Poetry Sisters Talk Back to a Poem

The Poetry Sisters are back this month writing to a prompt created up by Sara (though she gives credit to for the idea to Laura, who mentioned it when we were brainstorming challenges for the year). April's challenge was to "talk back" to a poem. Sara chose this poem, found in Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Anita Barrows and Joanna Marie Macy.

The Night
by Rainer Maria Rilke

You, darkness, of whom I am born–

I love you more that the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illuminates
and excludes all the rest.

But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations–just as they are.

It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.

I believe in the night.


I wrote a number of poems for this challenge, but I couldn't get away from the idea of a letter. I'm not sure why I was stuck on an epistle, but that's where every draft went, even when I tried to write to form. After a number of drafts, this is the one I finally settled on.

Letter to Rainer Maria Rilke

Dear Rainer,
Somehow your poem was no surprise
knowing you as I do
but I cannot concur

You love darkness, believe in night
I love brightness, believe in light

You say darkness embraces all
without regard to any feature
I fear it harms the small, the weak
diminishes every lonely creature

There is no comfort in the night
no refuge, peace, nor sacred psalm
It’s in the sun, its warmth and light
my heart, my soul find sweetest balm

I cannot love the darkness
I won’t embrace the night
we must agree to disagree
over this we shouldn't fight

You can have the dark, my friend
but for me I’ll bathe in light

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2017. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems written by my poetry sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Kelly Fineman
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

In addition to this post, you may want to take a few minutes to read my National Poetry Month post(s). This year I am sharing poetry that celebrates my late sister-in-law and what it means to be human. These daily posts focus on traits that Pam exuded—empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love. Here are the posts I've shared to date.
4-1: Kindness
4-2: The Kindness
4-3: A Jack Kerouac Poem
4-4: When I Am In the Kitchen
4-5: Stay Out Of My Kitchen
4-6: Perhaps the World Ends Here
4-7: The Neat One

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem. Happy poetry Friday friends!

NPM 2017 Day Seven: The Neat One

For National Poetry Month this year I am sharing poetry that celebrates my late sister-in-law and what it means to be human. These daily posts focus on traits that Pam exuded—empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love.

*****
The first Christmas gathering Pam hosted was in 1994. The house was new and unfinished, but we were all together. I was newly married and spending my first holiday away from my family, so I'm sure my sadness was palpable. Pam worked so hard to make everyone happy. My fondest memory of that visit, and the one memory of Pam that still makes me laugh out loud, is the lunch the women shared one afternoon. Nana Balch was there, the matriarch of the family. She was in her 80s and sharply dressed. As we ate and talked, I could see Pam twitching over the mess we were making. (She was a bit of neat freak!) Nana in particular was scattering crumbs everywhere. Close to the end of the meal, Pam couldn't take it anymore, so she got out the Dustbuster and vacuumed the table and floor around Nana, and then proceeded to vacuum Nana's lap! I can still see everyone's stunned faces. I tried so hard not to laugh. This poem about neatness reminds me of that day.

The Neat One
by Violet Alleyn Storey 
(Poetry Magazine, 1925)

When others throw newspapers down,
   She lays them in smooth piles;
When index cards lie on the desk,
   She places them in files.

  “The neat one,” they have called her long—
   It’s strange they never knew
She dreamed once of toy-littered rooms
   With children running through.


I'll leave you today with this parting shot.

... there can be no real beauty without neatness and order. — Julia McNair Wright

Thank you for reading. I hope to see you here again tomorrow.

NPM 2017 Day Six: Perhaps the World Ends Here

For National Poetry Month this year I am sharing poetry that celebrates my late sister-in-law and what it means to be human. These daily posts focus on traits that Pam exuded—empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love.

*****
When Pam and I had the opportunity for extended visits, we often found ourselves sitting at the kitchen table, talking about anything and everything.

Perhaps the World Ends Here 
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Read the poem in its entirety.


I'll leave you today with this parting shot.

Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering.—Rachel Naomi Remen

Thank you for reading. I hope to see you here again tomorrow.

NPM 2017 Day Five: Stay Out of My Kitchen

For National Poetry Month this year I am sharing poetry that celebrates my late sister-in-law and what it means to be human. These daily posts focus on traits that Pam exuded—empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love.

*****
Pam and I shared a love for cooking. We also shared our loathing for folks in our sacred kitchen space. I know I intruded on her more times than she probably appreciated, but she was always very generous about my stepping on her toes. While people often like to help with cleanup after a meal, this is a good time for the cook to decompress, get a little breathing space from company, and put things to rights in their own way! I know I'm guilty of shooing people away for this very reason. Once I realized Pam and I were alike in this way, I didn't take offense when she needed alone time in the kitchen. In fact, I once sent her a Dear Abby column that contained this poem, accompanied by nothing more than a post-it note with a heart and smiley face.

Stay Out of My Kitchen
by Susan Sawyer

Please stay away from my kitchen,
From my dishwashing, cooking and such.
You were kind to have offered to help me,
And I do want to thank you so much.

I hope you won’t think me ungracious
When I ask that you leave me alone,
For my kitchen is not very spacious
And my system is strictly my own.

So please stay out of my kitchen,
It may well prevent a few wars,
And when I am invited to your house,
I promise to stay out of yours.

I'll leave you today with this parting shot, found on one of my dish towels.

No matter where I serve my guests... they seem to like my kitchen best...

Thank you for reading. I hope to see you here again tomorrow.

