Poetry Friday: NPM 2022 - Day 8

Today's poem is written to a piece of V-mail my Great Uncle Ray (the youngest of 8 kids) sent to my grandmother (the second oldest). In it he says:

I just got a letter from Babe telling me about the celebration that the gang is planning for Ma & Pa's "Golden Wedding Anniversary" ... to be held on the 29th of November. I might as well let you know right now, that I'm sore as hell at the whole bunch of you for not letting me know about it sooner. Consider yourself bawled out.

Even in a time of war, the kid brother was still giving his big sister a hard time. This doesn't surprise me about my uncle at all.

This poem is written as a pair of dodoitsu. I haven't really followed the form too well this time.  While I have followed the pattern (a 4-line poem with a syllable count of 7-7-7-5), I have not focused on "love or work with a comical twist." The post What is a Dodoitsu? contains more information about this Japanese form.

Victory Mail, more commonly known as V-mail, was used to expedite mail service for American armed forces overseas. Using microfilmed messages reduced the bulk and weight of letters. This meant there was more space on planes for other war supplies and that letters could reach troops faster than before. In the years it was in operation (June 1942-November 1945), more than 1 billion letters were processed. You can learn more about it at Mail Call: V-mail.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow and see what new inspiration I've found for a poem. Until then, you may want to read previous poems in this series. I'm also sharing these poems on my Instagram in case you want to see them all in one place. 

April 1 - Senryu to a photo of my grandmother as a child
April 2 - Haiku to my mother's recipe
April 3 - Dodoitsu to a war memento
April 4 - Choka to my mother's engagement announcement
April 5 - Gogyohka to the receipt for my mother's engagement ring
April 6 - Senryu to a student's drawing of my dad
April 7 - Tanka to a photo of my grandmother and her mother by a car

Finally, I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Janice at Salt City Verse. Happy poetry Friday friends. 

NPM 2022 - Day 7

Today's poem is written to a photograph of my grandmother (the teen sitting and looking grumpy) and her mother (my great grandmother). On the back of the photo my mother wrote "Gram Benwitz" and "Mother." That's all I know. I wish I knew more about the car. I wish I knew why my grandmother looked so out of sorts. 

This poem is written as a tanka. A tanka is a 5-line poem with the syllable pattern 5-7-5-7-7. You can learn more about this form at The Tanka Journal.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow and see what new inspiration I've found for a poem. Until then, you may want to read previous poems in this series. I'm also sharing these poems on my Instagram in case you want to see them all in one place. 

April 1 - Senryu to a photo of my grandmother as a child
April 2 - Haiku to my mother's recipe
April 3 - Dodoitsu to a war memento
April 4 - Choka to my mother's engagement announcement
April 5 - Gogyohka to the receipt for my mother's engagement ring
April 6 - Senryu to a student's drawing of my dad

NPM 2022 - Day 6

Today's poem is written to a drawing one of my father's student made of him in 1970. I never thought my father was sentimental, but the fact that we found this drawing among his papers after he died said a lot about how he valued this particular gift. I know I still have cards, drawings, and notes my students have sent me over the years, so I found this piece to be particularly touching. I looked up this student (his name is on the back of the drawing) and found he earned a BS and PhD in chemistry. I'd like to think my dad had something to do with igniting his passion for science.

This poem is written as a senryu. Senryu is a three line poem written in the 5-7-5 form like haiku. While haiku focus on nature, senryu focus on human foibles. You can read more about senryu at How to Write Senryu Poems: Understanding the Senryu Form.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow and see what new inspiration I've found for a poem. Until then, you may want to read previous poems in this series. I'm also sharing these poems on my Instagram in case you want to see them all in one place. 

April 1 - Senryu to a photo of my grandmother as a child
April 2 - Haiku to my mother's recipe
April 3 - Dodoitsu to a war memento
April 4 - Choka to my mother's engagement announcement
April 5 - Gogyohka to the receipt for my mother's engagement ring

NPM 2022 - Day 5

Today's poem is written to the receipt for my mother's engagement ring. I was surprised to see that the store where my father bought the ring sold jewelry AND appliances. I have to believe that $145 was a big investment for my dad at the time. The Dollar Times calculator shows that when adjusted for inflation, $145 in 1951 is equivalent to $1,617 today. That sounded like a lot to me until I read a recent survey that found the average engagement ring cost in the United States is $5,900. Yikes! I paid less for a 2010 Mini-Cooper with 77,000 miles in 2019.

In any case, I found a lot to ponder when I saw this receipt. It certainly wasn't burning a hole in my dad's pocket, as he proposed the next day. Here's the poem I wrote.

