs I have chosen since 2009 and find more about the whole concept of choosing One Little Word), but in a way, everything this year was about shalom.  That word "flourishing," cited in the definition, kept coming up again and again in my life, in what I heard and read.  I saw examples of shalom, and felt its absence.  In the latter part of the year, our church began an in-depth study of the book of Genesis, and I learned a great deal about the literary aspects of the creation narrative, and how it compared to the creation narratives of surrounding Middle-Eastern cultures.  I began to think even more about shalom, and the picture of it in the garden, when all was as God had intended it to be.  Instead of separation and fear and suspicion, there was connection and rightness, shalom.  There was shalom between people and God, between people and nature, between the genders.  We seek that now, wishing and longing for the way things ought to be. 

The OLW I have chosen for 2014 is, then, continuing the theme from 2013.  But this year I was inspired by Irene Latham's choice for 2013.  Instead of picking an abstract concept, Irene, a true poet, chose the word "sky."  I loved watching her play with and enjoy her word all year long.

So this year, my OLW is garden.    I want to think about that original garden Paradise Lost, about the garden in myth and metaphor, and about flowers.  Quite honestly, I want to play, too, to take off my shoes and feel the grass between my toes. 

Here's to 2014!  I can't wait to see what's ahead!

Last Reading Update of 2013

Book #38 was Dr. Thorne, by Anthony Trollope.  I am loving these Victorian novels about clergymen.

Book #39 was the long-awaited Jesus Feminist, by Sarah Bessey.  I've been enjoying Sarah's blog for a long time, and I liked this book, too.  It isn't the last word, of course, on the subject, but I like her approach.  "People want black-and-white answers," she writes, "but Scripture is rainbow arch across a stormy sky.  Our sacred book is not an indexed answer book or life manual; it is also a grand story, mystery, invitation, truth and wisdom, and a passionate love letter.  I've abandoned the idea that my job is to get the absolute, 100 percent right answers on everything."

Books #40 and #43 were both by Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, both about Thomas Cromwell.  I am not sure what keeps drawing me back to the story of Henry VIII and his times, but somehow I can't look away from the fascinating, horrible tale.  Mantel does a fabulous job of showing Cromwell in all his complexity, but I do wish she would use quotation marks consistently and quit switching tenses.  Reading these was sort of a weird combination of breathless admiration of a brilliant writer and annoyance as I wanted to take my red pen to her prose.  Oh well, just call me pedantic, but also call me a Hilary Mantel fan.

Books #41 and #42 were both specifically Advent titles, Touching Wonder: Recapturing the Awe of Christmas, by John Blase, and Opening the Stable Door: An Advent Reader, by Dale and Jonalyn Fincher.  Both were quick, easy reads, and both helped me focus my scattered attention on Advent this year.

Book #43 was another quick read, but a helpful one from a writer I have loved for years, Philip Yancey.  This one, The Question that Never Goes Away, is his most recent response to the problem of evil, and it includes his visits to post-earthquake Japan; Newtown, Connecticut, and Sarajevo.  Highly recommended. 

Book #44 was another Trollope title, Framley Parsonage.  Only 43 Trollope novels to go!

Here are the other books I read this year:

Books #1 - #6.
Books #7 - #14.
Here's a link to my post about Bread and Wine, by Shauna Niequist, my eleventh book of the year.
Here's Book #15, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, by Dan Brennan.
Books #16 - #23.
Book #24, Middlemarch, by George Eliot. (Surely this one counts as several books, and can boost my total from 45 to closer to my unreached goal for this year, 52.)
Books #25 - #32.  (In this post I continued my annual tradition of getting the numbering wrong.)
Books #33 - #38.  (Yeah, the numbering in the post doesn't match.)

So I read 45 books this year.  This was a rewarding reading year, a satisfying mix of professional reading, reading about faith, and juicy novels, both YA and books written for people closer to my own age.  I didn't include all my re-reads, and I didn't include books of poetry.  I'm looking forward to another year of books in 2014!

Here's a link to some other people's reading lists for the year.

Poetry Friday on Monday

We just got back from a few days at the beach with very limited internet, so I missed Poetry Friday last week.  Here's the roundup.  I'll be back soon with links to the last few books I completed in 2013.

Poetry Friday: Difference

I was looking for a poem about peace, a poem appropriate for this day, the first morning waking up with no grading to do, with hours to fill as I wish.  I didn't exactly find it, but I did find this one, which I hadn't read before.  I love its portrayal of two minds, his and (I imagine) a woman's.  It makes me want to write a poem about my own mind, and sets me thinking about how I would do it.  And after all, what better thing to do with this first day of my Christmas break, my first day of peace after days of frantic work? 