NPM 2017 Day Four: When I Am in the Kitchen

For National Poetry Month this year I am sharing poetry that celebrates my late sister-in-law and what it means to be human. These daily posts focus on traits that Pam exuded—empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love.

*****
I have fond memories of Pam in the kitchen. She was an enthusiastic cook with a penchant for "light" recipes and sometimes unusual ingredients. She was quick to copy her favorite recipes to share with me. There are a few I still make today, though quite a few were relegated to the rubbish bin after only being followed once. Regardless of the recipe, Pam cooked everything with love and a desire to please others. I often think of her when I am alone in the kitchen.

When I Am in the Kitchen
by Jeanne Marie Beaumont

I think about the past. I empty the ice-cube trays
crack crack cracking like bones, and I think
of decades of ice cubes and of John Cheever,
of Anne Sexton making cocktails, of decades
of cocktail parties, and it feels suddenly far
too lonely at my counter. Although I have on hooks
nearby the embroidered apron of my friend’s
grandmother and one my mother made for me

Read the poem in its entirety.


I'll leave you today with this parting shot.

I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give. – Julia Child

Thank you for reading. I hope to see you here again tomorrow.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Lies I've Told

I pulled this old gem off the shelf this weekend.

In Chapter 4, Writing Free Verse Poems, Janeczko provides a laundry list (no pun intended) of ideas for writing list poems. I've been stuck on the idea of writing about "lies I've told."

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a list poem on the subject of "lies I've told." Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

NPM 2017 Day Three: A Jack Kerouac Poem

For National Poetry Month this year I am sharing poetry that celebrates my late sister-in-law and what it means to be human. These daily posts focus on traits that Pam exuded—empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love.

*****
Pam had more forgive and forget in her soul than most people I know. Forgiveness is not something that comes easily to me (though it should), and even when I do forgive, it's hard for me to forget. Pam seemed to be able to do this so easily, and with such grace. The poem below reminds me of this quality of hers. It comes from a letter Jack Kerouac sent to his first wife more than 10 years after their marriage had been annulled.

The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks dont see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you’re already
in heaven now.
That’s the story.
That’s the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they’re
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s’why I’ll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my woodstove
making pancakes.

You can find this letter, as well as his poetry, criticism, Buddhist writings, letters and more in The Portable Jack Kerouac.

I'll leave you today with this parting shot.

Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace. – Leo Tolstoy

Thank you for reading. I hope to see you here again tomorrow.

NPM 20017 Day Two: The Kindness

For National Poetry Month this year I am sharing poetry that celebrates my late sister-in-law and what it means to be human. These daily posts focus on traits that Pam exuded—empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love.

*****

"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." - Henry James

Kindness doesn't need to be some grand gesture. It can be as simple as a smile, a wave, an open door. This poem reminds me that while we may not know what another person is feeling or experiencing, one simple act may touch them in an extraordinary way. Here's a poem that expresses this sentiment.

Excerpt from The Kindness
by Jan Beatty

Their fragility, their awkward bumping
opens me to a long ago time—
            a hand on the door,
            I was walking in
to the psych hospital in Pittsburgh,
feeling broken and stripped down—
            a hand on the door
            from around my body
& I looked up to see the body
of a man, who said:
Let me get that for you—
            a hand on the door
            & the bottom of me
            dropped/
I couldn’t breathe for the kindness.
I couldn’t say how deep that went
for me.
I had been backing up, awkward/
I had been blind to my own beauty.

Read the poem in its entirety.

I often wonder how different our days would be if they were visited by these seemingly small but powerful acts of kindness by others. Today, on Pam's birthday, I am broken by the thought that we weren't kind enough, didn't do enough to offer her comfort and love. When I reach out in kindness to friends and strangers, it's Pam I see as I offer my heart to them.

I'll leave you today with this parting shot.

How beautiful a day can be when kindness touches it! – George Elliston

Thank you for reading. I hope to see you here again tomorrow. 

NPM 2017 Day One: Kindness

For National Poetry Month this year I am sharing poetry that celebrates my late sister-in-law and what it means to be human. These daily posts focus on traits that Pam exuded—empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love.

*****

Let's kick this month off with a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Before you read it, just give a listen.



This part of the poem, in particular, speaks to me.

Excerpt from Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Read the poem in its entirety.


What does it mean to be kind?

Kindness's original meaning of kinship or sameness has stretched over time to encompass sentiments that today go by a wide variety of names—sympathy, generosity, altruism, benevolence, humanity, compassion, pity, empathy—and that in the past were known by other terms as well, notably philanthropia (love of mankind) and caritas (neighborly or brotherly love). The precise meanings of these words vary, but fundamentally they all denote what the Victorians called "open-heartedness," the sympathetic expansiveness linking self to other. – from On Kindness (2010), written by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor Picador

I believe we could all use a lot more kindness in our lives. Imagine how different our world would be if we were to embrace this simple "open-heartedness."

I'll leave you today with this parting shot.

"A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees." - Amelia Earhart

Thank you for reading. I hope to see you here again tomorrow. 

Poetry Friday - NPM Starts Tomorrow!

Where has March gone! I've spent the better part of the month thinking about National Poetry Month and what I would like to explore this April. First, I decided to look back to determine what I've already covered in these yearly celebrations.

2016 - Celebrations - Project in which I highlighted daily, weekly, or monthly celebrations in April and connected them to a poet, poem, or book of poetry. 

