National Poetry Month: April 23, 2015

Prompt: Today, I challenge you to take a chance, literally. Find a deck of cards (regular playing cards, tarot cards, uno cards, cards from your “Cards Against Humanity” deck – whatever), shuffle it, and take a card – any card! Now, begin free-writing based on the card you’ve chosen. Keep going without stopping for five minutes. Then take what you’ve written and make a poem from it. (Hat tip to Amy McDaniel for the idea!)

From Inner Child Cards: A Fairy-Tale Tarot

Little Red Cap

You with your long innocent hair

under that little red cap,

knitted by someone who loves you,

the tassel floating like flame behind.

Why have you paused on your way,

ignoring your mother’s warning?

I know the woods are tempting.

I could stop you if I wanted.

But maybe I’ll wait to see

if you take the wise path,

if you notice the birds

have to fallen silent

before that dark presence.

National Poetry Month: April 22, 2015

Prompt: Today is Earth Day, so I would like to challenge you to write a “pastoral” poem. Traditionally, pastoral poems involved various shepherdesses and shepherds talking about love and fields, but yours can really just be a poem that engages with nature. One great way of going about this is simply to take a look outside your window, or take a walk around a local park. What’s happening in the yard and the trees? What’s blooming and what’s taking flight?

Day 22:

Suburban Aviary

Bird poop on the back stoop means

the doves are back loving and laying,

so I look to find their twiggy nest

peeking from the eaves,

safe from the tabby cat

who uses our fence for her highway,

far from the raccoons who sleep

in the oak tree next door,

those raccoons who once visited us

while we sat outside eating sandwiches,

watching with their little flashlight eyes.

Now that I think about it

I haven’t heard much cooing

in the early morning lately.

Maybe this means the doves

are exhausted new parents.

All the birds are pretty quiet right now,

the juncos, sparrows and chickadees

must be building and nesting,

which makes the bluebird

I saw twice last week

an even more astonishing sight,

bright with rust collar and buff belly,

a true bluebird of happiness

because seeing him hop in the grass

that is exactly what I felt.

National Poetry Month: April 21, 2015

Our prompt for today (optional, as always) is an old favorite – the erasure! This involves taking a pre-existing text and blacking out or erasing words, while leaving the placement of the remaining words intact… Erasures can feel almost like a game – carving new poems out of old texts like carving statues from blocks of marble — and so they take some of the anxiety out of writing. They can also lead to surprising new ideas, as the words of the original text are given new contexts.

Day 21:

This erasure poetry is dedicated to my sister Lana who told me last weekend her favorite number is e.

National Poetry Month: April 20, 2015

Today, I challenge to write a poem that states the things you know. For example, “The sky is blue” or “Pizza is my favorite food” or “The world’s smallest squid is Parateuthis tunicata. Each line can be a separate statement, or you can run them together. The things you “know,” of course, might be facts, or they might be a little bit more like beliefs. Hopefully, this prompt will let your poem be grounded in specific facts, while also providing room for more abstract themes and ideas.

Day 20:

What I know

Like trees,

we should root ourselves

into the earth, snuggling deep,

but not forgetting to reach

our limbs high into the air,

stepping on tiptoe if need be,

but stretching up, up

to reach clouds water-laden,

then cradling them

with abundant love

so rain washes down upon us,

wetting our hair and skin,

nourishing our bodies,

filling us

until that clean fire

comes to burn

us away to ash.

National Poetry Month: April 19, 2015

My poetry aspirations couldn't compete with family obligations, so I've missed four days of poems.  However, I'm determined to finish out the month. Today, after being away helping Mom move into her new apartment,  I offer another haiku:

rosy tipped dogwoods

lilacs tulips irises

must be in Portland

National Poetry Month: April 14, 2015

For today's offering, another haiku:

winds rise high tonight

no rain only dry leaves that

rustle like fire

National Poetry Month: April 13, 2015

In keeping with the mysterious quality of the number 13, today I challenge you to write a riddle poem. This poem should describe something without ever naming it. Perhaps each line could be a different metaphor for the same object? Maybe the title of the poem can be the “answer” to the riddle. The result could be a bit like our Day One poems of negation, but the lines don’t need to be expressed in negatives.

Bedtime

Running from my capture machine

of paper cup and envelope,

she scuttled under the bed skirt.

Now she lies in wait for that first opportunity,

to scurry back up the white sail of sheet

flapping over my huge body.

Covered up to my chin, I dread she will pounce.

Both of us wrapped in our own fears.

I know she just wants somewhere

to light, to spin, to grow fat and contented.

She has made a bad choice, the wrong turn.

I’ve done it myself many times.

Trapped in a tomb of her own making,

dust-covered carpet and shadows,

she won’t come out.