Difference

by Stephen Vincent Benét

 

My mind’s a map. A mad sea-captain drew it   

Under a flowing moon until he knew it;

Winds with brass trumpets, puffy-cheeked as jugs,   

And states bright-patterned like Arabian rugs.   

“Here there be tygers.” “Here we buried Jim.”   

Here is the strait where eyeless fishes swim   

About their buried idol, drowned so cold   

He weeps away his eyes in salt and gold.   

A country like the dark side of the moon,   

A cider-apple country, harsh and boon,   

A country savage as a chestnut-rind,

A land of hungry sorcerers.

                                              Your mind?

—Your mind is water through an April night,

A cherry-branch, plume-feathery with its white,   

A lavender as fragrant as your words,   

A room where Peace and Honor talk like birds,   

Sewing bright coins upon the tragic cloth   

Of heavy Fate, and Mockery, like a moth,   

Flutters and beats about those lovely things.   

You are the soul, enchanted with its wings,   

The single voice that raises up the dead   

To shake the pride of angels.

                                                 I have said.

 

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup. 

Poetry Friday

Today was the last day of classes, and I have giant piles of grading to do, so that they will be out of the way and I can focus on grading finals next week.  All that to say, no poems today, but you can go to the roundup here, at The Opposite of Indifference, to see what everyone else has posted. 

Poetry Friday: Sounds from this House

I am knee deep in grading, final exams to write, and assorted other end of the semester tasks.  But I'm popping in to link you to a poem I contributed to our school's online literary journal (first issue just out this week).  The poem is called "Sounds from this House."  I wrote down the idea a long time ago, because I had noticed that the sounds out of every window of our house are different.  I decided to catalog them.  I didn't intend for the poem to be about the earthquake, but somehow it got in there; at the time, everything I wrote was about the earthquake in one way or another. 

Sounds from this House, Delmas 83, Haiti

Listen:
There is a different sound from each bedroom in this house.
Upstairs, you can hear the conversations next door,
Loud voices speaking Kreyol,
Cajoling, joking, insulting,
Sometimes shouts, and a few times, even a gunshot.
There are parties and vodou ceremonies,
Music and drumming through the night.
From the other window, church wafts in;
Singing, preaching, microphone-amplified.

You can read the rest here.

And Robyn Hood Black has today's roundup here.

Poetry Friday: Ode to the Onion

 Van Gogh, Still Life with a Plate of Onions

I always do odes with my eighth graders around Thanksgiving.  This one seems fitting, since several of the delicious dishes today contained onions.  I love Neruda's focus on ordinary things, and the way he sees the extraordinary in them.  Perfect for Thanksgiving, when we look at our blessings with more grateful eyes than we do on other days. 


Ode to the Onion
Pablo Neruda, tr. George Schade

Onion
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grey round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared.
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden.
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency.
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicated the magnolia.
So did the earth
make you,
onion,
clear as a planet,
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation
round case of water.
upon
the table
of the poor.
Generously
you undo
your globe of freshness
in the fervent consummation
of the cooking pot
and the crystal shred
in the flaming heat of the oil
is transformed into a curled golden feather.

Then, too, I will recall how fertile
is your influence
on the love of the salad,
and it seems that the sky contributes
by giving you the shape of hailstones
to celebrate our chopped brightness
on the hemispheres of a tomato.
But within reach
of the hands if the common people,
sprinkled with oil.
dusted
with bit of salt,
you kill the hunger
of the day laborer on his hard path.

Star of the poor,
fairy godmother
wrapped
in delicate
paper, you rise from the ground
eternal, whole, pure
like an astral seed.
and when the kitchen knife
cuts you, here arises
the only tear
without sorrow.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
you are to my eyes
a heavenly globe, a platinum goblet,
an unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone.

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.


Take a look at the post-Thanksgiving roundup here.  

Poetry Friday: Merry Autumn

I am planning to read this one with my seventh graders next week.  I thought they'd like it because we read a whole slew of mournful November poems, and this one is way more cheerful.  In fact, Dunbar mocks the idea that autumn is sad.  The poem starts:

Merry Autumn
Paul Laurence Dunbar

It's all a farce,—these tales they tell 

About the breezes sighing,

And moans astir o'er field and dell,

Because the year is dying. 



And it ends like this:


Don't talk to me of solemn days

In autumn's time of splendor, 

Because the sun shows fewer rays, 

And these grow slant and slender. 



