Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Line 17 - Why, That's My Line!

Before this month's Progressive Poem even began, Heidi gave us an assignment. She asked us to write down our thoughts about the first line, and our predictions for how the poem would go. I have to confess that I didn't write anything down, but I did think about the line, and silently appreciated the fact that our protagonist was a seed. Lately I've been thinking this phrase often, a phrase relevant to more areas of my life than you might expect: Seeds, not switches. I don't know who created this phrase originally but the first person I heard use it was Rob Bell. He was talking about how many processes are slow, organic, unpredictable, not started by flipping a switch but by planting a seed. I've thought about how often, in my teaching, for example, I want results and I want them right now. I'm in a hurry, not wanting to let things take their course. That's what I thought about the line: Let's see what happens. Let's let this little seed grow as it wants to.

And wow, it's really grown!

I started writing my line the way I start a lot of my writing: by looking at pictures. But let me back up a little.

When I woke up on Monday morning, one of the first things I did was upload four photos to Facebook. I've been doing a Photo a Day project; this is the second year that I am posting daily photos responding to prompts I find here. Today's prompt was "Striking." On Sunday I took some photos of a plant I found especially striking. Here are a couple of the photos I shared:
Right after I posted the photos, I clicked on Monday's line of the poem and read it. I thought about it, enjoyed it, reread it, thought some more. I loved the "trellis...made of braided wind and song." Isn't that beautiful?

But I needed some pictures in my head to get me started. I started Googling images. I started with a trellis, and then jasmine. And that second search term brought me a whole bunch of pictures that looked exactly like my striking plant, except they were white. Wait, I thought, is that plant actually jasmine? That would be just too magical to be true.  Or maybe too creepy to be true, with Google spying on what I just posted on Facebook.  Hmmm.....

I typed in "purple jasmine" and found a lot of pictures of a Disney princess in a purple dress, and then some flowers that are purple and in the jasmine family. I don't think my plant is jasmine, but it sure does look a lot like it. I think it's purple wreath.  Is purple wreath related to jasmine? I inquired earnestly of Google, and again, I don't think it is, but there is such a thing as purple jasmine, I learned, and another name for that is star jasmine.

I wanted so much to write about flowers in my line, but I couldn't. It isn't time yet. The star-shaped flowers hanging out with the wily Moon can't grow until there's a place for them to live. You can't rush seeds.  Seeds, not switches.

I wanted to continue the song that Sarah Grace started. After all, we are at a party. I watched some YouTube videos showing time-lapse photography of plants growing, and finally, after thinking about it all day, I wrote my line, all seven words of it. I hope you like it. I especially hope Christie likes it, since she has to add tomorrow's line.

So here it is, the Progressive Poem, with my line added at the end in bold:

Nestled in her cozy bed, a seed stretched.

Oh, what wonderful dreams she had!

Blooming in midnight moonlight, dancing with

the pulse of a thousand stars, sweet Jasmine

invented a game.



"Moon?" she called across warm honeyed air.

"I'm sad you're alone, come join Owl and me.   

We're feasting on stardrops, we'll share them with you."  

"Come find me,” Moon called, hiding behind a cloud.



Secure in talons' embrace, Jasmine rose

and set. She split, twining up Owl's toes, pale  

moonbeams sliding in between, Whoosh, Jasmine goes.

Owl flew Jasmine between clouds and moon to Lee's party!



Moon, that wily bright balloon, was NOT alone.
                                                    
                                                      Jas grinned,
                                                       stretched,
                                                         reached,
                                                            wrapped
                                                               a new
                                    around            tender
                                                rootlet
a trellis Sky held out to her, made of braided wind and song.
Her green melody line twisted and clung.


Keep following the journey of the Progressive Poem by clicking on the blogs in the list below.  I wonder what will happen?


April
2 Jane at Raincity Librarian
4 Michelle at Today's Little Ditty
5 Jan at bookseedstudio
6 Irene at Live Your Poem
7 Linda at TeacherDance
8 Janet F. at Live Your Poem
11 Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales
12 Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink
13 Linda at A Word Edgewise
15 Donna at Mainely Write
16 Sarah at Sarah Grace Tuttle
18 Christie at Wondering and Wandering
19 Michelle at Michelle Kogan
20 Linda at Write Time
23 Amy at The Poem Farm
24 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading
26 Renee at No Water River
27 Buffy at Buffy's Blog
28 Kat at Kat's Whiskers
29 April at Teaching Authors
30 Doraine at Dori Reads
Posted by at 12 comments:

Friday, April 13, 2018

Poetry Friday: Happy Birthday, Lee Bennett Hopkins!

We're celebrating Lee Bennett Hopkins' birthday today on Poetry Friday.  As soon as I found out, I went looking for his books on my shelves.  The first thing I found was Author Talk: Conversations with Judy Blume, Bruce Brooks, Karen Cushman, Russell Freedman, Lee Bennett Hopkins, James Howe, Johanna Hurwitz, E. L. Konigsburg, Lois Lowry, Ann M. Martin, Nicholasa Mohr, Gary Paulsen, Jon Scieszka, Seymour Simon, and Laurence Yep.  (Whew!  That's quite a subtitle!)