2015 - Poetic Forms 

2014 - Science/Poetry Pairs 

2013 - Poetry A to Z 

2011 - Poetry in the Classroom  

2010 - Poetry Makers 

2009 - Poetry Makers - Interviews with poets who write for children. 

2008 - Poetry in the Classroom - Project in which I highlighted a poem, a theme, a book, or a poet and suggested ways to make poetry a regular part of life in the classroom.

I began this blog in November of 2006. I was new to this thing called blogging in 2007 and was preparing for a trip to China, so a daily celebration of poetry never crossed my mind. I'm not sure why I embraced daily posts and a thematic project in 2008, but once I did, I knew it would be a yearly tradition.

In 2009, I wrote many of my April posts in a darkened theater during rehearsals for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. My father was in hospice care at the time, and I found that both poetry and the musical kept me afloat.

In looking back, it is the glaring gap in these celebrations of poetry that touches me with a familiar prickle of grief. On March 29th of 2012, my husband lost his older sister to suicide. It was an incredibly sad time, and one in which it was hard to find solace. I wrote a lot poetry then as I tried to make sense of something incomprehensible, but I couldn't bring myself to blog. Celebrating anything just felt wrong. This year marks the 5th anniversary of Pam's death. During the last few months I've spent quite a bit of time thinking of her and wondering how I can honor her, the things she loved, and the things I loved about her.

Pam was light, and love, and kindness, and peace. In the world we live in today, these traits are much needed. So, this month I've decided to honor Pam and her legacy of caring through poetry -- poetry that celebrates what it means to be human. My daily posts will focus on empathy, kindness, caring, friendship, gentleness and love. I know the color purple will make an appearance in some small way. There might even be a kitten or a puppy among these posts to honor Pam's love for all creatures great and small.

Shortly after Pam died, I seemed to see purple at every turn, and each time I did was reminded of her. I even spent some time looking for poems that contained the word purple. Here's a short one I found that is still with me today and continues to make me smile.

The Purple Cow
by Gelett Burgess

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one!

Please join me in April for this year's National Poetry Month extravagnaza celebrating humanity and the incredible power of poetry.


I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater of The Poem Farm. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - It's Back!

I took a bit of an unexpected break this month, but I'm happy to be back with you. For whatever reason, Mondays this semester have been hard to manage. I've been teaching 2 classes back-to-back, beginning at 4:00 pm and ending around 9:45. That means I haven't been getting home until a bit after 10. By then, if I haven't posted a stretch, it doesn't get done that day. so, my apologies for being lax this month.

I've been writing lately to some of the exercises in The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell. This one is entitled "The Night Aunt Dottie Caught Elvis's Handkerchief When He Tossed It From the Stage of the Sands in Vegas" and was written by David Wojahn. In essence, the challenge is to write a poem about a family member meeting a famous person. Here are the guidelines for this.

• The encounter can be real or imaginary, but should at least be plausible.
• The family member, not the famous person, should be the protagonist of the poem.
• The narrator must know the "inner workings of the family member's mind," and must write about the family member as a "character" in the third person.
• The famous person can be anyone in politics, entertainment, or the arts.
• Generally, a longer poem is needed (at least 30 lines) to develop a portrait of the family member.

Here's a model poem for this exercise.

1933
by Lynda Hull

Whole countries hover, oblivious on the edge
of history and in Cleveland the lake
already is dying. None of this matters
to my mother at seven, awakened from sleep

to follow her father through darkened rooms
downstairs to the restaurant emptied
of customers, chairs stacked and steam glazing
the window, through the kitchen bright with pans,

ropes of kielbasa, the tubs of creamy lard
that resemble, she thinks, ice cream.
At the tavern table her father's friends
talk rapidly to a man in a long gray coat,

in staccato French, Polish, harsh German.
Her mother stops her, holds her shoulders, and whispers
This is a famous man. Remember his face.
Trotsky, a name like one of her mother's

Read the poem in its entirety.

Other example poems include History of My Heart by Robert Pinsky and Cuba by Paul Muldoon.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a poem for this stretch. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Triolet

I've been a bit remiss with stretches as of late. This one is coming to you just under the wire.

A triolet is an eight line poem with a tightly rhymed structure and repeated lines. Here is the form.

line 1 - A
line 2 - B
line 3 - A
line 4 - line 1 repeated
line 5 - A
line 6 - B
line 7 - line 1 repeated
line 8 - line 2 repeated

You can read an example and learn more about this form at Poets.org.

Here is an example. It comes from the book Fly With Poetry: An ABC of Poetry, written and illustrated by Avis Harley.

Phosphorescence
by Avis Harley

Have you ever swum in a sea
alive with silver light
sprinkled from a galaxy?
Have you ever swum in a sea
littered with glitter graffiti
scribbled on liquid night?
Have you ever swum in a sea
alive with silver light?

One of my favorite triolets can be found in Paul Janeczko's A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms. Written by Alice Schertle, the poem is entitled The Cow's Complaint.

Will you write a triolet with me this week? Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Sisters Write Ekphrastic Poems

The Poetry Sisters are back this month writing to an image chosen by Tanita.

Photo by Ana_Cotta, used under Creative Commons License

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ana_cotta/2763575483/in/pool-creative_commons-_free_pictures/

I wrote a number of poems for this challenge, but one idea kept popping into my head and I couldn't get over it (or past it). It was this ...
Following on this theme of phone booths in literature and film, my brainstorming took me to phone booth stuffing, the T.A.R.D.I.S., The Phantom Toll Booth, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and more. After a bit of noodling, this is what I finally settled on.