Why, it's the climax of the year,— 

The highest time of living!— 

Till naturally its bursting cheer 

Just melts into thanksgiving.



 You can read the whole poem here.

I'm really looking forward to next week just melting into Thanksgiving.  Over at Write. Sketch. Repeat., Katya is hosting a Thanksgiving feast and Poetry Friday roundup.  Head on over to see what she is serving here!

Poetry Friday: Today I am a Small Blue Thing

Today I am a small blue thing
Like a marble or an eye
With my knees against my mouth
I am perfectly round
I am watching you

I am cold against your skin
You are perfectly reflected
I am lost inside your pocket
I am lost against your fingers
I am falling down the stairs
I am skipping on the sidewalk
I am thrown against the sky
I am raining down in pieces
I am scattering like light
Scattering like light
Scattering like light

Today I am a small blue thing
Made of China, made of glass
I am cool and smooth and curious, I never blink
I am turning in your hand
Turning in your hand

I am cold against your skin
You are perfectly reflected
I am lost inside your pocket
I am lost against your fingers
I am falling down the stairs
I am skipping on the sidewalk
I am thrown against the sky
I am raining down in pieces
I am scattering like light
Scattering like light
Scattering like light

Today I am a small blue thing
Like a marble or an eye
I am cool and smooth and curious, I never blink
I am turning in your hand
Turning in your hand
Turning in your hand
Small blue thing
Turning in your hand
Turning in your hand

Suzanne Vega

Here's today's roundup, hosted by Jama.   

Poetry Friday: Thinking About Thoreau

I have been writing a poem every day for the month of November, and maybe at some point I'll share more of what I've written (on Monday I posted this in honor of Pajama Day), but for today, I want to show you the best poem I read this week, by my friend Jessica Stock.  She blogs at One Wild and Precious Life about art, reading, motherhood, homeschooling, and faith.  I am always so excited when I see that she has posted something; it's always worth reading.  This week she was thinking about Thoreau as she recovered from her daughter's sixth birthday party.  Thanks, Jess, for letting me share your poem!

thinking about Thoreau at the end of the sixth birthday party

I cannot take Thoreau seriously since I learned his mother did his laundry
simplify simplify: a nice thought but somebody or your mom must wash your underwear
Thoreau lived deliberately and did not ever
so far as I am aware
separate the whites or
deal with his child's civil disobedience or
hear his name called up his spine
so persistently that he might consider ducking into the coat closet

Did you, Thoreau, ever plan a six year old's birthday party
or contemplate food allergies
crafts
test the recipe for chocolate cake with chocolate frosting
or advance confidently in the direction of the store for maraschino cherries- a five year old's only request?
Details Details

Did you, Thoreau, ever see your daughter so drunk on delight and red40
at the end of her sixth birthday party?

Now watch as I take this glass of wine to the bath
And read the Atlantic and scrub my poor feet with sugar

No one, not even Thoreau, had such delicious solitude
Not even Thoreau had such smooth feet

Jessica Stock



Today's roundup is hosted by Diane at Random Noodling.  Happy Poetry Friday!

Pajama Day

I teach the word "infer" to the seventh graders,
who are dressed in their pajamas.
"If you look around today," I explain,
"You can infer from what people are wearing
That it's Pajama Day."

You can infer from what I am wearing, too,
That it is Pajama Day. 
My purple plaid drawstring pants
My oversized school T-shirt from two sports seasons ago
My socks and running shoes.

Dressed in my pajamas,
I attempt to keep order
Among children in bathrobes
Children with stuffed animals
Children in slippers,
And perhaps most difficult of all,
Those who forgot to dress up.

Not to worry - it's only Monday.
Four more days of costumed mayhem left in Spirit Week.
You can infer from my martyred sigh
Exactly how I feel about that.

November Project

I decided this year to take on a writing project a little different from the last couple of Novembers, when I have attempted to post on my blog each day of the month.  This year, I'm writing a poem each day.  At least, I'm trying.  I've done three poems so far, but the one for November 1st was already cheating a little, since it was one I had been working on for a couple of weeks.  And tomorrow makes the first day of November that I will go to work, since Friday was a holiday.  It's one thing to write on days off, and it's another to keep it up on work days. 

It remains to be seen whether I'll post some or any of my poems.  But this project is a reminder that I really need to write more.  Not so I can check it off my to-do list, but because I feel better when I do.  Writing helps me to arrange at least some of the stuff in my head.  Writing is a bit like exercising; I sometimes have to force myself to do both, but I can't deny the good effects both have on me when I follow through.  And for writing, that seems to be true whether or not I end up liking what I write. 