I loved reading the conversation with LBH.  He tells about his childhood, and how he hated school and didn't do well until eighth grade, when a teacher influenced him with the "gift of hope."  He wasn't interested in poetry until he started teaching.  There's even a series of photos of three stages in the life of a poem, from the few lines of the idea to the revision-in-progress to the published piece.  Here's his description of his "typical workday:" "I don't have a routine.  I write whenever I feel like it.  It's back to childhood: no rules!  Even so, I'm very disciplined.  I'm always working on several books at a time.  I always have a lot of projects going."

Thank you for all the many projects you have brought to completion through the years!  Your work has been a gift to students and teachers everywhere.  Happy birthday!

I've been enjoying the extra poetry in my inbox that April always brings, even though, as usual, the many goings-on around the internet are too much for me, and I can't possibly keep track of everything I'd like to and still keep track of my life and my students.  Poetry, reading it and writing it,  is a year-round preoccupation of mine, and one thing I enjoy is the Poetry app put out by the Poetry Foundation.  (You can download it here.)  It lets you search for poems by author, first line, poet, and even mood.  And you can make a favorites list.

Here's a poem from my favorites list for this second Poetry Friday in April:

There is No Word
Tony Hoagland

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store
with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack
that should have been bagged in double layers

—so that before you are even out the door
you feel the weight of the jug dragging
the bag down, stretching the thin

plastic handles longer and longer
and you know it’s only a matter of time until
bottom suddenly splits.

There is no single, unimpeachable word
for that vague sensation of something
moving away from you

as it exceeds its elastic capacity


Read on to find out why Tony Hoagland would find such a word useful here.

As always, I've been enjoying the Progressive Poem, too.  Below you can find the list, and links to the sites of everyone participating.  My line is coming up on Tuesday.


April
2 Jane at Raincity Librarian
4 Michelle at Today's Little Ditty
5 Jan at bookseedstudio
6 Irene at Live Your Poem
7 Linda at TeacherDance
8 Janet F. at Live Your Poem
11 Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales
12 Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink
13 Linda at A Word Edgewise
15 Donna at Mainely Write
16 Sarah at Sarah Grace Tuttle
18 Christie at Wondering and Wandering
19 Michelle at Michelle Kogan
20 Linda at Write Time
23 Amy at The Poem Farm
24 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading
26 Renee at No Water River
27 Buffy at Buffy's Blog
28 Kat at Kat's Whiskers
29 April at Teaching Authors
30 Doraine at Dori Reads

Here's to all the things poetry celebrates, and here's to the way poetry puts words to things for which there are no words.  Happy Birthday, LBH, and Happy Poetry Friday, everybody!  You can see more tributes and more poems here at today's roundup.
Posted by at 11 comments:

Friday, April 06, 2018

Poetry Friday: Late Due to Tomatoes

This is just to say
that I'm sorry I was late
to my meeting this morning
except not that sorry.
I stopped to take some pictures
of the tomatoes in my yard.
They were so beautiful.
So small and green
and so flecked with
rainwater.
And the meeting
seemed so far away.

Ruth, at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

That happened yesterday morning.  I was only slightly late to my meeting - maybe a minute.  And it wasn't an official school meeting, just a get-together with a couple of friends to pray before school on Thursdays.  And look at my tomatoes:

On my way to that meeting, I was thinking wildly sentimental thoughts about why this was National Poetry Month and how growing things were like poems and how my tomatoes made me a lot happier than meetings.  And all of that thinking led me to a more realistic poem about the effects of poetry on one's professional life, "To a Frustrated Poet." It begins like this:

To a Frustrated Poet
by 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.

I posted it here, but if you follow the link in that post to find the end of the poem, you'll reach a dead end with a statement from Minnesota Public Radio (grrrrr, talk about a Frustrated Poet - that's what I become every time I follow a link to the old Writer's Almanac).  So I found this link instead.

I have been enjoying all the extra poetry around this time of year, including the Progressive Poem.  Here's a list of the places you can go to keep up with that:


April
2 Jane at Raincity Librarian
4 Michelle at Today's Little Ditty
5 Jan at bookseedstudio
6 Irene at Live Your Poem
7 Linda at TeacherDance
8 Janet F. at Live Your Poem
11 Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales
12 Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink
13 Linda at A Word Edgewise
15 Donna at Mainely Write
16 Sarah at Sarah Grace Tuttle
18 Christie at Wondering and Wandering
19 Michelle at Michelle Kogan
20 Linda at Write Time
23 Amy at The Poem Farm
24 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading
26 Renee at No Water River
27 Buffy at Buffy's Blog
28 Kat at Kat's Whiskers
29 April at Teaching Authors
Posted by at 15 comments:

Thursday, April 05, 2018

Spiritual Journey First Thursday: Poetry

It's the first Thursday of the month, and that means a collection of posts on spiritual journeys.  You can find today's roundup here.  This month the topic is poetry, which is appropriate since we are in the first week of National Poetry Month.