Nostalgia

I weep for
Clark Kent
Dr. Who
Harry Potter

Where will Clark become Superman?
How with the Doctor travel through time and space?
How will Harry visit the Ministry of Magic?

It’s been years since I’ve seen
an honest-to-God booth
with a door and working phone
the kind you secretly popped into
to check for forgotten change
or ducked into to get
out of the rain

I miss the snap and ch-ch-ch-ch-ch
of the old rotary dial
and later, the beep-beep-beep
of metal push buttons

I long to enter a
royal red box in London
dial 62442 (magic!)
and descend through the ground

I dream of taking a trip
in the T.A.R.D.I.S.
to talk poetry with
Dickinson and Frost

I pray that if I ever need assistance
my heroes will find a space to
hang their hats and transform

Today I’m missing telephone booths.
What will I miss tomorrow?

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2017. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems written by my poetry sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Kelly Fineman
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Limerick

After watching Saturday Night Live the last few weeks, limericks and clerihews have been rattling around in my head. I thought it might be fun to write some limericks this week.

Limericks are humorous nonsense poems that were made popular in English by Edward Lear. Limericks not only have rhyme, but rhythm. The last words of the first, second, and fifth lines all rhyme, and the last words of the third and fourth lines rhyme. This means the rhyme scheme is AABBA. The rhythm of a limerick comes from a distinct pattern. Lines 1, 2, and 5 generally have seven to ten syllables, while lines 3 and 4 have only five to seven syllables. Here is an example from Lear's book.

If you can't read the text, here's the limerick in the 5-line form usually seen today.

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
   Two Owls and a Hen,
   Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'

You can read Lear's A Book of Nonsense online, which includes 112 limericks.
 

I hope you'll join me this week in writing some limericks. If you feel politically inclined, that would be fun too. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Rhupunt

I am still reading and pondering the forms in Robin Skelton's The Shapes of Our Singing: A Comprehensive Guide to Verse Forms and Metres from Around the World. The Rhupunt is a Welsh verse form. Lines are 4 syllables long, with the last line rhyming with the last line of the following stanza. Stanzas may be 3, 4, or 5 lines long. Here is the pattern for these versions.

3-line

x x x A

x x x A

x x x B

x x x C

x x x C

x x x B

4-line

x x x A

x x x A

x x x A

x x x B

x x x C

x x x C

x x x C

x x x B

5-line

x x x A

x x x A

x x x A

x x x A

x x x B

x x x A

x x x A

x x x A

x x x A

x x x B

Since the lines in each stanza are generally thought to be portions of a long line, they are sometimes presented as a couplet with lines of 12 to 20 syllables. Written this way the rhupunt would look like this:
x x x A x x x A x x x A x x x B
x x x C x x x C x x x C x x x B

You can read more about the rhupunt at The Poets Garret.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a rhupunt. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Sisters Write Villanelles

This month the poetry gang wrote villanelles with the theme of brevity or shortness. The villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. It is made up of five tercets and a quatrain. The rhyme scheme is aba aba aba aba aba abaa. The 1st and 3rd lines from the first stanza are alternately repeated so that the 1st line becomes the last line in the second stanza, and the 3rd line becomes the last line in the third stanza and so on. The last two lines of the poem are lines 1 and 3 respectively.

I started poems on 4 different topics, but ultimately couldn't get away from politics. My apologies for that. It's too bad really, because some of the other ideas were interesting. I'm going to keep working on the poem built around Shakespeare's quote "brevity is the soul of wit." It was the first thing I thought of when I began brainstorming ideas for this form and I just couldn't get it out of my head. I also worked on poems about winter days and revising poems. 

Here's the poem I'm sharing today. I thought about calling it "The Relativity of Trump," but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Untitled Villanelle

Time is relative they say

sometimes long and sometimes brief

it just depends upon the day

November seems so far away

yet we’re still filled with disbelief

time is relative they say

We want Obama’s yesterday

when our hearts weren’t filled with grief

but it depends upon the day

We read Twitter with dismay

and with impatience seek relief

but time is relative they say

Now we must make our way

with this narcissist in chief

so hope depends upon the day

We cannot run away

we must hold to our belief

time is relative they say

it just depends upon the day

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2017. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems written by my poetry sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Kelly Fineman
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by  Penny Klosterman at Penny and Her Jots. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Things To Do

In honor of Elaine Magliaro, who has a new book coming out on February 7th, I thought it might be fun to write "Things To Do" poems.

Elaine wrote a terrific post way back in 2010 describing how she got started writing things to do poems. Inspired by the poems of Bobbi Katz, Elaine took to writing list poems in this format with her second graders. The post, The Super Duper "Things to Do" Poems Post, includes example poems written by/with her students, as well as links to original poems Elaine wrote in this form.

Elaine's book, Things to Do, is filled with poem that describe "things to do" if you are dawn, a bird, honeybee, an acorn, the sky, and more.

Here's an excerpt from a poem that didn't make it into this collection.

Things To Do If You Are a Castle

Stand on a stony cliff
overlooking the sea.
Wear a thick wall of armor.
Sprout tall turrets.
Be a haven.
Drop your drawbridge
for damsels in distress.

Read the poem in its entirety.