Poetry Friday: Catch a Body

I am having a hard time excerpting this poem; it's short, so follow the link and read the whole thing.  Ilse Bendorf takes exception to Holden Caulfield's advice: "Don't ever tell anybody anything."  She moves on to describing some things we should say, like

if
your mother looks radiant in violet
you should tell her, or when a juvenile
sparrow thrashes its wings in dustpiles
and reminds you of a lover’s eyelashes,
you should say so

but then she explains how we are boats, but also islands, but also pirates...

This is a wonderful poem, given to me by my daughter; please just go here and read the whole thing, OK?  And when you get done, go here, to Linda's home at Teacher Dance, and see what everyone else has for today.

As for me, I have the day off,  All Saints' Day, and although I have a stack of grading to do, I also plan to read some poetry today, and who knows?  Maybe I'll even write some.  Happy Poetry Friday!

Poetry Friday: Naomi Shihab Nye

It was Naomi Shihab Nye week with my 8th graders; every day we read one of her poems.  Here's part of one I didn't read with them.  It's from her book, Fuel, and it's written in the voice of students.

Morning Glory

...

We're fat with binders and forgetting
We're shaping the name of a new love
on the underside of our thumb.
We're diagnosing rumor and trouble
and fear.  We hear the teachers
as if they were far off, speaking
down a tube.  Sometimes a whole sentence gets through.

But the teachers don't give up.
They rise, dress, appear before us
crisp and hopeful.  They have a plan.

 ...

This is so appropriate for this week.  It reminds me, too, of this quote I wrote down while I was reading Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle and High School, by Randy Bomer:

"Over and over again, I make the teacher's mistake of assuming that time begins the moment my students cross the threshold of my room.  But if my class is to tell the truth about literacy, I have to guard against that mistake and keep in mind that each student's whole life outside this room is what he or she will use to make meaning."

Oh well, we teachers don't give up.  I'll be at it again next week. 

And here's today's roundup, hosted by the amazing Irene Latham.  It's her thousandth blog post!  Head on over to congratulate her and read what everyone else is posting.

Poetry Friday: Sick Edition

In this short life that only lasts an hour
How much - how little - is within our power

Emily Dickinson


I'm sick in bed today with most unpoetic symptoms, so glad for the distraction of Poetry Friday.  Check out Janet's Mortimer Minute.  She said some nice things about me that cheered me up no end.  And the roundup is here, at Merely Day by Day. 

Reading Update

Book #32 of this year was a teacher book, How's it Going?: A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers, by Carl Anderson.  I don't have the book in front of me the way I like to when I post these reviews, because as soon as I was done with it I immediately passed it on, first to my co-teacher and then to the elementary administrator at our school, so that the elementary teachers could read it.  It was that good, that full of wonderfully helpful ideas for any age of students.  I picked up this book because I was very dissatisfied with the writing conferences I was doing with my students, and this book did not disappoint.  I recommend it for anyone who is teaching writing to kids.  Lucy Calkins did the foreword, and her quote underlies the whole text: "Teach the writer, not the writing."  Anderson tells you exactly how to do that.  As soon as I can get the book back, I want to read it again.

Book #33 was Barbara Kingsolver's latest, Flight Behavior.  I hadn't heard great things about this book, so I hadn't been in a hurry to read it, but this summer I heard someone whose judgement I respect talking about how good it was.  What was I thinking?  I would read Barbara Kingsolver's grocery lists.  (In fact, I guess I almost have, since I did read her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which was about what she and her family ate for a year.)  This book is fabulously written, and although the topic, climate change and the way it is destroying the planet, is hardly uplifting, Dellarobia and her friends and family are so well portrayed, and the story so beautifully drawn, that I couldn't stop reading until I was done.  The flight of the title refers mostly to butterflies, and specifically the Monarch butterflies, which this year have migrated to Tennessee instead of Mexico.  When Dellarobia first sees them, she isn't wearing her glasses, and thinks the mountainside is on fire.  Soon enough, the presence of the butterflies changes everything for Dellarobia, her family, and her depressed community, where going to college is practically unheard of, and climate change is dismissed as a ridiculous liberal story. The book explores Dellarobia's relationships, globalization, and scientific research and how the news media simplify and misrepresent it, but the narrative never flags. 