I remember a lecture in graduate school where the professor said that the Poet (capital P) had taken the role of God in modern life.  I dismissed this as complete nonsense (not aloud, just in my mind), and actually couldn't even imagine what such a statement might mean.  Today, while I still dismiss equating God with a human Poet, capitalized or not, I understand the concept a bit better.  Poetry goes beyond the mundane; it expresses thoughts and emotions that go deeper than a typical conversation on a typical day.  It's clear that for many people there is a connection between poetry and spirituality; perhaps we could say that the poet takes the role of a priest or holy person (not God), ushering our thoughts past the ordinary and into something more ineffable.

This idea of poets (or artists in general) goes along with the idea C.S. Lewis expresses in The Great Divorce.  A visitor from Hell to Heaven (The Ghost) is gaping at the surroundings and wishing to paint them.  He falls into conversation with a resident of Heaven (The Spirit).

"'I should like to paint this.'

'I shouldn't bother about that just at present if I were you.'

'Look here; isn't one going to be allowed to go on painting?'

'Looking comes first.'

'But I've had my look.  I've seen just what I want to do.  ... I wish I'd thought of bringing my things with me!'

The Spirit shook his head, scattering light from his hair as he did so.  'That sort of thing's no good here,' he said.

'What do you mean?' said the Ghost.

'When you painted on earth - at least in your earlier days - it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape.  The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too.  But here you are having the thing itself.  It is from here that the messages came.  There is no good telling us about this country, for we see it already.  In fact we see it better than you do.'

'Then there's never going to be any point in painting here?'

'I don't say that.  When you've grown into a Person (it's all right, we all had to do it) there'll be some things which you'll see better than anyone else.  One of the things you'll want to do will be to tell us about them.  But not yet.  At present your business is to see.  Come and see.  He is endless.  Come and be freed.'"

(Look at the copy I found on my shelf!  It was published in 1969 and it is dusty and missing its back cover, and I love it.)

I appreciate Lewis' musings on art here - both that it can be a way to finding God, and that it is much less than God.  That is how I think of poetry and its role in my spiritual journey.  It can fill me with love for Creation, but it can't replace the Creator.  In the Bible, poetry is used as worship, and as expression of emotions positive and negative.  But neither the poetry nor the poet is the point; the point is God's splendor and majesty.

As long as poetry maintains its proper place, it can absolutely be a part of my spiritual practice.  And it is; both reading it and writing it.  Here's a poem I've loved since high school, a poem which helps me think about the beauty of the world.

God's World
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour!  That gaunt crag
To crush!  To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, world, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart.  Lord I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.
My soul is all but out of me, - let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.


I felt that way yesterday as I took this picture.  Obviously my world is very different from the autumn day Millay describes, but just look at that sky!  "Lord, I do fear thou'st made the world too beautiful this year." 


Posted by at 7 comments:

Sunday, April 01, 2018

What I Learned in March

I think I'm not very good at doing these posts, because although I try to keep a list through the month, it never gets much on it.  Still, since I did January and February, I'll try March too.  My March list has only two entries, both names: Annie Dillard and Parker Palmer.

More and more, it feels to me that life is about speed, careening through my life and through history, trying to keep up with the increasingly mystifying news of the world and with the breakneck pace of each school year, changing topics and activities to keep my students engaged, rushing through my work so that I can go to bed and then get up the next morning and do it all again.   Both Annie Dillard and Parker Palmer, though, help me to slow down and to reflect on what it's all about.

In my February post I wrote that I am participating in a discussion group of Palmer's book The Courage to Teach.  This continues to lead to nourishing conversations, the details of which come back to me during my teaching days and during ongoing interactions with friends from the group and sometimes even in dreams.  We've talked about paradox and the nature of knowing, about how our strengths and our weaknesses as teachers are sometimes two sides of the same coin.  Sometimes we envy Palmer the rarefied air of his work at the university level, and compare it ruefully to the flatulence humor of our own workplace, but I've taught college too, so I get that his job isn't all pure learning and shiny enthusiastic students.  I just love the way his thought, put down on paper, facilitates our ability to think in new ways.

Annie Dillard's thought is mind-stretching for me, too.  This month I read an essay of hers that blew my mind in all the best ways, "An Expedition to the Pole."  It can be found in The Abundance and Teaching a Stone to Talk.  Long and discursive, the essay is hard to quote because it is the opposite of sound-bytes.  Annie Dillard's writing is the anti-Twitter.  In this essay she is comparing attending church and participating in its ancient rituals with being a polar explorer.  In both endeavors, we are aiming for the ineffable but sometimes get bogged down by the day-to-day.

Listen to this:

"A high school stage play is more polished than this service we have been rehearsing since the year one.  In 2,000 years, we have not worked out the kinks.  We positively glorify them.  Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter.  Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens.  Week after week Christ washes the disciples' dirty feet, handles their very toes, and repeats, it is all right - believe it or not - to be people.

Who can believe it?"

Or this:

"Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand - that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us."

(Come to think of it, that could totally be a Tweet.)

Another essay of Dillard's that I loved was "For the Time Being," which is in a book of the same title and in The Abundance.  This one is about Teilhard de Chardin and his combined vocations as churchman and scientist.  It takes the long view, showing the whole life of this brilliant man and what he accomplished in his work and his friendships, but also the frustrations he faced.