I hope you'll join me in writing a "Things To Do" poem this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

This Week's Poetry Stretch - Zeno

I'm teaching Monday and Tuesday evenings this semester, and I'm a bit overwhelmed. It was on my run this morning that I realized I hadn't posted a stretch yet. My apologies for sharing this so far into the week. I've picked a short, challenging form for us.

The Zeno is a poetic form that was invented by J. Patrick Lewis. Here's Pat's explanation of the form.

I've invented what I had called a “hailstone," after the mathematical "hailstone sequence." It has nothing to do with Mary O'Neill's Hailstones and Halibut Bones, but it would no doubt instantly be confused with it. Hence, "hailstone" is problematic. So I call the form a "zeno," so named for Zeno, the philosopher of paradoxes, especially the dichotomy paradox, according to which getting anywhere involves first getting half way there and then again halfway there, and so on ad infinitum. I'm dividing each line in half of the previous one. Here's my description of a zeno:

A 10-line verse form with a repeating syllable count of 8,4,2,1,4,2,1,4,2,1.
The rhyme scheme is abcdefdghd.

Here are two examples.

Sea Song
A song streaming a thousand miles
may sound like a
fairy
tale,
but it’s only
love’s bulk-
mail
coming out of
the blue...
whale. 

Why Wolves Howl
Gray wolves do not howl at the moon.
Across a vast
timber
zone,
they oboe in
mono-
tone,
Fur-face, I am
all a-
lone.

Poems ©J. Patrick Lewis. All rights reserved.

I hope you'll join me in writing a zeno this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Friday - Pied Beauty

I need this today ...

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

Read the poem in its entirety. (You can listen to it too!)

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Violet Nesdoly. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Décima

The following description comes from my April 2015 interview with Margarita Engle.

The décima is a rhymed, metered poem that most commonly has ten eight-syllable lines in a rhyme pattern abba aa abba.

Here's an example.

BIRD PEOPLE
by Margarita Engle

In a time when people were stars
in deep, hidden caves of the sea,
a fisherman ventured so far
that a hole in the cave set him free.

He burst from the cave up to sky
and reached the bold shimmer of light.
No longer a man who could cry,
he was silent until darkest night.

Then the song that flew from his heart
was the sweetest song ever heard,
a melody about the start
of life as a winged, singing bird!

Poem ©Margarita Engle, 2015. All rights reserved.

In this poem, Margarita used twelve lines with a rhyme pattern abab  cdcd  efef. As she said, "Changing a décima is perfectly acceptable!  When they’re used as the lyrics of rumba songs, they are often improvised."

You can learn more about the décima at NBCLatino.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a décima. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Sisters Write Somonka

And so, another year of writing poetry with my fabulous sisters begins! I can't tell you how excited I am that we are continuing to write together. We've mapped out our plan for the year and at Liz's choosing, we are beginning with the somonka and the theme of love.

The somonka is a Japanese form that consists of two tanka written in tandem. Tanka is a form of Japanese poetry that has been practiced for more than 1000 years. Tanka are composed of 31 syllables in a 5/7/5/7/7 format. Most tanka focus on nature, seasons, the discussion of strong emotions, or a single event of some significance. In a somonka, the first tanka is usually a declaration of love, with the second a response to that declaration. 

This is the point where I confess that I don't like love poems. I don't like to read them and don't often write them. In fact, the first love poem I ever wrote was just last month during our ekphrastic writing challenge. The image took me unexpectedly in the love direction, and so I went with it. Sitting down this time to write a love poem was a difficult challenge. I'm not sure I've followed the guidelines exactly, but I've got a poem or two I'm happy to share.


I'm a lucky boy
snuggled in my favorite chair,
so warm, belly full.
Could there be a better life
for me, than to be so loved?

He's easy to love,
all lean lines and handsome face,
a classic beauty.
It's easy to ignore his
flaws. Who doesn't love a dog?

 

How do I love thee you?
With poetry (not Browning),
with words unspoken,
with lasagna, chocolate cake,
in numerous mundane ways.

I married for food.
She captured my heart through my
stomach. Heaven knows
there are other reasons, but
I'm too full to think. That's love.

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2017. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems written by my poetry sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Kelly Fineman
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Linda at Teacher Dance. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Things to Do

In honor of Elaine Magliaro, who has a new book coming out on February 7th, I thought it might be fun to write "Things To Do" poems.

Elaine wrote a terrific post way back in 2010 describing how she got started writing things to do poems. Inspired by the poems of Bobbi Katz, Elaine took to writing list poems in this format with her second graders. The post, The Super Duper "Things to Do" Poems Post, includes example poems written by/with her students, as well as links to original poems Elaine wrote in this form.

Elaine's book, Things to Do, is filled with poem that describe "things to do" if you are dawn, a bird, honeybee, an acorn, the sky, and more.

Here's an excerpt from a poem that didn't make it into this collection.

Things To Do If You Are a Castle

Stand on a stony cliff
overlooking the sea.
Wear a thick wall of armor.
Sprout tall turrets.
Be a haven.
Drop your drawbridge
for damsels in distress.

Read the poem in its entirety.

I hope you'll join me in writing a "Things To Do" poem this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Ya Du

Ya Du is a Burmese poetic form that uses climbing-rhyme. Each poem contains anywhere from 1-3 stanzas (but no more than 3). Each stanza contains 5 lines. The climbing rhymes occur in syllables four, three, and two of both the first three lines and the last three lines of a stanza. The first four lines have 4 syllables each, and the last one can have 5, 7, 9, or 11 syllables. The last two lines have an end-word rhyme. 