Book #34 was recommended by one of my seventh graders.  I loved Wonder, by R.J. Palacio, the story of ten-year-old August Pullman, who was born with a cranio-facial deformity and who is just about to start school for the first time after being homeschooled. One of my eighth graders was doing a book recommendation a couple of weeks ago, and she warned us that the book was sad and "You can cry." That's my warning for Wonder, too. You can cry; I did, a lot.  But this is a beautiful story, and ultimately a happy one.

Book #35 was recommended by my daughter; it was the sequel to a book she suggested over the summer, The Year of Secret Assignments.  This one, The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie, by Jaclyn Moriarty, was similar.  It consisted mostly of Bindy's notes, musings, and correspondence, but Bindy really came alive (haha, see what I did there?), and in spite of the somewhat improbable ending, I enjoyed reading this.

Book #36 was Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words.  I wanted to read this because I was listening to a series of podcasts from a church that is basing a year's worth of sermons on this book.  This was my first book by McLaren, and I found it well-written, thought-provoking, readable.  I appreciated the way he made abstract spiritual concepts approachable and put words to ideas that are difficult to express.  However, there were several points at which I felt that the book wasn't intended to be exclusively about Christianity.  It almost felt as if McLaren was out to annoy his evangelical readers by a paean to Buddhism, an exhortation to gather for worship, "whether it's in a glorious cathedral or temple, a spacious megachurch facility, or a small local chapel, synagogue or mosque," and a friendly aside: "Now here I am being transparently trinitarian, and some may not be able to go here with me."  That said, McLaren uses scripture (yes, the Bible) extensively all the way through, and his writing is clearly informed by his own experience with God.  I enjoyed this book and found it gave me helpful ways to think about faith.  You can find more about the book, and the twelve words, here.

Book #37 only came out two days ago, and my daughter and I have both already read it.  It's Addie Zierman's book When We Were On Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over.  I have been reading Addie's blog for a while.  I started back when it was called "How to Speak Evangelical," and loved reading her beautifully written meditations on the cliches of the evangelical Christian world.  The book was no disappointment, but I didn't feel that we had parallel lives as much as I thought I might.  Many of the "growing up evangelical" details are similar, though I'm older than she is and grew up in another country, but the story, like all of our stories, was very much her own.  I wanted to hear more about her time in China with her husband; it seemed to me that coming back from that very difficult and life-changing experience must have had something to do with the development of her depression, and I would love it if she would explore that idea as deeply as she has mined some of her other experiences.   Although Addie's adult life is very different from mine, her writing started me thinking about many of the particulars of my own faith journey.  Here's a quote that will give you an idea of how fun her prose is to read: 

"These days, faith is a lot like Wisconsin: a series of repetitive ups and downs, the natural rise and fall of the road that stretches before you.  Boring.  Beautiful.  Ridiculous sometimes, as when the road eases into the Wisconsin Dells and there are suddenly giant plastic animals and water slides and a huge haunted mansion tilted along the road."

Addie's writing has encouraged many others to reflect on their journey, too, and you can read some of those reflections at the synchroblog she is hosting here.

Next Time, on the Mortimer Minute

In spite of my last minute request, my tag-ee for the Mortimer Minute has graciously agreed to post next week.  Janet, who blogs at Across the Page, and who also has a gorgeous nature blog called Discovering Nature, is a friend from college.  After spending several quite intense years of our lives seeing each other all the time, we moved to different corners of the planet, and haven't seen each other in - wow, it's a long time, when you stop to count.

In spite of not seeing Janet in the flesh since we were both much younger, I have enjoyed keeping up with her on her blogs.  She is as thoughtful and deep-thinking as ever, and now her own homeschooled children are reaping the benefits, instead of the college literature classes she use to take and teach. 

In addition to being a wonderful writer, thinker, and poet, Janet is also a rabbit-owner, and who knows?  Maybe Mortimer will make a friend at Janet's house.

Stay tuned for Janet's Mortimer Minute on Friday!

Poetry Friday: Mortimer Minute

I was tagged last Friday by Liz Steinglass.  Here are the guidelines for the Mortimer Minute:

1) Pose and answer three questions you’ve always wanted to be asked in an interview about children’s poetry. (Ideally, use one question posted by the person who invited you to the Hop.)
2) Invite one, two, or three other bloggers to go after you.
3) In your post list the names of the bloggers you invited and give the dates when they’ll be posting.

I don't know that I've always wanted to be asked anything at all in an interview about children's poetry, but using one of Liz's questions and two of my own, here goes...

How did you come to love poetry?