Another way my thoughts were guided in March was by listening to a podcast that I didn't put on my list: this episode of Sandra McCracken's podcast Steadfast, in which she interviews Peter Harris, founder with his wife of A Rocha International, a Christian environmental group based in Portugal.  Harris, too, talked about slowness, and patience, and accomplishing small things over long periods of time.  He talked about the Eucharist, and how its elements are bread and wine, not grain and grapes.  It is made of things which take time to produce.  It can't be rushed, or done at a drive-through.

Slow down, my listening and reading and discussing told me this month.  Be patient.  You really have no idea what is truly going on in your students' minds, or the world around you, or even your own heart.  Be faithful, trust the process, keep getting out of bed and going to work, aiming for the ineffable but plodding through the day-to-day.  Don't be weary in well-doing.

Did I learn those lessons in March?  Well, at least I took a step closer to learning them.  Let's see what April brings. 
Posted by at 2 comments:

National Poetry Month: Day 1

Of course the most important thing I'm celebrating today is Christ's resurrection from the dead.  In addition, it's the first day of National Poetry Month, and that means the first line of the Progressive Poem!  Head on over to Liz Steinglass to see the way she has begun our poem!  I'll be adding my line on the 17th.


April
2 Jane at Raincity Librarian
4 Michelle at Today's Little Ditty
5 Jan at bookseedstudio
6 Irene at Live Your Poem
7 Linda at TeacherDance
8 Janet F. at Live Your Poem
11 Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales
12 Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink
13 Linda at A Word Edgewise
15 Donna at Mainely Write
16 Sarah at Sarah Grace Tuttle
18 Christie at Wondering and Wandering
19 Michelle at Michelle Kogan
20 Linda at Write Time
23 Amy at The Poem Farm
24 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading
26 Renee at No Water River
27 Buffy at Buffy's Blog
28 Kat at Kat's Whiskers
29 April at Teaching Authors
30 Doraine at Dori Reads

You can read all the Progressive Poems since 2012 here.  I've participated in every one!  
Posted by at 1 comment:

Friday, March 30, 2018

Poetry Friday, Good Friday

He said I wrote about death,

by Kim Dower

and I didn't mean to, this was not
my intent.

Here's the rest of the poem and it ends this way:

I did not mean to write about death,
but rather how when something dies
we remember who we love, and we
die a little too, we who are still breathing,
we who still have the energy to survive.


Good Friday is about death, and love, and surviving.  Sunday will be about resurrection, but let's not rush ahead.  

Here's Heidi's roundup, which includes a discussion of the Progressive Poem, coming soon.  I'll be posting my line on the 17th this year. 
Posted by at 4 comments:

Monday, March 26, 2018

Reading Update

Book #25 of the year was This is How it Always Is, by Laurie Frankel.  How is it always?  Well, parents always try to do the best for their children, even when the situation is completely unforeseen and they have no idea how to proceed.  The family in this novel faces a challenge that we've all seen in the news, but how would we deal with it if it happened to us? 

Book #26 was Lucky Fish, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.  I reviewed this book here.

Book #27 was How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig.  Tom Hazard looks 41, but he has a condition called anageria, in which he doesn't age.  He's been alive for more than 400 years.  It's possible to live a pretty good life this way, as long as you are willing to keep moving on, and never, ever fall in love.  Hazard's situation is an extreme case of what it's like to be human for all of us: loving other people is the best way to get hurt, but also the best way to stop time.  I enjoyed this book, and there was the added bonus of Hazard's latest profession being teaching.  This gave rise to lines such as: "So, this is the life I have chosen above all others.  The life of a man standing in a room of twelve-year-olds ignoring him" and "For decades and decades and decades I have bemoaned people who say they feel old, but I now realize it is perfectly possible for anyone to feel old.  All they need to do is become a teacher" and "I have only been alive for four hundred and thirty-nine years, which is of course nowhere near long enough to understand the minimal facial expressions of the average teenage boy." 

Book #28 was The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid, a novel which follows the fortunes of a Pakistani Princeton graduate whose pursuit of the American dream is interrupted by September 11th, 2001. 

Book #29 was The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New, by Annie Dillard, and #31 was another book of Dillard essays, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters.  More than a third of the second book was also in the first book, including my favorite essay, "An Expedition to the Pole," which compared churchgoing to polar exploration.  I had read some Dillard before, but had never enjoyed her work as much as I did in these two books.

Book #30 was Do Not Become Alarmed, by Maile Meloy.  The situation in this book started off bad and just kept on getting worse and worse and worse.  A stressful read that I only finished because I just had to know what was going to happen.

Book #32 was This Must Be the Place, by Maggie O'Farrell.  This story pulled me in and kept me reading.  I will definitely try more of O'Farrell's books. 


Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Poetry Friday: The Conditional


Happiness is having a daughter who texts you poems.  

Posted by at 12 comments:

Friday, March 16, 2018

Poetry Friday: Birthday Gifts Edition

For my birthday a few weeks ago, I got many lovely gifts, but I want to write about the poetry-related one.  I used an Amazon gift card to buy Aimee Nezhukumatathil's book Lucky Fish, and then spent the balance on chai.  So this week I will share a little review of the book, and then a poem by my brother about chai.