Here's an example of what the climbing rhyme pattern looks like.

x x x a

x x a x

x a x b

x x b c

x b x x x x c

Since ya du means "the seasons," the poem should contain a reference to the seasons.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a ya du. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Cybils Finalists!

I'm so thrilled to have served as a Cybils first round judge in the poetry category this fall. I'm very excited to share the list we are sending forward to the round 2 judges.

Booked

by Kwame Alexander

To Stay Alive: Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party

by Skila Brown

Guess Who, Haiku

by Deanna Caswell

When Green Becomes Tomatoes: Poems for All Seasons

by Julie Fogliano

Garvey’s Choice

by Nikki Grimes

Fresh Delicious

by Irene Latham

The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary

by Laura Shovan

You can view all the Cybils finalists here. Happy New Year and happy reading.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Somonka

Christmas is over, but Hanukkah is still going strong. The new year is just around the corner. I'd like to write about endings and beginnings, so a form written from two perspectives sounds like a good idea.

The somonka is a Japanese form that consists of two tanka written in tandem. The first tanka is usually a declaration of love, with the second a response to that declaration. While this form usually requires two authors, it is possible for one poet to write from both perspectives.

Writing somonka requires that we revisit the guidelines for tanka. Tanka is a form of Japanese poetry that has been practiced for more than 1000 years. Tanka are composed of 31 syllables in a 5/7/5/7/7 format. Most tanka focus on nature, seasons, the discussion of strong emotions, or a single event of some significance.

In her article Tanka as Diary, Amelia Fielden writes:

Tanka, meaning ‘short song’, is a 1300 year old Japanese form of lyric poetry. Non-rhyming, it is composed in Japanese in five phrases of 5/7/5/7/7 syllables.

In English, tanka are normally written in five lines, also without (contrived) rhyme, but in a flexible short/long/short/long/long rhythm. Due to dissimilarities between the two languages, it is preferable not to apply the thirty-one syllable standard of the Japanese poems, to tanka in English. Around twenty-one plus/minus syllables in English produces an approximate equivalent of the essentially fragmentary tanka form, and its lightness. To achieve a “perfect twenty-one”, one could write five lines in 3/5/3/5/5 syllables. If the resulting tanka sounds natural, then that’s fine. However, the syllable counting does not need to be so rigid. Though no line should be longer than seven syllables, and one should try to maintain the short/long/short/long/long rhythm, variations such as 2/4/3/5/5 or 4/6/3/6/7 or 3/6/4/5/6 syllable patterns can all make good tanka.

Here is an example, translated by one of my former colleagues at the University of Richmond. These tanka were sent back and forth between a nobleman named Mikata No Sami (Active C. 700) and his young wife, the daughter of Omi Ikuha (N.D.)

Tied up, it loosens,
untied, it's too long
my love's hair --
nowadays I can't see it --
has she combed it together?

Everyone now says
my hair is too long
and I should tie it up --
but the hair you gazed upon
I'll leave in tangles

Translated by Stephen Addiss in The Art of Haiku: Its History through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters (pp. 19-20)

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a somonka. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Bite-Sized Sonnet

Since we wrote a sonnet variation last week, I thought I continue with this theme. In Avis Harley's book Fly With Poetry: An ABC of Poetry, she include the bite-sized sonnet. This form follows the rhyme scheme of a "traditional sonnet," but it's not written in iambic pentameter. Instead, each line contains only ONE syllable. Here's Avis' poem.

A Bite-Sized Sonnet

House
sleeps.
Mouse
creeps
in
through
thin
flue.

Spots
cheese;
stops.
Sees
cat.
SCAT!

Poem ©Avis Harley. All rights reserved.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a bite-sized sonnet. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Curtal/Curtailed Sonnet

Sorry I missed you all last week. I got caught up in the end of the semester and it was Friday before I realized I hadn't scheduled a post for writing. Mea culpa. I am back and have a number of stretches ready to go to see us into the New Year.

The curtal sonnet (or curtailed sonnet) was invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem Pied Beauty is a fine example of this form.

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—

  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

Read the poem in its entirety.

The curtal sonnet is composed of a sestet and a quintet. It is written in iambic pentameter, with the exception of the final line, which is a spondee (a foot consisting of two long (or stressed) syllables). The rhyme scheme is:

• sestet: a/b/c/a/b/c
• quintet: d/c/b/d/c or d/b/c/d/c 

You can read more about this form at The Curtal Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a curtal sonnet. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Seven Write Ekphrastic Poems (One Last Time for 2016)

And so, another year of writing poetry with my fabulous sisters comes to an end. This year we alternated poetic forms with ekphrastic poems. This time around Andi shared photos taken at the Glencairn Museum Cloister. This is the photo I chose.

Photograph © Andi Sibley

I've never written a love poem before, as I'm not really the romantic type, but I am sentimental. Here's where this image took me.

22 Years and Counting ...

You sit in the ram
I’ll sit in the ewe
together in quiet
we’ll relish the view

The peace of the valley
buried in snow
the twinkling lights
of the houses below

Up here on the hill
with the now setting sun
we sit in our chairs
as the day is undone

Communing together
we don’t say a word
but we don’t need to speak
for our hearts to be heard

With fingertips touching
we speak with our eyes
the fact that you love me
is still a surprise

You are my comfort
my home and my song
in the map of my heart
it's with you I belong

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2016. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems written by my Poetry Seven compatriots at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Kelly Fineman
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Bridget Magee at wee words for wee ones. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Six Words

Don't fret, this isn't a sestina! Today I have a different six-word poetry challenge.