We always had poems in our home.  I remember my mother quoting, "How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the sky so blue?  Oh, I do think it's the loveliest thing ever a child can do," from A Child's Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson.  I remember my dad reading "The Bells," by Edgar Allan Poe, to me, and I was thrilled by the repetition and the wild way the sound of the bells builds through that poem.  (Incidentally, my students are less thrilled by this poem - I have tried it a few times, with no success whatsoever.)  In school we had to choose poems to memorize, and there was a big competition every year.  I remember learning "Disobedience," by A. A. Milne, and I can still recite it these many years later.  We had a teacher in high school who used to spend one period a week on poetry, and I always loved those purple dittos (I saved them for years - I wonder where they are now?).  Favorites were "The Great Lover," by Rupert Brooke and  "The Rolling English Road," by G.K. Chesterton.

In college, my love of poetry directly led to finding other love.  In an American Literature class, the professor asked me to read an Emily Dickinson poem aloud.   My husband says that when he heard my voice (which in those days had a trace of an English accent from my years in British boarding schools, apparently rendering me quite irresistible), he knew he wanted to get to know me.  He cleverly orchestrated a meeting by pretending he needed to borrow my notes, and now we've been married 24 years, and have regular poetry nights with our children.

How about writing poetry?  When did you start that?

I have always written poetry of various kinds.  I liked playing with rhymes, and as an adolescent I wrote many angst-ridden, emotion-filled poems.   For years I was inhibited by my studies of literature, and downplayed my own work, using words like "doggerel" and "little ditties."  It's only in the last few years that I've admitted aloud, "Yes, I write poetry."  After the Haiti earthquake, I seemed to get a little bolder, and I started sharing some of my own writing here on this blog.  For the last two years, I've participated in readings at the school where I work.  In my job teaching middle school English, I encourage kids to get involved in poetry, both reading it and writing it.  Many of them do!

If you could have any "superpower," what would it be?

After the week I've had, I'd have to say that I wish I had some extra teaching superpowers, like Seventh Grade Wrangling or Super-Speed Grading.  Both of those tasks (for which I am not equipped with superpowers) have occupied my week, which is why I waited until the last minute to ask my tag-ee if she would accept the Mortimer Minute next.  I'll write a post later in the week revealing my tag.

Meanwhile, check out the roundup, which is hosted here today.

Poetry Friday: Kofi Awoonor

One of the people who died in Nairobi in the attack on the Westgate mall was Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor.  The New Yorker published this tribute. 

One of Awoonor's best-known poems is, appropriately, called "Songs of Sorrow."  Here is part of it:

"Returning is not possible
And going forward is a great difficulty
The affairs of this world are like the chameleon faeces
Into which I have stepped..."

Going forward is a great difficulty in a world where such things can happen, and chameleon faeces seems a pretty accurate comparison, some days.

You can read the rest of the poem here. 

Poetry Friday: The Beach and Violence

I was looking for a poem about the beach, because we're going on our staff retreat this weekend at the beach.  But at the same time I was feeling despondent about what I've been reading since last Saturday about the carnage in Kenya, the violence interrupting a beautiful Saturday morning, the shoppers gunned down, and who knows why.  Kenya is the place where I first knew beaches, when we drove or took the train to Mombasa, spoiling me forever with the wide, white, expanses of sand and the warm Indian Ocean.  Kenya is the place where I first knew many things.  It was a beautiful, wonderful place to grow up, and I will always love it.  And it hurts to watch the suffering there right now.

This poem by Rabindranath Tagore perfectly captures the combination of the beauty and the pain, the children heedlessly playing on the beach, unaware of the potential of even those waves to bring death.  I'm thinking of the child in Westgate Mall who said to the killer with a huge gun, "You are a bad man."  And in response the murderer gave the child a chocolate bar and let him go.

"Death is abroad and children play."  As the Book of Common Prayer says, "In the middle of life, we are in death."

After the Tagore poem, I'm including the Kenyan national anthem, which is the least bellicose national anthem I've ever heard.  It's really a prayer.  You can read the words below the video.

On the Seashore
By Rabindranath Tagore

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous.  On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances. 
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

O God of all creation
Bless this our land and nation
Justice be our shield and defender
May we dwell in unity
Peace and liberty
Plenty be found within our borders.

Let one and all arise
With hearts both strong and true
Service be our earnest endeavour
And our homeland of Kenya
Heritage of splendour
Firm may we stand to defend.

Let all with one accord
In common bond united
Build this our nation together
And the glory of Kenya
The fruit of our labour
Fill every heart with thanksgiving.

Amy has today's roundup here, at the Poem Farm.