I first discovered Nezhukumatathil's work at Poetry Foundation.  I've posted a couple of her poems on this blog, here and here.  I put her book on my wish list a long time ago, since I was intrigued by what I had seen.  She is half Filipina and half South Indian and lives in Mississippi.  Her writing is unexpected: light-hearted, but often with a twist.  As you can imagine with her background, the references are from everywhere.  "Kottayam Morning" evokes the sounds and smells of her grandmother's home in Kerala, India.  "At the Center for Retired Great Apes" is set in Florida.  "Kansas Animalia" laments:

I pity the lone ostrich at the Wichita petting zoo,
who plucks out her own feathers because they sold
her mate to a place in Toledo.

She writes of stargazing with her father (in spite of mosquitoes), eating Thanksgiving dinner for the first time with her future husband, ice-skating, what it's like to have a name nobody can pronounce.  She writes of giving birth.

Everyone slept            except my valiant
husband
               who stayed awake          for almost three days
and stayed        strong as a pepper plant.            He was
starlight
               and samosa and every good thing.

I love finding entry into the mind and life of a new-to-me poet, and I thoroughly enjoyed this visit with Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

And the chai?  I was running low on the spiced kind I like to buy, Rishi Masala Chai Tea, which is expensive but worth it, so I got myself a new bag.  Here's my brother on chai.  I love this poem for the details of our childhood, and my students always enjoy it when I share it with them each year. 


Chai

It grew in the Kericho sun
watered by the rains that swept up from Lake Victoria
every afternoon at 4
like a heavy felt curtain.
Top two leaves and a bud
picked in the pouring rain.
Flapping black raincoats and hats,
bright faces and bright singing.
The emerald of the freshly washed leaves
almost hurts the eye.
Miles of smooth green hills
stretching to the horizon of my mind.
Dried on acres of wire racks,
the smell of them a liquor in the nostrils,
drowning in the thick black scent of it,
bathing in the aroma,
the smell of home and happiness
and warm rain running down my back
and black earth and blue skies.
Memories, packaged in a green box
and sent to me by kind strangers.

Richard Bowen


Thank you to my dear friends who contributed to this birthday delight.   And thank you to Linda for hosting this week's roundup! 
Posted by at 10 comments:

Thursday, March 08, 2018

Poetry Friday: The Light I Collect

I'm in the throes of grading season.  I mean, sure, it's always grading season in my world, but it's a particularly intense time right now, with projects from my seventh graders and a big writing deadline coming up tomorrow for my eighth graders.  I've been planning a Birthday Gifts Edition of Poetry Friday, but I can't take the time or the mental bandwidth right now to work on it.  Maybe next week.  Meanwhile, here's a little foretaste, an excerpt from "The Light I Collect," a poem in Aimee Nezhukumatathil's book Lucky Fish.  I bought this book with birthday money and I will review it in my Birthday Gifts Edition.

If a man in China can keep ten thousand dollars' worth
of caterpillars in a metal box underneath his bed
for medicine, then I want to collect flakes of light
for those winter months where we go a whole week

without seeing a slice of sun.  The light I want to collect
is free.  Can't be sold as a cure for muscle ache
or to ward off evil eye.  I write this in August.  It should be
illegal to talk about snow in Western New York now.

from "The Light I Collect," by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

I know that many of my readers are in the throes of another kind of depressing season, the one mentioned in the poem: winter.  I wish I could send you some "flakes of light," some "slices of sun" from my part of the world, where this is the most beautiful time of the year.  Just as I'm trying to cling to my knowledge that I have students who are doing great work, resisting my instinct to focus all my attention on the ones who aren't, as though nobody is.

Let's collect the light and store it up for the dark times!

This week's roundup is here.
Posted by at 11 comments:

Sunday, March 04, 2018

Reading Update

Book #19 of the year was the ninth Inspector Gamache book, How the Light Gets In, by Louise Penny.  I liked this one, but I think I was half asleep as I was finishing it, and my checkout from the library had already expired, so it's gone from my Kindle now.  I have the impression that a whole lot of stuff got resolved in the last few pages as I faded in and out, or I might have just dreamed all that.  In any case, I put a hold on the next one, so I guess I'll find out.  (And how great is it that Leonard Cohen allowed Penny to use his lyric as her title for free?) 

Book #20 was A Piece of the World, by Christina Baker Kline.  I love books about paintings, and this novel is about Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World."  It's the story of Christina Olson, Wyeth's friend and muse.  She lives a difficult, narrow existence in rural Maine, with little choice about what happens to her, and a disability, to boot.  Late in her life, Wyeth's interest in painting her house, surroundings, and Christina herself enriches her life.  Here she is on Andy's effect on her: "Through his perspective I see familiar things anew.  The pale pink wallpaper with tiny flowers.  The red geraniums blooming in the window in their blue pots.  The mahogany banister, the ship captain's barometer in the foyer, an earthenware crock on a shelf in the pantry, the blue pantry door scratched by a long-ago dog."  I enjoyed Christina's prickly personality, her pride, her refusal to be anyone but herself, and the glimpses into the young woman she used to be.

Book #21 was another one set in New England, this time in Rhode Island.  A Hundred Summers, by Beatriz Williams, takes place in the thirties, and it's full of secrets, drama, and terrible weather.  Who knew that was just what I was craving?  I certainly didn't.  But I enjoyed this one immensely.

