Poetry Friday: Sixteen

I locked my classroom this afternoon and headed home.  It's summer.  That means many things, but the first thing it means is my daughter's birthday, in a couple of days.  I wrote this poem for her.



Sixteen

She was born during Finals Week
And as I labored, her dad typed an exam.
The students later said it was the easiest he'd ever given.

This year Finals Week ended just before her birthday
And she checks her grades obsessively online,
Dissatisfied by all the numbers she discovers.
Only a hundred is good enough for her.

There's a photo of her in her dad's arms in the hospital
Hours after she was born.
Next to him a pile of papers sits ready to be graded,
Assessed, evaluated,
But his focus is on her
And he judges her to be perfect.

Listen to me, daughter,
Intense and fragile since the moment I first held you,
No letter or number will ever sum up your worth.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Today's Poetry Friday roundup is here.

Seventh Grade Gifts

Tuesday was the last day with students, then Wednesday we had our eighth grade promotion. Today I have been cleaning up in my classroom and I'm planning to finish that tomorrow, attend our last faculty meeting, and then start the summer. On Tuesday I got two precious gifts from seventh graders, and I think they pretty much sum up the year and the age group.



First, I received a lovely frog's leg, straight from the scene of the seventh grade dissection planned by their teacher on the last day of school. I smiled sweetly, said thank you, and took it, which I think sorely disappointed the gift-givers, who had hoped for screams.



Later, I got this card, complete with a personal note from one of the girls, telling me what she had particularly enjoyed in my class and wishing me a great summer. She said she couldn't wait to see me in eighth grade.

Oh, and by the way, the frog leg was from girls, too.

Of course, the vast majority of the seventh graders didn't give me any gifts, but simply squirmed and dropped things and tried to turn in work five days late and said bye when I said bye to them. Now to see what summer does to them and how they morph into eighth graders.

Poetry Friday

It was a busy day and I never got a poem posted, but plenty of other people did, so go read what they shared here.

Poetry Friday: Sestina: Like

While looking for a poem to share today, I found this one that is so very clever that I had to choose it. If you're not familiar with the sestina form, I explained it here. In this example, instead of choosing six different words to end the lines, A. E. Stallings has chosen just one, the omnipresent word "like."  She uses it to skewer Facebook, careless language, and the current lack of nuance in friendship. 

Sestina: Like
By A. E. Stallings
 

With a nod to Jonah Winter

Now we’re all “friends,” there is no love but Like,

A semi-demi goddess, something like

A reality-TV star look-alike,

Named Simile or Me Two. So we like

In order to be liked. It isn’t like

There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain “dislike”...

Here's the rest.

And here are some more Stallings poems I shared back in October 2010.

 

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup, where you can find out what poems have to do with Doritos.

Poetry Friday: The Art of Losing

I've been thinking about the earthquake this week, and the aftermath of it, particularly how it affected people in my life. I learned that people are much closer to falling apart than I had ever realized, and that we have no idea how a huge, unexpected, and completely uncontrollable event will affect us and the people we think we know. I learned that permanence is largely an illusion. I learned many good things, too, and I have shared them on this blog, but right now it is more the negative which are preoccupying me.

I decided to look back at where I was in May 2010, three years ago this week, and to post the poem that spoke to me then.

 Here's that post.

 And here's the poem:


One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like a disaster.  


So much lost.  So little progress towards mastery of that art.

But don't worry! I'm sure most of the people at this week's Poetry Friday roundup are in a better mood this week!

Poetry Friday: Any Fool Can Get Into an Ocean

I'm writing this on Thursday night because I'm heading to the beach in the morning for the Eighth Grade Retreat.  I went looking for an ocean poem and immediately found this one, which seems perfect.  

"Any fool can get into an ocean..."

Jack Spicer

Any fool can get into an ocean   

But it takes a Goddess   

To get out of one.

What’s true of oceans is true, of course,

Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming   

Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed

You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess

To get back out of them

Here's the rest, including a reading of it.

Off to wade through the metaphor's seaweed.  Back on Saturday.


The roundup is here this week.

May Day

April, Poetry Month, is over.  As always, it ended up being such a busy month that I didn't have time to savor all the fabulous poetry-related projects going on in blog-land, and barely even got to finish reading the Poetry Friday posts each week.  I traveled to the IRA conference in San Antonio (and still haven't organized myself enough to write a post on the sessions I attended).

We have the day off from school today, because here in Haiti, as in many places around the world, May 1st is Labor Day.  I have spent most of the day working on my talks for the Eighth Grade Retreat we're having this coming weekend.  I've been thinking about what I want to say to these kids, looking at photos of them from their middle school years, and reflecting on how far they have come since I first started teaching them.  May is an ending; our school year goes on a little bit into June, but graduation is at the end of May, and everything is winding down into the summer pretty much from here on out.

Probably other middle school teachers will understand me when I say that spring in eighth grade is a challenging time.  It's a little bit like teaching seniors; you are wanting to maximize your time with them, to teach them all the things you know they're going to need next year, and yet in some ways you're ready to say goodbye to them.  They've become restless, ready to move on.  Some days they feel hostile from my vantage point in the front of the room, so different from those little kids who first entered my room at the beginning of seventh grade.  They tolerate middle school now, but they are made for bigger things, their attitude conveys.  These small desks can no longer contain the people they are.

So it's May, and another school year is almost history.  This has been a difficult year in some ways, mostly unbloggable, and I'm ready for the summer to come.  But I want to be present in this last month of school, focused on the task at hand, enjoying the people in my room each day. 

Poetry Month: Day 30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Here are the poets who contributed:

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

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

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Nine

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

Poetry Month: Day 29

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

Mending Wall

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

Robert Frost

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Eight

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

The Progressive Poem is Here: Poetry Month Day 27

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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



Photo Source: GreatestFoolsCircus.blogspot.com

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

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




 

Poetry Friday: To a Frustrated Poet

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

Breathe.

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


To a Frustrated Poet
R. J. Ellmann

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

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

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

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

Poetry Month: Day 25

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


In the Basement of the Goodwill Store
by Ted Kooser

In musty light, in the thin brown air   

of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,   

beneath long rows of sharp footfalls   

like nails in a lid, an old man stands   

trying on glasses, lifting each pair

from the box like a glittering fish   

and holding it up to the light

of a dirty bulb.

Here's the rest.

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Five

Here's today's line.



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



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

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

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

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

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

Poetry Month: Day 24

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

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

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

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Four

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





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

Poetry Month: Day 23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Three

Here's today's line.

 

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

Here's today's line.

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

More on that when I get home.