This poem is written as a Gogyohka. Gogyohka simply means verse which is written in five lines. This is a non-syllabic form, with each line generally representing one phrase. Invented in the 1960s, the idea was to "take the traditional form of Tanka poetry (which is written in five lines) and liberate its structure, creating a freer form of verse." You can learn more about this form at Writer's Digest Gogyohka: Poetic Form.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow and see what new inspiration I've found for a poem. Until then, you may want to read previous poems in this series. I'm also sharing these poems on my Instagram in case you want to see them all in one place. 

April 1 - Senryu to a photo of my grandmother as a child
April 2 - Haiku to my mother's recipe
April 3 - Dodoitsu to a war memento
April 4 - Choka to my mother's engagement announcement

NPM 2022 - Day 4

Today's poem is written to the newspaper clipping announcing my mother's engagement. The page is filled with classifieds and one brief bit of news. I imagine readers were probably more interested in the news story than the happy announcement.

This poem is a choka. The choka is a Japanese form of unrhymed alternating five and seven syllable lines that ends with an extra seven syllable line. It can be any odd number of lines. You can learn more about this form at Poets Collective.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow and see what new inspiration I've found for a poem. Until then, you may want to read previous poems in this series. I'm also sharing these poems on my Instagram in case you want to see them all in one place. 

April 1 - Senryu to a photo of my grandmother as a child
April 2 - Haiku to my mother's recipe
April 3 - Dodoitsu to a war memento

NPM 2022 - Day 3

Today's poem is written to a miniature pair of underpants I found among my father's old war letters. I laughed when I first saw it, and then laughed even harder when I thought of my grandmother opening the mail and receiving it. I'm convinced my grandfather would have appreciated the joke, but my grandmother? Not so much.

This poem is a dodoitsu, a 4-line poem with a syllable count of 7-7-7-5. The dodoitsu "often focuses on love or work with a comical twist." The post What is a Dodoitsu? contains more information about this Japanese form.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow and see what new inspiration I've found for a poem. Until then, you may want to read previous poems in this series. I'm also sharing these poems on my Instagram in case you want to see them all in one place. 

April 1 - Senryu to a photo of my grandmother as a child
April 2 - Haiku to my mother's recipe

NPM 2022 - Day 2

Today's poem is written to a favorite recipe of my mother's. I've made it a few times in the last few months, I think in part because I miss her, and in part because I (weirdly) miss her handwriting. 

When I was growing up, a teacher’s annual pay wasn’t spread over 12 months, so summers were incredibly lean. Most days we were grateful for the garden, but sometimes, we'd just had enough.

Hmmmm ... Is this haiku or senryu? I could make a case for this being a nature poem or a poem about human character. It's hard to know. In any case, this follows the 5-7-5 format. You can read about both these forms at 10 Types of Japanese Poetry: A Guide to Japanese Poetic Forms.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow and see what new inspiration I've found for a poem. Until then, you may want to read previous poems in this series. I'm also sharing these poems on my Instagram in case you want to see them all in one place. 

April 1 - Senryu to a photo of my grandmother as a child

Poetry Friday and NPM 2022 - Day 1

This year for National Poetry Month I'm sharing original poems written in a variety of Japanese poetic forms (haiku, tanka, dodoitsu, etc.) to primary sources. I'm using photos, letters, newspaper articles, and more to inspire my writing.

This first poem is written to a photograph of my grandmother Gmelin (Marie) and her brothers Earl (the tall one, as noted by my mother on the back of the photo) and Jerry.

Senryu is a three line poem written in the 5-7-5 form like haiku. While haiku focus on nature, senryu focus on human foibles. You can read more about senryu at How to Write Senryu Poems: Understanding the Senryu Form.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow and see what new inspiration I've found for a poem. In the meantime, I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Heidi Mordhorst of my juicy little universe. Happy poetry Friday friends. 

Poetry Sisters Write Ekphrastic Dodoitsu

This month our challenge was to write ekphrastic dodoitsu. The dodoitsu is a Japanese poetic form of 4 lines with syllables 7/7/7/5. The dodoitsu "often focuses on love or work with a comical twist." You can learn more about this poetic from Robert Lee Brewer at Writer's Digest.  Ekphrastic means we used images to inspire our poems. 

We shared a number of images in our group so that we'd have a range to choose from. The image I shared was one of my dad when he was stationed in Hawaii during WWII. He loved dogs and took quite a shine to a stray and somehow managed to keep him on base. They named him "Puddles, the transportation dog." Here's the poem inspired by this image.

Kelly shared a photo of a heart chalked on a brick wall. I wrote two poems inspired by this image. (Click on the photos to enlarge.)

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Kelly Ramsdell
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month we are writing poems inspired by or in the style of Taylor Mali. We hope you'll join us. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on April 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

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 at The Poem Farm. Happy poetry Friday friends. 

Poetry Friday is Here!