In the book I Am Writing a Poem About . . . A Game of Poetry, Myra Cohn Livingston writes about three of the assignments she gave to students in her master class in poetry at UCLA. The third assignment Livingston gave was to write a poem that included six assigned words. Here is a description from the book's introduction.

About the last assignment--a six-word-based poem--there was some debate. Everyone agreed that hole, friend, candle, ocean, bucket, and snake presented possibilities, but a few preferred the word scarecrow to bucket, so a choice was given. Hole, friend, candle, ocean, and snake were mandatory, but one could choose either bucket or scarecrow as the sixth word.

Now, that is a challenge! Let's follow Livingston's directions and write a poem that contains the five words hole, friend, candle, ocean, and snake, as well as either bucket or scarecrow as the sixth word. I hope you'll join me in writing this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Terzanelle

I'm a day late this holiday week, but I'm here and glad you are as well.

So, what do you get when you cross a terza rima and a villanelle? The answer is a poetic form called a terzanelle. A terzanelle uses the villanelle’s form of five triplets and a quatrain with the interlocking rhyme scheme of the terza rima.

Here is the line pattern and rhyme scheme.

1 a1
2 b1
3 a2

4 b2
5 c1
6 repeat line 2

7 c2
8 d1
9 repeat line 5

10 d2
11 e1
12 repeat line 8

13 e2
14 f1
15 repeat line 11

16 f2
17 repeat line 1
18 repeat line 14
19 repeat line 3


You can read more about the terzanelle at Form and Formlessness.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a terzanelle. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Diminishing Rhyme

The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach, contains a number of prompts and writing exercises, including this one entitled Emotion/Motion/Ocean/Shun. Here's what Susan Mitchell writes:

If you read the title of this exercise aloud, you will hear a quadruple rhyme. But if you examine the words themselves, you will notice that there is something special about this rhyme scheme. The sound shun is contained in ocean, the sounds of both shun and ocean in motion, and shun, ocean and motion can all be folded into emotion. Such a rhyme scheme, which incidentally was favored by the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert, is called diminishing rhyme because the rhyme words get smaller as you move from emotion to shun. But I prefer the term nesting rhymes because the words nest one inside the other like Russian wooden dolls.

Here is an example of this form from the George Herbert poem "Paradise".

I bless Thee, Lord, because I grow
Among the trees, which in a row
To Thee both fruit and order ow 

Read the poem in its entirety. 

So, that's it. Your challenge is to write a poem that uses diminishing rhyme. Won't you join us? Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Macaronic Verse

In celebrating my blogiversary yesterday (10 years!), I went back and looked at all the poetry stretches we've done since I started posting them in August of 2007. It's been more than two years we wrote poems in the form of macaronic verse, so it seems like a good time to revisit the form. The Handbook of Poetic Forms defines macaronic verse in this fashion.

Macaronic verse is a peculiar, rare and often comic form of poetry that sometimes borders on nonsense. It is a mixture of two (or more) languages in a poem, in which the poet usually subjects one language to the grammatical laws of another to make people laugh.

Poetry Base describes macaronic verse this way.

The definition is a poem in a mixture of two languages, one of them preferably Latin. Usually the mixture of languages is a bit absurd. The word of one language may be terminated with common endings in the other.

So, your challenge for this week is to write a poem that uses more than one language. I hope you will join me this week in writing macaronic verse. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Ten Years Old! A Blogiversary Retrospective

Today I am celebrating 10 years in the blogosphere, and more specifically, the Kidlitosphere. It's been an amazing ride. I've found a community here that humbles, inspires, educates, and supports me in ways I never would have imagined when I started this journey. 

To celebrate the big day, I've decided to share some of my favorite posts, memories, and personal experiences that have grown out the real, live human connections I've made in this digital world. So, here we go!

*****

When I started this blog, my son had just started kindergarten. He's now a sophomore in high school.

 

I'll admit to being a bit embarrassed about my early posts. I'm not really sure what I wanted the blog to be. I knew I wanted it to be about teaching and books and math and science and .... probably too many things in the beginning. What's interesting about reading those early posts is that some of the ideas and issues that I grappled with then, I continue to grapple with. For example, in an early post I wrote this after my first parent-teacher conference sitting on the parent side of the desk.

My biggest concern was in fact, his teacher's concern. I have a kid who hates to make mistakes, puts too much pressure on himself to get everything right, and just wants to be downright perfect.
...
I was thrilled with the fantastic report I received from William's teacher, but found myself wondering on the drive home, how do I fix this? How do I teach him it's okay to make mistakes, that everyone does, and that this is really what learning is all about? I'm not sure, but when I find out, I'll let you know.

Fast forward ten years. This week in class we focused on math talks and the "productive struggle" that's so important in math. And we talked about mistakes ... how we need to value them and how we can't fear them as kids do the hard work of learning something new.

In those first few posts I wrote about teaching, planning, historical fiction, "busy" children's books, and more. What led me down the rabbit hole, and opened up a new world on the blog was my post on January 1, 2007 highlighting the Cybils shortlist. That year, 482 books were nominated to produce a list of 45 finalists. This one post led me to the kidlitosphere, and it ultimately helped me find my tribe. My "tribe" consists of authors, teachers, librarians, poets, and a whole host of folks I never would have met were it not for this blog. My blogroll would be hundreds of links today if I actually listed every one on this blog. Now I can follow many of these folks on Twitter.