Book #22 was The Contemplative Writer: Loving God through Christian Spirituality, Meditation, Daily Prayer, and Writing, by Ed Cyzewski.  The title pretty much says it all.  This was a quick read, but very inspiring and helpful.

Book #23 was Chased by the Light: A 90-Day Journey, by Jim Brandenburg.  This book was published in 1998, and it's the result of Brandenburg setting himself a photographic challenge, to make one picture each day for ninety days in the northern woods of Minnesota.  I had a couple of thoughts while reading this.  One was how ludicrous it is to call anything I might do "photography," when artists like this exist in the world.  A...ma...zing.  These are ninety absolutely gorgeous photos, and the essay that goes with them is equally gorgeous.  (And I don't call what I do photography; I call it "taking pictures.")  Another thought was of the dear friend who gave me this book, someone whom I very rarely see any more, and whom I miss.  That feeling was underlined by the melancholy of the October through December landscape of Minnesota.

Book #24 was Oprah's current Book Club choice, An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones.  I wanted to read this, but of course so did a bazillion other people.  I had it on hold at the library and I was something like 175th in line, and then suddenly four days ago the book became available, so I guess they must have bought a bunch more copies.  This is the story of Roy and Celestial and their marriage.  They have been married a year and a half when everything changes for them because of  Roy's arrest and incarceration.  This book pulled me in and made me feel all the feelings.  Tayari Jones already has Oprah's recommendation, so she certainly doesn't need mine, but she has it anyway.

I am glad I got in the habit of keeping track of my reading on this blog, because so often when I am writing these posts I get a sense of the overall theme of the books I've consumed lately, and a chance to reflect which would probably be missing if I just barrelled on to the next book I'm going to gulp down.  This particular batch includes some mighty fine reading, books that introduced me to other lives in masterfully told stories.  The ideas on contemplation and the beautiful photography were icing on the cake.

This post is linked to the March Quick Lit post at Modern Mrs. Darcy.
Posted by at 1 comment:

Friday, March 02, 2018

Poetry Friday: Finishing my QWP

I had a birthday this week, and it was a biggie.  Now I'm a quinquagenarian.  I announced back in July that I was embarking on a writing project to prepare for my birthday.  My goal was to write fifty first drafts before I turned fifty.  I achieved it, plus a little bit more, and I've shared some of my writing here along the way, and some more of it with my writing group, and some with my husband and my children and a few friends.  Some of it hasn't been read by anyone but me.

To celebrate my birthday, I'm going to share two of my QWP poems today.  The first one was inspired by a book my daughter brought home, in which the poet had written a "Self-Portrait as Motel Clerk."  It was about a job he had had in graduate school, and it made me think of a job I had between college and grad school.  When I look back at myself at that age (just a little older than my daughter is now), I feel fondness for that young person with so much ahead of her.  This poem is a good illustration of my QWP because it uses some of the raw material I've gathered in my 50 years on this earth.

The second poem is based on a prompt that Liz, last week's roundup host, shared.  It's called a "Why I'm Here" poem, similar to George Ella Lyon's "Where I'm From" poem.  (Here's my WIF poem, from back in 2006.)  I loved Liz's "Why I'm Here" poem and wanted to write one too.  I've worked at my school since I was 25 years old (with a few breaks here and there to move away and then back, and to stay home with my children), and now I am the éminence grise of the middle school, getting to that point where I'm older than most of my students' parents.  My own children don't need me as much as they used to.  I'm not cool any more (not that I ever was, very).  Why am I here?  I thought about it for a while (and it made the James Taylor song "That's Why I'm Here" go through my mind for a few days) and came up with some answers.  On my birthday, a bunch of my friends made a list of 50 things they like about me - best gift ever! - and I was pleased to see that several of the things about me that I think are reasons I'm here were on their list.


Self-Portrait as Waitress

It’s the summer before my wedding
and starting grad school.
I’m twenty-one,
dressed in a shiny nylon waitress uniform
and trying to look confident.

I’m waiting tables in Nashville, Tennessee,
just like half the people who moved here
to make it big in country music.

The kitchen staff and the other waitresses
yell cheerfully and profanely at each other and at me,
expanding my vocabulary and my world.

A busboy tells me proudly there are ten steps to bussing a table
and I realize I never thought about bussing a table
let alone about doing it well.

I’ve never failed a class before
but I struggle to master my eight steps of waitressing.

I sniffle as I eat my tasteless employee-priced dinner
at a table smelling of grease and sweat and vanilla ice cream.

A fellow waitress tells me this is her second job;
she works at another place during the day
and then here three to eleven,
and she’s saving up to leave her husband.

My feet hurt in their sensible shoes.

In my dreams I spill coffee, drop plates, forget orders
then get up and put on my dark green uniform
and try again to get it right.

I refill ketchup bottles and roll silverware after my shift.

One day a secret shopper writes me a glowing review,
and it’s hung up on the bulletin board in the break room,
like a report card on a refrigerator.