I'm thrilled to be hosting Poetry Friday on a day when my poetry sisters and I are sharing the results of a monthly challenge. This month we played a game called Exquisite Corpse. Here's a bit about it:

Exquisite Corpse is a game developed by surrealist writers in the 1920s. The game lets you randomly create combinations of words which your own intelligence often finds meaning in. (The name of the game is one of the first images the inventors created by playing it.)

You can read more about it at Exquisite Corpse: An Imagery Imagination Game.

We began with Liz, who sent one line of poetry to Tanita. Tanita wrote one line of poetry and sent ONLY her line to Kelly. It continued in this fashion, with each poet sending a single line to the next. We met on Zoom Sunday and read our lines aloud. Here's what we ended up with.

This month, odd one out, running short on days and sleep, (Liz)

This month, past meets pride, roots ripped from native soil still somehow grow. (Tanita)

The once-bright future dims. Shadows grow (Kelly)

But there, near canyon  rim, in  broken light (Sara)

the yearling hawk shrieked in futile fury (Andi)

and the steel-edged clouds looked away (Laura)

trees bow and bend on a blustery day (Tricia)

that rattles old oak leaves down the street. (Mary Lee)

Once we had these lines, it was up to each poet to take (or leave) the words and revise in their own way. Because I like rules, I gave myself a few. I had to use the words or portions of words that were written, and I could not add more than 5 new words. Here's what I came up with.

Post-Pandemic Life

This day …

  No one sleeps

  Hawk meets steel-edged clouds

  near canyon rim 

  In broken light

  shadows grow

This month …

  Running short on days 

  the once-bright future dims

  Odd, the past

  that rattles down the street

  in futile fury

This year …

  Old oak trees bow and bend

  unbreaking

     Don’t look away

  Roots ripped from native soil 

  still somehow grow

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2022. All rights reserved.

After we met, I spent some time working on a creative journal entry for the #100dayproject I'm working on. You can see a bit of my writing process in it.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. (Please note I'm posting Thursday evening for you early birds, so some of these links may not be live until Friday.)

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Kelly Ramsdell
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month we are writing ekphrastic doditsu. You can learn about this poetic from Robert Lee Brewer at Writer's Digest. We are sharing images in our group, but you can write to anything you like. If you want to be inspired by my image, here's what I shared. 

That's my dad when he was stationed in Hawaii during WWII. He loved dogs and took quite a shine to a stray and somehow managed to keep him on base. They named him "Puddles, the transportation dog." Since the "dodoitsu often focuses on love or work with a comical twist," I thought this image would be fun to write about. Feel free to use it if you like.

We hope you'll join us in our next challenge. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on March 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

*****

I'm rounding things up old school today, so leave your link in the comments and I'll add you to the post. Happy Poetry Friday all!

Original Works (Poems, Videos, Photos, etc.)
If you didn't see the links above, you can check out the Exquisite Corpse poems written by my poetry sisters here:

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn shares a poem entitled This Month.
• Sara Lewis Holmes shares a poem entitled Odd One Out.
• Kelly Ramsdell shares a poem entitled This Month.
• Laura Purdie Salas shares a poem entitled One Egg.
• Liz Garton Scanlon shares a poem entitled Passing the Torch.
• Andi Sibley shares a poem entitled Maintaining.

Linda Mitchell of A Word Edgewise shares her poem related to the sense of smell.

Linda Kulp Trout shares an original video poem entitled True Love.

Karen Eastlund takes a stab at one of my favorite forms and shares two triolets.

Michelle Kogan shares all kinds of kinds of Exquisite Corpse goodness with a video AND poems!

Linda Baie of Teacher Dance shares poem written to the prompt of the Sphinx entitled Rarely Mutable.

Denise Krebs shares a golden shovel entitled My Heart Sings.

Janice Scully shares a lovely elegy to the recently departed Dr. Paul Farmer.

Elisabeth Norton of Unexpected Intersections shares several original poems on Chernobyl and Ukraine.

Bridget Magee of wee words for wee ones shares some cornea humor. Thank you for making me snarf my tea this morning.

Marcie Flinchum Atkins returns to Poetry Friday (welcome  back!) and shares a photo haiku.

Molly Hogan of Nix the comfort zone is sharing a number of poems inspired by bread.

Irene Latham is sharing an ArtSpeak poem entitled Hope Has Long Legs. (I love herons!)

Matt Forrest Esenwine of Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme shares a poem entitled Hummingbird.

Rose Capelli of Imagine the Possibilities shares a poem entitled Annabel Angelou Catherine Blake.

Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche shares a poem entitled Beautiful things start with just one.

Buffy Silverman shares a poem entitled February's Fake News.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater has a new book coming out. Hurray! Check out the book trailer and her poem entitled Outfit.

Jone MacCulloch shares two exquisite corpse poems and a video of some New Year postcards.

Patricia Franz shares a poem entitled Old Catfish.

Renee LaTulippe's debut poem picture book comes out soon. Hurray! Check out her book trailer and art from the book.