Soon she’ll molder to dust herself.

I could try to find her, but know I won’t.

National Poetry Month: April 12, 2015

NaPoWriMo Day 12 Prompt: It comes to us from Dr. Cynthia A. Cochran of Illinois College:

Here is a great prompt for anyone who likes to write descriptive prose but shudders at writing poetry–and it really works:

Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form.  Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.

Cut the lines where you see fit and, VOILA! A poem!

Utica Street

white clapboard house

green shutters

upstairs downstairs kind

fence gate overlooked alley

backyard bursting

apple tree purple Concord grapes

garden patch tomatoes

green beans corn

humid air laden

wasps bees hovering

fruit sticky split by summer rain

cherry tree my cherry tree

so old most grew

far from reach bird nibbled

pink spring blossoms

then sweet tartness

rosy hearts picked sun warm

over chain link fence

rows of other yards

rows of houses marching

front porches shaded

by white-blossomed bridal bush

swing sets squatted

in patchy grass rough-mown

dogs barked we romped

slid down slides

legs pumping

we flew through air

National Poetry Day: April 11, 2015

NaPoWriMo Prompt: Today, rather than being casual, I challenge you to get rather classically formal, and compose a poem in Sapphics. These are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee.

Well, I certainly can count syllables, so my poem qualifies on that count (pun intended). However, as for the trochees and dactyls, I gave up. Lazy modern poet...

Lesvos

That day I first saw Sappho’s island of birth, 

Greek sun rose hot even at dawn’s blue hour.

Scrub covered hills rolled

outside the dust caked car window. I drove on,

clutch crabby and grumbling like an old woman

stumbling on gravel.

To the sea I sped, past signs I couldn’t read.

On to the Aegean where Sappho had first

penned poems of love.

I should have studied some verses to recite,

but my throat ran dry. Words flew away, cinders

orange against blue.

National Poetry Month: April 9, 2015

NaPoWriMo Day 9: Our prompt for the day (optional, as always) plays of our resources. Today, I challenge you to write a visual poem. If that’s not specific enough, perhaps you can try your hand at a calligram? That’s a poem or other text in which the words are arranged into a specific shape or image. You might find inspiration in the famous calligrams written by Guillaume Apollinaire. And a word to the wise — the best way to cope with today’s exercise may well be to abandon your keyboard, and sit down with paper and pen (and maybe crayons or colored pencils or markers!)

This form made me think of writing concrete poetry with my middle school students, so I tried to channel that energy.  Since I'm no visual artist, be kind to my awkward swirl. Ironically, attending the first meeting of a poetry class kept me from posting earlier!

National Poetry Month: April 8, 2015

Today is the eighth day of the  NaPoWriMo challenge, and that is truly what it is for me today.  Here it is Wednesday of the first week back after my Spring Break, and tonight I have to go to a school board meeting. I've stayed up too late every night since I got back from my vacation, so I am already tired and cranky.  
Obviously these are not the ideal conditions to write a poem, so at the moment I feel myself dried up. However, when in doubt haiku can come to the rescue! I'm still writing one a day (462 so far since 1/1/14) so this will be my poem of the day:

Day 8:

milky way streaking

through star dotted sky swept clean

then the moon rises

National Poetry Month: April 7, 2015

NaPoWriMo Prompt: So today, I challenge you to write about money! It could be about not having enough, having too much (a nice kind of problem to have), the smell, or feel, or sensory aspects of money. It could also just be a poem about how we decide what has value or worth.

Day 7

Money

At home she sees kids on the street everyday,

but here in Paris, with the Eiffel Tower

shining over her shoulder,

she can’t watch them sitting, hands outstretched.

She asks for a euro, thinking perhaps, it equals a quarter.

I don’t tell her it’s more than a dollar.

 “Tonight is too cold for someone to sleep hungry,” she says,

and I am filled with the light of her

as she bends, dark hair swooping over her face,

dropping the coin into his waiting palm.

National Poetry Month: April 6, 2015

NaPoWriMo Day 6: Today’s prompt springs from the form known as the aubade. These are morning poems, about dawn and daybreak. Many aubades take the form of lovers’ morning farewells, but . . . today is Monday. So why not try a particularly Mondayish aubade…

Monday Aubade

Four of us to get to school, four bowls of cereal or scrambled eggs,

Mom from table to stove, from one need to the next.

Dad long gone, having drunk his coffee and climbed into his truck

driving off into pre-dawn darkness.

Monday when beds stripped of weekend lay empty,

school books gathered and sneakers lost, then found.

Dawn peered over the trees across the farm field,

birds chattered in the oak outside the kitchen window.

Four squabbles, milk spilled on the plastic tablecloth,

dog under our feet searching for scraps.