I learn what “sweet milk” is,
how to get sworn at without flinching,
and to tip well.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Why I’m Here

I’m here to make and pour the tea
and to add an extra spoonful of sugar
if you want it.  I’m here
to ask the questions
and listen to the answers,
to overthink and empathize.
I’m here to read as many of the books
as I possibly can.  I’m here
to fix punctuation
and recommend a good novel,
to lower the noise level in the hallways,
to witness the eyerolls
and try not to take them personally.
I’m here to learn new slang
every year, in several languages,
to say the wrong thing and then say I’m sorry,
to say the right thing every once in a while.
I’m here to tell new teachers
that there is nothing wrong with them,
and that the first year is just the worst.
I used to be here to clean up vomit,
and now I’m here to answer my children’s texts
and to savor my husband's cooking
and to hold babies whenever I get the chance.
I’m here to say goodbye
again and again
and somehow still find the energy to say hello.
I’m here to write it all down
and take pictures of all of it
and remember,
even if everyone else forgets:
love, and earthquakes,
and what the hibiscus looks like today.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's what the hibiscus looks like today, in case you're wondering:


I've been keeping track of my QWP on the whiteboard in my classroom, changing the number as it went up.  Most of my students didn't pay any attention, but there were one or two in each class who would comment and ask questions.  The day after my birthday, I erased the total, and decided to start again from scratch.  How much can I write before my next birthday?  We'll see!

And here's today's roundup.



Posted by at 15 comments:

Thursday, March 01, 2018

Spiritual Journey First Thursday: Music


At my wedding, the congregation sang this hymn, one of my favorites, and my husband's absolute favorite.  The lyrics talk about the love of God as an ocean, "vast, unmeasured, boundless, free."  I love the tune, but really music to me has always been more about the words, and when I start thinking about the music which has been important to me in my spiritual journey, I am amazed by how many hymns I can recite, sometimes several verses.  Those words are in my head from years and years of repetition throughout my life.

When I went looking through my blog archives for writing about hymns, here's some of what I found:

Back in 2007, I quoted from this hymn, "New Every Morning," commenting that it gave a rather "dreary" picture of everyday life.  A couple of days later, I tried to explain a bit more about what I meant.  Here are those posts: the first and the second.

In 2008 I wrote this post about something we had sung in church.  We were using videos with lyrics at that time, and this one had substituted "the lowest hill" for "the lowest hell," which was what the original lyrics say.  I also criticized their punctuation, which caused an inadvertent change in meaning to the song.

I've written a couple of posts about the hymn "Abide with Me," which we used to sing in boarding school whenever we had evening chapel.  This one was from 2009 and this one from 2012.

Did you know that Charles Wesley wrote earthquake hymns?  I learned about them in 2010 after the Haiti earthquake.

And speaking of earthquakes... In 2010 I wrote a post about "Oh, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus," the one with which I started this post, and also one about "My Faith Looks Up to Thee," one about "O Love that Wilt Not Let Me Go," and one about "My Song is Love Unknown." I was struggling so much in those months right after the earthquake, and the words of hymns helped me week after week.  I wrote some more about that in this Easter post from 2011, quoting the hymn "In Heavenly Love Abiding."  

 In this post, I wrote about a friend who was stuck under rubble in the aftermath of the earthquake, and the hymn words that kept going through his mind.  

 There are more posts about hymns, but these examples give a pretty good representation of how important these words are in my spiritual life, even though it's been a long time since hymns have formed the majority of the music in the churches I've attended.  There are many ways I experience this "deep, deep love," but church music is high on the list.

Today's roundup is here.
 

Posted by at 8 comments:

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

What I Learned in February

I wrote about some things I learned in January, and I decided to try that kind of post again this month.  I made a very short list, but then February is short.

Back at the beginning of the month, I learned about the Red Rule of photography.  I post a photo every day on Facebook using prompts that come from CY365, and the prompt for February 2nd was "The Red Rule."  When I looked it up, I learned that the rule is "Every time you see something red, take a picture of it."  I took lots of photos of red things and enjoyed the way the color pops every time it appears.

I learned about a podcast that is not at all new.  It is called ArtCurious, and so far I've found every episode completely fascinating.

I learned, not for the first time, that you can't possibly over-communicate in seventh grade.  Have you told your students several times a day for three weeks about an assignment?  Are you getting tired of hearing yourself talk about it?  It doesn't matter.  Say it again.  I guarantee you that someone in the room will be hearing about the assignment for the first time.

I learned that The Courage to Teach, by Parker Palmer, really is a wonderful book to discuss with a group of intelligent friends.  I thought it would be when I first read it, but I hadn't had the opportunity to be in a discussion group about it until now.  Back in November, I heard Gretchen Rubin recommend on her podcast to "schedule some daily transcendence."  It's sort of a secular way of saying what those of us who grew up evangelical were taught as "have your quiet time."  This book falls in that same transcendent category.  Palmer encourages a kind of reflectiveness that teachers often don't have time for, as we run about dealing with the immediate chaos that faces us.  It's so rewarding to look deeper and talk about the process.

At the end of the month, I had a big birthday, and learned some of what my friends think about me.  Since I was turning fifty, some people made a list of fifty things they like about me.  I'm still floating on the good feelings of this gift.  I highly recommend telling people what you like about them, and getting them to do the same for you. 
Posted by at No comments:

Friday, February 23, 2018

Poetry Friday: Keats


Sonnet X
Keats

To one who has been long in city pent,
  ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
  And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with hearts content,
  Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
  Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
  Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,
  He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
  That falls through the clear ether silently.