Catherine Flynn of Reading to the Core shares a beautifully illustrated found poem.

Karin Fisher-Golton shares that celebrates 2-22-22. It's entitled Twosday.

Carol Varsalona of Beyond Literacy Link shares an exquisite corpse poem entitled Love.

Carol LaBuzzetta of The Apples in My Orchard shares a poem entitled Cardinal Story: A Poetic Version.

Ruth Bowen Hersey of There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town shares a poem entitled Esta Falda.

Poems of Others

Robyn Hood Black of Life on the Deckle Edge shares some Scottish Nursery Rhymes.

Jama Rattigan of Jama's Alphabet Soup muses on toast and toasters and shares the poem Ode to My Toaster by by Allan Chochinov.

Heidi Mordhorst of my juicy little universe shares the poem Midnight Air in Louisville by Afaa Michael Weaver.

Tabatha Yeatts of The Opposite of Indifference shares an excerpt from ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Karen Edmisten shares the poem Wild Gratitude by Edward Hirsch.

Announcing the #KidsLoveNonfiction Campaign

This morning, Mary Ann Cappiello, Professor of Language and Literacy at Lesley University, and Xenia Hadjioannou, Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Harrisburg campus of Penn State University, sent the letter below to The New York Times requesting that the paper add three children's nonfiction bestseller lists to parallel the existing picture book, middle grade, and young adult lists, which focus on fiction.

This change will align the children's lists with the adult bestseller lists, which separate nonfiction and fiction. It will also acknowledge the incredible vibrancy of children's nonfiction available today and support the substantial body of research showing that many children prefer nonfiction and still others enjoy fiction and nonfiction equally.

If you support this request, please follow the signature collection form link to add your name and affiliation to the more than 200 educators and librarians who have already endorsed the effort. Your information will be added to the letter but your email address will remain private.

 

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

Nonfiction books for young people are in a golden age of creativity, information-sharing, and reader-appeal. But the genre suffers from an image problem and an awareness problem. The New York Times can play a role in changing that by adding a set of Nonfiction Best Seller lists for young people: one for picture books, one for middle grade literature, and one for young adult literature.  

Today’s nonfiction authors and illustrators are depicting marginalized and minority communities throughout history and in our current moment. They are sharing scientific phenomena and cutting-edge discoveries. They are bearing witness to how art forms shift and transform, and illuminating historical documents and artifacts long ignored. Some of these book creators are themselves scientists or historians, journalists or jurists, athletes or artists, models of active learning and agency for young people passionate about specific topics and subject areas. Today’s nonfiction continues to push boundaries in form and function. These innovative titles engage, inform, and inspire readers from birth to high school. 

 

Babies delight in board books that offer them photographs of other babies’ faces. Toddlers and preschoolers fascinated by the world around them pore over books about insects, animals, and the seasons. Children, tweens, and teens are hungry for titles about real people that look like them and share their religion, cultural background, or geographical location, and they devour books about people living different lives at different times and in different places. Info-loving kids are captivated by fact books and field guides that fuel their passions. Young tinkerers, inventors, and creators seek out how-to books that guide them in making meals, building models, knitting garments, and more. Numerous studies have described such readers and their passionate interest in nonfiction (Jobe & Dayton-Sakari, 2002; Moss and Hendershot, 2002; Mohr, 2006). Young people are naturally curious about their world. When they are allowed to follow their passions and explore what interests them, it bolsters their overall wellbeing. And the more young people read, the more they grow as readers, writers, and critical thinkers (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2021; Van Bergen et al., 2021).

Research provides clear evidence that many children prefer nonfiction for their independent reading, and many more select it to pursue information about their particular interests (Doiron, 2003; Repaskey et al., 2017; Robertson & Reese, 2017; Kotaman & Tekin, 2017). Creative and engaging nonfiction titles can also enhance and support science, social studies, and language arts curricula. And yet, all too often, children, parents, and teachers do not know about recently published nonfiction books. Bookstores generally have only a few shelves devoted to the genre. And classroom and school library book collections remain dominated by fiction. If families, caregivers, and educators were aware of the high-quality nonfiction that is published for children every year, the reading lives of children and their educational experiences could be significantly enriched.

How can The New York Times help resolve the gap between readers’ yearning for engaging nonfiction, on the one hand, and their lack of knowledge of its existence, on the other? By maintaining separate fiction and nonfiction best seller lists for young readers just as the Book Review does for adults.

The New York Times Best Sellers lists constitute a vital cultural touchstone, capturing the interests of readers and trends in the publishing world. Since their debut in October of 1931, these lists have evolved to reflect changing trends in publishing and to better inform the public about readers’ habits. We value the addition of the multi-format Children’s Best Seller list in July 2000 and subsequent lists organized by format in October 2004. Though the primary purpose of these lists is to inform, they undeniably play an important role in shaping what publishers publish and what children read.