Poetry Friday: Monet

I found this poem a couple of weeks ago by following a link from The Opposite of Indifference.  In "Monet Refuses the Operation," by Lisel Mueller, Monet is telling his doctor that he doesn't want his vision to be "corrected," because he likes the way he sees the world.

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don’t know each other,

as if islands were not the lost children

of one great continent.  The world

is flux, and light becomes what it touches,

becomes water, lilies on water,

above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow

and white and cerulean lamps,

small fists passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that it would take long, streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

Here is the rest of the poem. 

I love the idea that Monet has taken his whole life to "arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels," and to discover that "Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun."  I wonder what aspects of aging I could see as benefits, if I just squinted my eyes the right way.

When I wrote this post, I didn't know who was hosting the roundup today.  What a coincidence!  It's Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference.  Go here to read what great poems everyone has today.

Poetry Friday

I had Parent/Teacher conferences today and was frantically rushing to get my grades up to date beforehand - so for today I just have a link to what everyone else posted.  Happy Poetry Friday!

What Everyone Else Posted

Poetry Friday: Seamus Heaney

I'm sure there will be a lot of Seamus Heaney posts today, since he died last week.  Someone posted this one on Facebook.  I wasn't familiar with it, but it's perfect for the occasion, speaking as it does of impermanence and seizing the moment.


Blackberry Picking
Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

for a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots

where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

we trekked and picked until the cans were full,

until the tinkling bottom had been covered

with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

like a plate of eyes.



You can read the rest, and hear it read aloud, here. 


Bonus: this great story by a writer who tried - and failed - to get an interview with Heaney, but got a poem instead.

Today's roundup is hosted by Author Amok. 

Poetry Friday: Linda Pastan

I had a dream last night that I had been kidnapped.  I had managed to escape from the kidnapper, but he was still in the house, and I didn't want him to hear me.  I was sneaking around and being as quiet as I could, but guess who else was there?  In the inexplicable way of dreams, all of my middle school students.  And they wouldn't be quiet.  I was shushing them and explaining in a tearful whisper that our lives were in danger if they wouldn't stop talking.  They were behaving just like they do at the beginning of silent reading every day, except without that glorious moment when everyone finally relaxes into a book and there's that beautiful reading zone hush.  I woke up in a cold sweat.

So that dream pretty much shows you where my mind is these days.  I always forget what a job it is to break in a new batch of seventh graders, and we have changes this year in schedule, resulting in different pacing; it's a better fit, but it just takes time to get used to.  I feel swamped in grading, as though I never get out from under it.  I have no time or mental energy to think a thought.

Someone shared this poem on Poetry Friday a couple of weeks ago, and I've had it open on my desktop ever since.  This is where my writing is now; it's not happening.  In spite of all the other things going on in my brain, I need to, like Linda Pastan, "decide not to stop trying."

Here's her poem:

Rereading Frost

Linda Pastan

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

At other times though,
I remember how one flower
in a meadow already full of flowers
somehow adds to the general fireworks effect

as you get to the top of a hill
in Colorado, say, in high summer
and just look down at all that brimming color.

Here's the rest of the poem, including where she decides not to stop trying.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: In an Artist's Studio

I read this poem with my eighth graders every year and we speculate on the story behind it.  I love it because there is just the right level of mystery.  The kids always say, "Obsession!" when they get the picture of the studio filled with countless paintings of the same woman.  Yet it's an obsession with the artist's idea of the model, "not as she is, but as she fills his dream."

I found this wonderful analysis of the poem.

In an Artist's Studio

One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel—every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

Christina Rossetti

The Poetry Friday roundup is here today.

Poetry Friday: Aimee Nezhukumatathil

I don't know anything about Aimee Nezhukumatathil except what I read on Poetry Foundation, but I like reading her poems.  My favorite is this one, which plays cleverly with the way writers use reality:

Are All the Break-Ups in Your Poems Real?

By Aimee Nezhukumatathil
 

If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck

in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,

the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—

then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,

bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—

and when I say I am married, it means I married

all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.

You can read the last seven lines of the sonnet here.

Another fun poem by Nezhukumatathil is her found poem made up of lines from emails she got from high school students, hence the title:

Dear Amy Nehzooukammyatootill,

By Aimee Nezhukumatathil

(a found poem, composed entirely of e-mails from various high school students)

You can read that one here. 

It's great to be back to Poetry Friday after about five weeks of hiatus.  Today's roundup is here.  Enjoy lots of wonderful poems!

Summer Reading

Although we started school on Monday, I already have a day off, since August 15th is the Feast of the Assumption.  I wanted to blog about my summer reading before school started, but this is the closest I can come to achieving that goal.