Posted by at 8 comments:

Friday, February 16, 2018

Poetry Friday: Stability

I have several things to share with you this week for Poetry Friday.

First, I get a daily poem email from poets.org (you can sign up for it on the website), and yesterday's was "Scaffolding," by Seamus Heaney.  To me, this poem speaks to long-term relationships, whether marriage or friendship or family ties, and the way we learn over time that we can count on certain people.  The many hours and years that have gone into wall-building, the stories that have gone into our history, have produced a fine and lovely building.

Secondly, last week I received a postcard from Tabatha, and I'm posting a photo of the front and one of the back, with the poem she chose for me.  This one, too, seems to speak to history and stability, a happiness beyond flightiness.  Thank you, Tabatha, for this perfect choice.

I'm going to be turning fifty soon, and I've been in a reflective mood about this large number, and about my life so far, what I have lost and what I have kept, what lasts and what doesn't.  Both of these poems are appropriate for this mood. 


Scaffolding
Seamus Heaney

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that plans won't slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job's done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear.  We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

I also posted a couple of original poems this week: Metaphor for Valentine's Day, and Ashes for Ash Wednesday.
Posted by at 12 comments:

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Reading Update

Book #14 of 2018 was Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved and book #17 was Jonathan Martin's How to Survive a Shipwreck.  I wrote here in this post from 2016 about how I reread both of these books frequently.  I don't add them to my total every time I reread, but this is the first time this year for both, so here they are.

Book #15 was Grief Cottage, by Gail Godwin.  While I didn't love this quite as much as some of her other books, I did appreciate the full-circle quality of it and the reminder that the villains in our lives are often just people whose full stories we do not yet know.

Book #16 was The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis.  My friend Marilyn Gardner blogged the other day about what good Lenten reading this book is.  It struck me that she was right, and also that it had been a very long time since I had read any of the Chronicles of Narnia.  I used to read them all through once a year.  I see that since I started this blog, I haven't done that.  I went to my daughter's room to look for a copy, and couldn't find one.  By the time I was done searching, I had located five of the seven books (and two copies of one of them) and put them all together on the shelf, but no Last Battle.  Oh well.  I was pretty sure I had it in my classroom, and sure enough, the next morning I found it.  Marilyn was right: this is perfect Lenten reading.  I have a student who is reading Pride and Prejudice, and I told her I was envious of her, reading it for the first time.  This was clearly not the first time I read this book.  It was not the tenth time.  It's possible it was the twentieth, but likely I have read it even more than that.  It's an old friend.  "This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.  The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."
Book #18 was Plainsong, by Kent Haruf.  I enjoyed it, and now I have to find the second book in the trilogy.  The library, from which I downloaded the first one, has the third one but not the second. 

This post is linked to the February Quick Lit roundup at Modern Mrs. Darcy.
Posted by at No comments:

Ashes

There's been a photo in the news today of a woman at the high school where the school shooting yesterday took place.  Among the other photos it caught my attention because she's been to church for Ash Wednesday; she has a cross drawn on her forehead with ashes. 

Here's the poem I wrote yesterday after getting home from church.  We were reminded that we are dust.  We didn't need a gunman to remind us again.


Ashes

I’m here for the ashes.
I’m here for the dust,
for remembering that that is what I am,
and that that is where I will return.

I’m here for the ashes,
the remains of what I loved,
the palms from last year,
burned
and carefully preserved,
precious dust.
Those palms mattered
too much to toss their remains away.
They became today’s ashes.
And that’s why I’m here.

I’m here for the ashes,
for the reminder that though my flesh is solid now,
it will die.
The smudge on my forehead
will wash away,
but I will still be mortal,
corruptible,
headed for my expiration date.

I’m here for the ashes,
so smear them on me,
whispering as you do,
“Remember,
remember,
remember that you are dust.”
Precious dust,
but dust nonetheless,
a temple filled with the Holy Spirit
that one day will fall
silent
and
still.

I’ll leave with the ashes,
and through my day I’ll see others
with dusty marks on their faces,
as they too have been reminded
of what they are.
Beautiful and impermanent,
valuable and temporary,
glorious
and
needing to be
swept up
with a broom.

There are other places to get
roses and accolades,
work and fulfillment,
conversation and snacks,
but this is the only place I know
where they are imposing ashes today
so
that’s why I’m here.
For the ashes.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
Posted by at 2 comments:

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Metaphor

When I ask my students to make metaphors
they take to it right away.

A metaphor for love?
They have an idea!

“Love is a rose,”
one tells me,
excitedly.
“Because it’s beautiful,
and it smells nice,
but it has thorns,
and it rots.”

Yes, I tell them.
That is a perfect
metaphor,
which is why writers
have been using it
for centuries.

On Valentine’s Day
they buy each other roses,
and there is an intoxicating aroma,
and petals on the floor in the hallways
in an array of pinks and reds,
and some people carry bouquets
and other people cry,

and who cares whether the metaphor isn’t original?

You’re right,
I tell them.
Love,
I tell them,
love is a rose.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Posted by at 1 comment:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)