Adding children’s nonfiction best-seller lists would:

• Help family members, caregivers, and educators identify worthy nonfiction titles.
• Provide a resource for bibliophiles—including book-loving children—of materials that satisfy their curiosity.
• Influence publishers’ decision-making.
• Inform the public about innovative ways to convey information and ideas through words and images.
• Inspire schools and public libraries to showcase nonfiction, broadening its appeal and deepening respect for truth.

We, the undersigned, strongly believe that by adding a set of nonfiction best-seller lists for young people, The New York Times can help ensure that more children, tweens, and teens have access to books they love. Thank you for considering our request.

Dr. Mary Ann Cappiello 

Professor, Language and Literacy

Graduate School of Education, Lesley University

Cambridge, Massachusetts 

Former Chair, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Committee 

Dr. Xenia Hadjioannou

Associate Professor, Language and Literacy Education

Penn State University, Harrisburg Campus

Harrisburg, PA

Vice President of the Children’s Literature Assembly (CLA) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). 

 

References

• Allington, R. L., & McGill-Franzen, A. M. (2021). Reading volume and reading achievement: A review of recent research. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S231–S238. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.404
• Correia, M. (2011). Fiction vs. informational texts: Which will your kindergarteners choose? Young Children, 66(6), 100-104.
• Doiron, R. (2003). Boy Books, Girl Books: Should We Re-organize our School Library Collections? Teacher Librarian, 14-16.
• Kotaman H. & Tekin A.K. (2017). Informational and fictional books: young children's book preferences and teachers' perspectives. Early Child Development and Care, 187(3-4), 600-614, DOI: 10.1080/03004430.2016.1236092
• Jobe, R., & Dayton-Sakari, M. (2002). Infokids: How to use nonfiction to turn reluctant readers into enthusiastic learners. Markham, Ontario, Canada: Pembroke.
• Mohr, K. A. J. (2006). Children’s choices for recreational reading: A three-part investigation of selection preferences, rationales, and processes. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(1), 81–104. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15548430jlr3801_4
• Moss, B. &  Hendershot, J. (2002). Exploring sixth graders' selection of nonfiction trade books: when students are given the opportunity to select nonfiction books, motivation for reading improves. The Reading Teacher, vol. 56 (1), 6+.
• Repaskey, L., Schumm, J. & Johnson, J. (2017). First and fourth grade boys’ and girls’ preferences for and perceptions about narrative and expository text. Reading Psychology, 38, 808-847.
• Robertson, Sarah-Jane L. & Reese, Elaine. (Mar 2017). The very hungry caterpillar turned into a butterfly: Children's and parents' enjoyment of different book genres. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(1), 3-25.
• Van Bergen, E., Vasalampi, K., & Torppa, M. (2021). How are practice and performance related? Development of reading from age 5 to 15. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(3), 415–434. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.309

If you support the request to add three children's nonfiction bestseller lists to parallel the existing lists, which focus on fiction, please add your name and affiliation to the signature collection form. 

Poetry Sisters Write About Bells

The last challenge of the year was to write about bells. I had a lot of grand ideas, many fits and starts, but kept coming back to one topic. When I was 12, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and came to live with us. I loved her dearly, but she was tough on my mom, who had married her only son. She complained about everything, and almost always claimed it was my mother's fault. My mother never complained about the less than kind treatment. She lost her patience only once, when surely she was on her last nerve every day. One of the things that drove my mother to drink (seriously, she went through a lot of Harvey's Bristol Cream in those days) was the bell my grandmother rang to get our attention. I remember quite clearly it disappearing after my grandmother's death. So, that's the bell I wrote about.

This poem is in the form of a Bob and Wheel. Here are the guidelines:

• Quintain (or five-line) stanza or poem
• Rhyme scheme of ababa
• First line of two to three syllables
• Lines two through five have six syllables per line

Here is my poem.

I've actually written a few poems about my grandmother. You can read them here:

Bittersweet Memories of Mary

Grandma Quoted Truman

Here's a photo of the two of us.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Kelly Ramsdell
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month we are writing “poetry inspired by something overheard.” Susan Thomsen at Chicken Spaghetti has written these as a form of “found poem.” For an example, check out Susan's poem A Day Like Any Other: A Found Poem. We hope you'll join us. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on January 28th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Carol Wilcox at Carol's Corner. Happy poetry Friday friends. May the coming year be a good one for you all. 

Poetry Sisters Write Odes to Autumn

This month's challenge was to write an ode to autumn. Fall is my favorite season, but I had a hard time thinking of topics, especially since the early directive was "not nature." If you can't write about nature, what DO you write about fall?

I did a little brainstorming and listed the things I love about this season and the events that mark it. I started to think about Thanksgiving and holiday rituals and before I knew it I was writing about a family recipe that only ever sees the light of day in fall. So, I may not have followed the rules precisely, but I do have a draft of a poem.