Book #24 of 2013 was Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton.  This book is a typical Victorian novel, except that all the main characters are dragons.  Picture a very correct, rules-bound society of enormous savage dragons.  It took me a little while to get into the proper frame of mind to enjoy this book, recommended by my fantasy-loving daughter, but once I did, I was captivated.  It has been a while since I've read anything this fun and satisfying. 

I chose book #25 because it occurred to me that I have read several books compared to Anthony Trollope - Tooth and Claw, for one, and Susan Howatch's Church of England series, and books by Joanna Trollope, who is a distant relative of Anthony's - but never read anything by the man himself.  I decided to remedy that.  I found a free Kindle version of The Warden to begin with, and when I liked that, I was able to find this collection of his complete works, 47 novels for $2.99.  That should keep me going for a while!

Book #26, Ruby Slippers: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home, by Jonalyn Grace Fincher, was one I had been wanting to read for a while, since I enjoy Fincher's blog, also called Ruby Slippers.  She fearlessly takes on topics that other Christian bloggers might avoid, and her ideas have given me much to think about.  I found much to enjoy in the book, too, but ultimately I wasn't entirely satisfied with her explanation of what constitutes a "female soul."  I would like some friends to read this one, too, so we can talk about it.  Any takers?

I wish I had had more information about book #27 before reading it.  Specifically, I wish I had realized that Never Fall Down was a lightly fictionalized account of the experiences of a real person.  Patricia McCormick interviewed Arn Chron-Pond in English about his experiences as a child soldier with the Khmer Rouge, and she tells us in an Author's Note at the end of the book: "Trying to capture that voice was like trying to bottle a lightning bug.  Every time I imposed the rules of grammar or syntax on it, the light went out.  And so, in telling Arn's story I chose to use his own distinct and beautiful voice."  I wish I had known this because it would have kept me from being irritated all the way through the book by the unexplained pidgin-English quality of the writing.  Why, I reasoned, would the main character be speaking English at all?  In his own language he would be fluent and there would be no need for sentences like, "A lot of time kid throw stone at me."  Even in spite of not knowing the reason for the way the book was written, I did get drawn in by the horrifying story.

Book #28 was another Trollope title, Barchester Towers, and these absorbing stories about Victorian clergy and their families will be sprinkled in among the other books I read for some time to come.  Forty-five more titles to go!

Book #29 was another recommendation from my daughter.  The Year of Secret Assignments, by Jaclyn Moriarty, was a fun Australian novel about students at two rival schools required to write letters to one another.  I wouldn't give this to my middle schoolers; it's really for older kids.

Book #30 was Lucky: How the Kingdom Comes to Unlikely People, by Glenn Packiam.  This unpacking of the Beatitudes replaces the more traditional word "blessed" with "lucky," explaining that in the original language, the word used by Jesus isn't a particularly "religious" one.  This is a refreshing and enjoyable take on a familiar passage, and I think a small group would get a lot out of discussing it together. 

Book #31 was Bitterblue, by Kristin Cashore.  This is a companion book to Cashore's books Graceling and Fire, and characters from both books show up.  There was less of the mind-reading that so fascinated me in the other two books (though there is some), but this book is about a society healing after a time under the brutal regime of King Leck, Bitterblue's father.  Leck's abuses are described in some detail; ultimately I didn't find it too much, but I would understand if some did.  But I found this a very thought-provoking study of what a society would need to do to recover from a rule like this.  How have real-life countries done this?  Very differently.  Look at South Africa's amazing recovery from apartheid, due to the forgiveness modeled by Nelson Mandela, and bringing people's stories into the open during the Truth and Reconciliation process.  Compare that with the suppression in Japan of the atrocities committed during World War II, to the point that some of them are only now, sixty years later, starting to be talked about. 

Incidentally, I enjoyed this video by Christian author and literature teacher Karen Swallow Prior about the benefits of what John Milton called "promiscuous reading," meaning reading a variety of different material without much of a plan: "haphazard, mixed reading," Prior calls it.  Clearly I am a practitioner of this type of reading!

Another Poem-less Poetry Friday!

Today was our first day of school; the high school students came to register, get lockers, and other administrative details.  I spent the afternoon planning for next week, when I'll start teaching.  I had to put poetry at the bottom of my to-do list, but I really hope this is the last time!  Meanwhile, there are many great poems here, at today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Home Again - Poetry Friday!

After five weeks of traveling, I'm home, but still not quite up to jumping back into Poetry Friday.  Next week...

Meanwhile here's today's roundup!