My mother’s face grim-set.

Soon the fat yellow bus would arrive for my brother and me,

soon my sisters would make their way to school down the street.

Soon the house would fall hushed except for clicking

of doggy nails across the kitchen floor.

Now I wonder what my mother did.

Would she sit and watch the day come awake,

just sit with coffee cup nested in her hands?

Completely still,  gazing out at her garden before she shook herself out

and cleared the plates to set in soapy water.

National Poetry Month: April 5, 2015

Today's NaPoWriMo Prompt: Find an Emily Dickinson poem - preferably one you've never previously read  - and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it!

Gulp! Who am I to tamper with the great Emily's words? I didn't follow the directions completely...

Day 5: 

Before I got my eye put out – (336)

by Emily Dickinson

Before I got my eye put out –

I liked as well to see

As other creatures, that have eyes –

And know no other way –

But were it told to me, Today,

That I might have the Sky

For mine, I tell you that my Heart

Would split, for size of me –

The Meadows – mine –

The Mountains – mine –

All Forests – Stintless stars –

As much of noon, as I could take –

Between my finite eyes –

The Motions of the Dipping Birds –

The Morning’s Amber Road –

For mine – to look at when I liked,

The news would strike me dead –

So safer – guess – with just my soul

Upon the window pane

Where other creatures put their eyes –

Incautious – of the Sun –

Dear Emily #33

the sun

comes up

fueling morning’s

amber road

it is mine

to look at when

I like

it is mine

to share

with dipping birds

or other

creatures
mountains 
meadows
forests
are mine

the sky
of stintless stars

has split
my heart in two

National Poetry Month: April 4, 2015

Today's Prompt from NaPoWriMo: So today, I challenge you to write a "loveless" love poem...and if you're not in the mood for love? Well, the flip-side of the love poem - the break-up poem...If that's more your speed at present, try writing one of those, but again, avoid thunder, rain, and lines beginning with a plaintive "why"? Try to write a poem that expresses the feeling of love or lovelorn-ness without the traditional trappings you associate with the subject matter.

Day 4:

Goodbye

I bent to pick up the socks,

black skins dropped where he had sat.

Anger burrowed into me unexpected, and I knew.

Here was nothing left to hold or caress.

My hands like strangers dropped

those limp scraps right back onto the floor.

National Poetry Month: April 3, 2015

Today's writing prompt from Kelli Russell Agodon: Write a poem that has only five syllables in each line. Give the poem a long title. This one sounded fun since I've been writing haiku everyday for over a year now. I can spot a five syllable line anywhere.

Day 3:

I Listen to My Friend Make Breakfast While I Wake Up

outside I hear sounds

dishes and footsteps

I know soon coffee

will be brewed because

that is what we do

each morning as we

begin again we

drink and eat give food

to our bodies yes

cereal is now

poured into a bowl

and I imagine

milk after even

though I can’t hear that

each day we build our

selves back into what

we were until night

sleep took us before

we sank deep to float

in what we don’t know

with such trust that we

would return to light

National Poetry Month: April 2, 2015

Today's poem comes via a writing prompt from Kelli Russell Agodon:  Grab the closest book. Go to page 29. Write down 20 words that catch your eye. Use 7 of the words in a poem. For extra credit, have 4 of them appear at the end of a line.
I grabbed Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost.  The words I chose were: blue, edges, depths, spectrum, shallow, scattered, touch, horizon, go, ranges
Day 2:

there
 
beyond computers
and Facebook
grocery shopping
grunt of everyday
beyond the mundane
want of I
lie the blue edges
of the horizon
 
if we go there
where rocks range
scattered above shallow
waves slapping sand
perhaps then we can
touch what we have
always been
meant to find

National Poetry Month: April 1, 2015

It's that time again: National Poetry Month which means I'll be participating in NaPoWriMo once again. Last year I posted a haiku on my blog every day in April. This year I'm determined to post different types of poems each day. 

And if any of you want to write a poem to me, I'll post your work as well. 

So taking courage in hand (who in her right mind would post poems when they are newborn?), here goes.

 

Day 1:

Washing Dishes

White shards shattered,

scattered over the tile floor.

The plate flew past his head,

like in a movie

she had once watched,

like she had often imagined.

How it started doesn’t matter.

A bird trapped in her cage,

approval the worm she craved.

Not his half hidden glance

as he turned away,

derision written in the curve of his lips.

As she wiped that plate dry,

warm from its bath,

porcelain smooth,

this time her hand

knew the reply

she had never dared.