Ode to a Thanksgiving Recipe

The paper is well-worn
yellowed with age and
stained with splatters
from years of placing it
near a busy stove

It is sentimentally retrieved
each Thanksgiving
carefully unfolded, pressed flat
it has been taped and re-taped
along the seams
it was even ironed once in
a misguided attempt to
remove wrinkles
the singed edge still
haunts me

Copied in my mother's hand
her penmanship identical to
so many of her generation
I can picture her at the kitchen table
copying it from a women's magazine
on the back of a recycled
school lunch menu

I'll admit it's not
my favorite dish
yet I make it every year
my November love letter
to home, to holidays past
to my mom

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2021. All rights reserved.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Kelly Ramsdell
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

Would you like to try the next challenge? We're writing about bells. That's it, no specified form, just the subject of bells.  We hope you'll join us. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on December 31st (that's New Year's Eve, so plan ahead) in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. Happy poetry Friday friends.

Poetry Sisters Write Wordplay Poems

The challenge this month was to write a wordplay poem. Laura set this challenge based on one offered up by Nikki Grimes in May 2015 at Today's Little Ditty. Here's an excerpt:

When I first began to write poetry at age six, it was the result of wordplay.  So try this wordplay exercise and create your own free verse poem.

When I talk about wordplay, I'm talking about studying a word from top to bottom, and inside out, considering every aspect of the word:  What it looks like, sounds like, feels like.  What it does, how it's used, etc.  The idea is to bring all of your senses into the act.  The poem you create may end up being complex and sophisticated, or very simple.  But whether you're writing a nursery rhyme, or a complex prose poem for adults, wordplay is a valuable skill in the process of creating dynamic, original, poetry, or lyrical prose.

Last year when we wrote hippo poems, I wrote in this form. I really love that poem, so I was a bit intimidated to try this again. It took a while to find a topic I liked, but I'm surprisingly happy with this draft about lemons.

Lemon
Lemon is a sour word
that makes you purse your lips
squinch your face
shiver at its taste

Lemon is a disappointing word
turn the key in a new-to-you
used car as it sputters
and chokes

Lemon is sunny word
recalling hot summer days
money-making schemes
grandma’s depression glass pitcher

Lemon is a scurvy word
eat the wedge
peel and all
daily dose of Vitamin C

Lemon is a chef’s word
brightening every dish 
a zestful ingredient
unheralded secret weapon

I started a second poem on migration. It's not finished yet, but here's what I have so far. I really wanted to include immigrants or refugees, but couldn't find a way to do that. I'm going to keep playing with this one.

Migration

Migration is a traveling word

whether whale or wildebeest

bird or butterfly

life is lived in motion

Migration is a seasonal word

summer, winter, spring, and fall

searching for greener pastures

warmer climes

Migration is a wandering word

upstream, downstream riding currents

north to south and north again

never ending back and forth

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2021. All rights reserved.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Kelly Ramsdell
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

Would you like to try the next challenge? We're writing an Ode to Autumn. An ode is a lyrical poem, and like the ancient Greeks, modern humans also enjoy marking an occasion with a song. Whether you choose an irregular ode with no set pattern or rhyme, or the ten-line, three-to-five stanza famed by Homer himself, we hope you'll join us in singing in the season of leaf-fall and pie. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on November 26th (the Friday after Thanksgiving, so plan ahead) in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

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

Poetry Sisters Write Tanka

This month's challenge was to revisit poems written by other members of the group and write tanka in inspired by or in conversation with those poems.

Tanka is a form of Japanese poetry that has been practiced for more than 1000 years. Tanka is generally defined as a poem composed of 31 syllables in a 5-7-5-7-7 format. Most tanka focus on a single event of some significance.

I started this challenging by visiting the blogs of my sisters and reading through some of their poems. I selected one from each and tried to write to every choice. I promptly got stuck. I did a lot of syllable counting and found I was having trouble making complete thoughts fit on each line, which I felt was necessary. Enjambment doesn't feel right in this form, at least not to me. I did a little bit of reading and found this bit from the article Tanka as Diary by Amelia Fielden to be helpful.

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.

Kelly also did a series of posts about tanka and I found this one, How the parts of tanka relate to one another, also a good reference.

Ultimately, I tried to focus on short/long/short/long/long as opposed to strictly 5/7/5/7/7. I'm not sure I've done justice to the challenge, but I'll let you be the judge. Here are a few of the poems I wrote and the poems that inspired them.

Sara wrote a poem entitled I cannot. Here's the poem it inspired.