If I'd been thinking ahead, or much more creative, I would have turned this into a lengthy celebration and started weeks in advance, sharing some of the more interesting bits and bobs along the way. Ten years is a long time to do one thing. Heck, people today often don't hold a job that long! The blog has definitely morphed a bit, but it's still a place I love to hang out. Here are some of the highlights from my first year of blogging.

*****
January 7, 2007
I entered Lisa Yee's Bodacious Book Title Contest. The rules were:
1. Think of a title from a children's/middle grade/young adult book.
2. Change the FIRST LETTER of ONE of the words to make it into a whole new title.
3. Then add a sentence describing the new book.

Here's one of my entries. It seems appropriate to share so close to election day.
Original Title: Duck for President
New Title: Puck for President
Summary: Upon escaping from the pages of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck finds himself in a land ruled by a ridiculous republican leader and, convinced he can do better, decides to run for President.

January 26, 2007
I participated in Poetry Friday for the first time! I didn't know to link up with others at that point, but I was finding a place to share and slowly finding my way into a community that I still participate in.

January 29, 2007
I posted my first thematic book list and Mary Lee Hahn of A Year of Reading stopped by to recommend a book. I'm so glad she did, and I'm so glad we're still talking about books and poetry together.

March 5, 2007
I wrote my first fib and walked through my writing/revising process. And Greg Pincus of GottaBook stopped by! (You're shocked, right?)

April 9, 2007
I wrote my first book review and was thrilled to find the author stopped by. This has happened a lot over the years, and it still makes me giddy. And that book I reviewed then is still in my teaching library and gets regular use.

May 15 - June 4, 2007
I traveled to Taiwan, China, and Tibet with a group of faculty members and blogged about my adventures. Here's a link to my summary post about what I learned.

July 16, 2007
I wrote about the book Ten Little Rabbits and the difficulty in evaluating books about other cultures. Debbie Reese of American Indians in Children's Literature stopped by and my education began. I still read her blog and am inspired by her tireless work.

August 6, 2007
I posted my very first poetry stretch. The form was the bouts-rímes. It's called the Monday Poetry Stretch now. I don't republish the poems in a new post any longer, just hope folks will drop into the comments to read the great things people share.

September 28, 2007
John Green came to campus as part of a lecture series. (This was just one year after An Abundance of Katherines was published.) I'd been following the Vlog Brothers since he was awarded a Printz honor in January, so meeting him was great fun.

October 6, 2007
I attended the very first Kidlit conference in Chicago and met all these amazing people.

October 15, 2007
The kidlit community came together in an event called Blogging for a Cure, spearheaded by Jules and Eisha of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. More than 60 bloggers worked to highlight an amazing group of illustrators who created snowflakes in support of Robert's Snow 2007. I may have even bid on and won a few ...

And that, my friends, is just a recap of one year of blogging! I've written numerous thematic lists since then, continue to host poetry stretches, participate in Poetry Friday, still speculate on the nature of diversity in children's books, write about poetry in many varied forms, and post original poetry supported by my amazing poetry sisters. I've experienced the highest highs and some of the lowest lows with this community. I'm so very grateful to have you. Thank you for reading, commenting, and stopping in to share my little corner of the internet. I love seeing you here.

Poetry Seven Write Terza Rima

As this year of writing together winds down, the Poetry Seven gang is tackling our final form, the terza rima. The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms (Padgett, 2000) defines terza rima in this fashion.

Terza rima is a tumbling, interlocking rhyme scheme that was invented by the thirteenth-century Italian poet Dante for the creation of his long poem, The Divine Comedy.

Terza rima (an Italian phrase meaning "third rhyme") consists of a series of three-line stanzas (tercets) with the rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc ded and so on. It can go on as long as the poet wishes. At the end of the poem an extra line is often added to complete the structure: yzy z.

You can read more on this form at Poets.org.

So, with a form to guide us, we decided to write about something uplifting, grateful, or hopeful. I'm not sure I managed to meet the theme head on this time, but rather think I've struck a close tangent. It's been hard to feel hope during this protracted election cycle, but I'm trying mightily to stay positive.

Here's the first draft which I wrote last night. Yes, at this point in the semester I'm working on everything at the last minute (much like my students, I imagine). It shows, but I'm glad to be here with my sisters once again.

Untitled Terza Rima
(With apologies to Langston Hughes)

Our world feels broken, bruised beyond repair
such bluster, noise, and chaos fill each day
but hope must be our choice and not despair

As clouds around us swell in black and gray
the news reminds us things could be much worse
so we must persevere, must not delay

to treasure all we have, this earth diverse
to meet each heart with gratitude and trust
to turn this global meltdown in reverse

to show more kindness, fight for what is just
to raise up those who've long been trod upon
to douse hate's sparks before we all combust

Acknowledge this will be a marathon
that change requires strength that’s undeterred
that only faith and love will move us on

to realize at last those dreams deferred

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2016. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems written by my Poetry Seven compatriots at the links below. Sending hugs to Andi who's not sharing a poem today, but always with us in spirit.

• Tanita Davis
• Kelly Fineman
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by one of my poetry sisters, Laura Purdie Salas. Happy poetry Friday friends!

P.S. - I'm celebrating a BIG blogiversary on Sunday, so I hope you'll stop by to join me for some virtual cake and a few fond memories.