 

Learning from Anne Frank's Tree

Leaving the classroom to become a coach for English/Language Arts teachers has left me in a bit of a quandary. I'm still a poet who loves to travel, but am I still a teacher?  Not having papers to grade or report cards or parent conferences anymore has made me more than a little guilty when I talk to my teacher friends. Coaching teachers isn't easy but  facing a class of 30 8th graders is much, much more difficult.  So, am I still a teacher? For the last few months I've wondered if I should continue this blog or change its title. Somehow I wasn't sure I had anything more to say here.

Then I found something I wanted to share.

One of the duties of my new position is writing curriculum that aligns with the Common Core State Standards. I know there is much debate about the new standards, but to me one of the most hopeful aspects of the new English/Language Arts standards is a renewed focus on the meaning of individual pieces of literature. In the former California State Standards, instruction centered around comprehension skills that were then tested with multiple choice questions. Trying to understand the author's real message was often lost. While writing this new curriculum, I've had to dig into texts in a way I have not done since I studied literature in college. It's been exciting.

The other day, while writing about and researching The Diary of Anne Frank, I came across an online project I had never heard of before:  Anne Frank Tree: An Interactive Monument. It has been a long time since I read Anne Frank's diary, and I had forgotten how important the chestnut tree outside her window was to her. She mentioned it over and over. I also didn't know that the actual tree had become diseased and was blown down by high winds on August 23, 2010. However, people had found a way to commemorate both Anne and her tree.

This interactive project is sponsored by Anne Frank House. Individuals can create a message about Anne and how her work inspired or affected them. This message is typed on a "leaf " that joins other messages to create a digital tree as a monument to Anne Frank's memory. As of today 709, 222 people have participated. I thought this would be a wonderful way for students to respond to Anne's story.

The actress Emma Thompson was invited to place the first leaf when the project was unveiled. In the video of her speech introducing the Anne Frank Tree Monument , she shared some interesting insights about Anne and her importance to us all:

Listening to her made me realize that this didn't have to just be for young students. I decided to place my own leaf containing the haiku I had written about Anne. And that haiku led to another one:

immersed in Anne Frank's baby leaves budding

story I still cry for all frothy yellow in sunlight

her lost future words soon they will glow green

I also learned about The Sapling Project. When it became obvious that Anne's tree could not be saved, The Anne Frank House began gathering chestnuts from the tree. These chestnuts were germinated, and the seedlings sent to various organizations around the world. The American Anne Frank Center in New York received 11 saplings that were distributed to places throughout the United States. One sapling was given to Sonoma State University not far from where I live. That tree became a part of the University's Holocaust and Genocide Program. Since discovering this, I plan to visit the tree soon.

Emma Thompson said that Anne Frank's "would haves are our real possibilities." I believe Anne would have liked that phrase. For myself, I think reading Anne's words again has made me see that teaching and writing is not only about making my own possibilities come true but also helping others as well.  

If you have never read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, I urge you to do so. If you have already been touched by her story as I have, perhaps you will write a message on a leaf. 

Happy New Year!

According to history.com, "Civilizations around the world have been celebrating the start of each new year for at least four millennia. The earliest recorded festivities in honor of a new year’s arrival date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon." That's a long time.

Just what is it that makes human beings feel the need to celebrate cycles, reflect on our past and wonder about our future? I guess it is one of the things that makes us humans. Since I am not a philosopher, psychologist or minister, I'll leave the whys to someone else. Suffice to say that today I have joined the millions of us around the world who feel the need to do a little reckoning of our lives on this day.

Today my inbox has been filled with blogs from others doing just what I am doing right now. And the problem is that all our musings and reflections are of little use to anyone except ourselves. With the burgeoning of blogs and online sharing of every sort, we often reveal too much too many times. I don't want to fall into that category so I'll just say this:

It's been a strange year for me. I changed jobs after 23 years, and am no longer a classroom teacher. I didn't use my passport once, the first time in over a decade that I didn't travel somewhere internationally. And there have been other strangenesses that are too personal to reveal here.

While much of the year has left me shaken, there is one accomplishment of which I am particularly proud: my daily haiku writing. Over the past 365 days, I have written 365 haiku. I will admit I missed three days (one of them was my birthday for which I can be forgiven), but did make up for those by doing double haiku afterwards. Most of my hundreds of haiku were just plain horrible as far as poetry goes, but some I think actually can be called poems.

Along the way I have had the deep pleasure of being involved in an online Facebook community of fellow haiku writers, most of whom I have never met in person. Even so, I have learned so much about these wonderful people through their haiku. Along the way we have become writing buddies, "liking" and responding to each other's work. It has been a joyous experience. 

So to ring out the old year and welcome the new, what better way than with a haiku? It may not be one of my best but it's the last of 2014.

                          day scrubbed shiny clean

                          sunlight streaming through windows 

                          new year's eve wishes