If you can boil

water, you can poach an egg

don't dream of omelettes

instead take joy in wheat toast

bathed in a lava-like flow

Andi wrote a poem entitled Living in the Space Between. Here's the poem it inspired about my parents.

from blind date to love

a lifetime together

extraordinary

years of highs, lows, in-betweens

sweet memories, no regrets

Laura wrote a poem entitled First Snow. Here's the poem it inspired. (I borrowed a phrase of hers for this one.)

welcoming winter

sisters make snow angels

freezing together

best yearly tradition

despite our age, nothing's changed

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2021. All rights reserved.

That's probably enough for today. I'll share the remaining tanka written to poems by the rest of the gang in the week to come.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Kelly Ramsdell
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month our challenge is a Wordplay Poem, as invented by Nikki Grimes. You can read Nikki’s description at Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’ blog in a post entitled Spotlight on Nikki Grimes and DMC Challenge. You've got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with us on October 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by our poetry sister Laura Purdie Salas. Happy poetry Friday friends.

Poetry Friday is Here!

Hello all. I've been away for a while, so I'm happy to be back and hosting this week. I lost my mother on June 30th and am still mourning her. I feel adrift, or perhaps untethered is a better word. I've had a hard time writing, starting many poems but finding myself unable to follow through and finish them. I have, however, been reading and reflecting.

Today I'd like to share a poem by Barbara Crooker. 

Grief
is a river you wade in until you get to the other side.
But I am here, stuck in the middle, water parting
around my ankles, moving downstream
over the flat rocks. I'm not able to lift a foot,
move on. Instead, I'm going to stay here
in the shallows with my sorrow, nurture it
like a cranky baby, rock it in my arms.

Read the poem in its entirety.

*****

I'm rounding things up old school today, so please leave your link in the comments and I'll add you to the post throughout the day. Happy poetry Friday all.

*****

Linda Mitchell of A Word Edgewise shares the poem The Office Building by Helen Hoyt.

Jama Rattigan is back from her summer blog break and is sharing Mary Oliver's dog poems.

Michelle Kogan shares an original poem entitled Winged Harvest-Eating.

Matt Forrest Essenwine shares an original poem about food at the fair.

Jone MacCulloch shares a photo accompanied by an original poem and a reminder. 

Robyn Hood Black shares an original poem, a poetic excerpt by Shelley, and a 9-11 remembrance.

Linda Baie of Teacher Dance shares a book review and an original poem for 9-11.

At Gathering Books, Myra is sharing the poem A New Language by Casandra Lopez.

Catherine Flynn of Reading to the Core shares the poem The Web by Alison Hawthorne Deming.

Becky Herzog of Sloth Reads shares a number of original poems written for her Poemtember poetry list.

Alan Wright of Poetry Pizzazz is playing with form and shares an original rondelet.

Carol Varsalona of Beyond Literacy Link shares original poems on 9-11.

Kat Apel shares the poem Farewell Town by Fan Yun and an original poem she wrote in Chines. (Don't worry, it's translated!)  

At Unexpected Intersections, Elisabeth Norton shares her poetic thoughts on history and timelines.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater of The Poem Farm shares an original poem entitled Make a Line.

Ruth of There is no such thing as a God-foresaken town shares Sonnet 73 by Shakespeare.

At Reflections on the Teche, Margaret Simon shares an original poem entitled My Favorite Things.

Janice Scully of Salt City Verse shares information on the Carnegie Library and an original poem entitled If Not For the Library and Books.

Susan Thomsen of Chicken Spaghetti shares information about the book The Best American Poetry 2021, which comes out at the end of September.

Mary Lee Hahn of A(nother) Year of Reading shares an original sonnet entitled Summer's End.

Karen Edmisten shares the poem Ode to Teachers by Pat Mora.

At The Apples in My Orchard, Carol shares an original poem entitled Goldenrod Prairie Walk.

Joann Early Macken shares an original chimney swift haiku and a video she filmed of a bird cloud funneling into a chimney.

Denise Krebs of Dare to Care shares two original poems about faith in dark times.

Heidi Mordhorst of my juicy little universe is sharing an original poem entitled Back to School.

Poetry Sisters Tackle the Zentangle

This month's challenge was to compose a zentangle poem.  Kat Apel does a really nice job describing them on her site. This is similar to blackout poetry, though doodles and lines are used to block and frame the words. 

All of these poems come from pages found in Maugham's Choice of Kipling's Best, published by Doubleday & Company in 1953. I found this at a thrift shop, so even though it sets my teeth on edge to destroy a book, I've committed to using this one for experimenting with this form.

When we met on Sunday I chose a page and wrote all the words that looked promising for a poem, in order, on a large sheet of paper. I underlined words that I thought might work together, and wrote a poem. Then I went back with another color and tried again.

When I felt like I had something, I boxed the words on the page. Sara suggested connecting the words, so I did, hoping for some organic shape to appear.

Here's the poem. 

Evening

smoke and shadow lay long

woods full of scents and sounds

pretty things lark about

sit still

enjoy

Of course, after I boxed them, I realized I didn't like the ending and should have done something different after "lark about," so I abandoned this one.

Before we met, I experimented with a page and a poem, but it's too busy and the words got lost, though I liked where the poem was going.

The hearts and flower are a bit much. Here's the untitled poem.

lovingly connected

without a word

caught in his eyes

hearts beating slowly

hands dropped

spoke

good enough to 

fill the silence

I wish that had been hearts beating quickly, but you can't change the words or the order in a poem like this, so it can be very frustrating. Perhaps this is a good way to generate a first draft of a poem.

The poem I landed on doesn't feel very zentangle-ish, but it's what I've got. Here is the page, some closeups, and the poem.

summer day

simple things

song

grass, sweet smelling

wind, light

friends together

My poetry sisters know that this last week has been hard. I've been struggling with some health issues, but in the midst of it all, my mother fell, had surgery, then suffered a stroke. She declined rapidly and was placed in hospice care on Tuesday. She has not woken since Wednesday. I can't be with her and am heartbroken about it. I'm finding it hard to write poems now, but I did manage this zentangle for her.

For June

I remember lots of things

the sea

dreams

your life

laugh

soul

I have loved you

every minute

mother mine

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2021. All rights reserved.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

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

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month we are writing villanelles on the topic of dichotomy - or, true opposites, if you will. Bifurcations. Incongruities. Paradoxes. Contradictions. We're talking Luke/Darth (or is that a false dichotomy, and they're two sides of the same coin??? Discuss), real/imagined, civilized/savage, winter/summer, function/dysfunction. Interested? Good! You've got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering (or someone else's) with the rest of us on July 30th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! (Thanks to Tanita for writing this bit!)

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

Poetry Sisters Write Ekphrastic Poems

This month's Poetry Sisters challenge was to write a poem in response to an image. We had a few to choose from, but I decided to write to a photo Sara shared of Spider Dress and Serpent. This dress was designed by Isamu Noguchi in 1946 for Martha Graham dance productions. It was worn by Graham for the performance Cave of the Heart, in which she portrayed Medea who, after being abandoned for another woman by her husband Jason, killed his new wife and the children Medea bore with him. 

Photo by Sara Lewis Holmes. Exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

When we met on Zoom almost two weeks ago, I was still thinking about the 4×4 form that I'd seen in an earlier Poetry Friday post. Denise Krebs at Dare to Care invented this form. Here are the rules.

• 4 syllables in each line
• 4 lines in each stanza
• 4 stanzas
• 4 times repeating a refrain line–line 1 in the first stanza, line 2 in the second stanza, line 3 in the third stanza, and line 4 in the fourth stanza.
• Bonus: 4 syllables in the title
• No restrictions on subject, rhyme, or meter.

This felt like a good form to constrain my writing. Given the dress, a restrictive form seemed like the way to go. I wrote several different poems, but this one is my favorite.

Corsetted Heart

inside a cage

I'm tightly bound

can barely move

no breath, no sound

my heart is locked

inside a cage

the pain it feels

time can't assuage

these wounds don't heal

when locked away

inside a cage

a taut ballet

most tender souls

will disengage

when living life

inside a cage

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2021. All rights reserved.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

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

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month we are writing zentangle poems. If you are unfamiliar with this form, check out this post by Kat Apel. Share your poem on June  in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!

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

Poetry Friday - Celebrating Mary Lee

When I started my blog late in 2006, I quickly found my way to kidlit blogs, Poetry Friday and an amazing community. A Year of Reading, so beautifully written by Mary Lee and Franki, became one of my regular reads. It has evolved over the years, much like this blog has, though Mary Lee and Franki have been more consistent than I. 

I'm grateful for all Mary Lee has taught me over the years about teaching, about poetry, about life. As a teacher educator, I find retirements bittersweet. I know how hard it is to find good teachers, especially those who serve for many years with a passion that is unabated. I also know how hard teaching is and how well-deserved a rest is when it is time to go.

I spent a week trying on different poetic forms and trying to find the words for a fitting tribute. In the end, I went with fishing, because this isn't an end, but a beginning. The poem I wrote is a lai. The Lai is a French syllabic verse form consisting of one or more stanza of nine lines with two rhymes, though the rhyme can vary from stanza to stanza. Here are features of the form.

• 9 lines.
• Rhyme scheme is a-a-b-a-a-b-a-a-b.
• Lines ending with rhyme a are five syllables in length.
• Lines ending with rhyme b are two syllables in length.

Mary Lee, I wish you many happy hours in a stream, up to your waders in quiet, and sun, and peace.

Fly Fishing

perfect and apart

river steals my heart

each swish

of line, each cast start

a rhythm to chart

a wish

that this quiet art

hook set will impart

a fish

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2021. All rights reserved.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out the posts honoring Mary Lee today, as well as all the other wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering. Happy poetry Friday friends.