A Poetry Friday Tra-La to SPRING!!

Welcome 

to the 

Round-Up

for 

Guess what? 

It's spring! 

I'm so happy to be hosting the Poetry Friday Round-Up today - it's the first full day of spring. O, oh, oh, lovely, glorious, yahoo, hooray, spring, spring, SPRING! I feel like bursting into song just as if I were in a Broadway musical. "Oh, what a beautiful morning...." (only it's Seattle, folks, so maybe it's raining?) Still, I am so, so ready for the cherry trees to pink up, the skies to blue through, the tulips to bloom. As e.e. cummings wrote: 

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things, while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.

                                e.e. cummings

Photo by Keren Fisher

Now, down to business. If you have a Poetry Friday link to share, please let me know in the Comments section below by naming your site and giving me the URL for Friday's post.  I'll round things up periodically -  morning, noon and night. Happy spring, everyone!

Night Owls 

Steven Withrow is playing with animal names over at Crackles of Speech. 

 

At Gathering Books, Myra Garce-Bacsal pairs up a video of Tracy Chapman with a poem ("Woman Work") by Maya Angelou, in honor of Women's Month. 

Heidi Mordhorst is competing in the "March Madness" Poetry playoff and offers us a link to her poem (her fellow competitor is Linda Baie!) over at my juciy little universe.

At Teacher Dance, Linda Baie has a poem by Joyce Sutphen, plus a link to the March Madness playoff (where she competes with Heidi Mordhorst!) 

Look through BJ Lee's Blue Window for her March Madness playoff poem (assigned word: "fungibility"!!)

Robyn Hood Black welcomes spring at Life on the Deckle Edge with March's Student Haiku Poet of the Month, Marisa Schwarz.

Catherine at Reading to the Core shares an original poem inspired by a painting and Laura Shovan's Pantone Poetry Project.

At Alphabet Soup, Jama offers up some "poesy and posies a la Emily Dickinson" as well as Emily's recipe for Rice Cakes. In addition, you can follow Jama's "Contact Me" link to send her an email if you're interested in signing up for her Poetry Month Kidlitosphere project.  

Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference has posted a lovely poem by John Philip Johnson called "After the Changeling Incantation."

Okay, that's it for tonight. I'll do another round-up about 10:00 tomorrow morning (PST.) 

Ten More at Sun Up!

Laura Salas talks about how books change as we write them and how they can change us - she's the guest author on Kirby's Lane, the blog of author Kirby Larson. (Is that you standing on your head, Laura?) 

In response to the Two Teacher's Slice of Life writing challenge (a poem a day for a month!) Cathy over at Merely Day by Day has posted an original poem titled "The Line Between." 

At Author Amok, there's a fascinating explanation of the Welsh form called the "englyn," with examples in both English and Welsh - all courtesy of guest geographer/poet Michael Ratcliffe. And don't miss the Celtic music video. 

Tara Smith celebrates spring, too, at A Teaching Life - she's in with an original poem for the Slice of Life Challenge. 

Michelle Heidenrich Barnes is part of the March Madness madness, too, and posted her Round One poem at Today's Little Ditty .  

Irene Latham looks at Jon Muth's HI, KOO! over at Live Your Poem.  

There's Madness everywhere! Check out Buffy Silverman's Round One poem for the March Madness competition - that's over at Buffy's Blog. 

Doraine Bennet at Dori Reads delights us with a beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson (how wonderful, the idea of March being out of breath when it knocks at the door!) 

From the perspective of his March Madness poem this year, Matt Forest Esenwine looks back at his contribution from last year - that's at  Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme. 

Jeannine Atkins at What I'm Reading reviews an interesting new verse novel by Mariko Nagai. 

And a Mid-Morning Baker's Dozen! 

At Poetry Time, Charles Waters posts his fifth entry and fills it generously with three original poems, whetting our appetites with one from the Poetry Friday Science anthology,  one in competition at March Madness and one inspired by his first time on a jet ski!

Liz Steinglass's response to John Green and Sarah Urist Green's video project, The Art Assignment, is a poem that builds itself literally from the feet up (fantastic - how did she do that?) Head over to her website to see it. 

An original poem for the March Madness competition - "Perpetual Motion" - is up at Donna Smith's blog, Mainely Write. (Oh, I have a grandson who fits that poem to a T. ) 

The energetic Diane Mayr provides us with a trifecta of Poetry Friday posts: the first at Random Noodling (about poetry therapy),  the second at Kurious Kitty (a poem by W.B. Yeats) and the third at Kurious K's Kwotes (a quotation from Yeats.)

Vanissa and Matthew, both age 10, are the stars of Margaret Simon's post today, about using new words, over at Reflections on the Teche. 

Another star, this time only five years old - Nicolas's "drawn notes" of Hamlet and Ophelia. Check it out at Kortney's One Deep Drawer.

Emily Dickinson is definitely coming in on the springtime breeze! Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect has "Dear March" arriving at her door today.

Little Willow offers up a piece of Margaret Widdemer's "Song" over at Bildungsroman.

Ed DeCaria, who started the annual March Madness madness, reflects on what's been learned from the first four matchups over at Think, Kid, Think.

Over at All About the Books, Janet S. features Betsy Franco's A Curious Collection of Cats (with marvelous illustrations by Michael Wertz.) 

We get an acrostic poem this week from Joy at Poetry for Kids Joy. Mahalo to you, Joy!  

Lorie Ann Grover waxes poetic about the Palouse hills of Eastern Washington over at On Point, and she reviews Peek-a-Zoo! by Nina Laden at readertotz. 

Jone shares a Poetry Pairing at Check It Out. And don't miss the sign-up link for Jone's Postcard Poetry Project, now in its sixth year. 

And a Few More Drift in on the Spring Breeze...

Mary Lee Hahn helps us usher in the weekend at A Year of Reading with an original poem that goes perfectly with our Saturday or Sunday morning breakfast:  "Pancakes" (Yummm...)

Over at Semicolon, Sherry offers us one of the five Lucy poems written by William Wordsworth. I felt sure Wordsworth would make an appearance for the first full day of spring! 

And Amy Ludwig VanDerwater posts an original poem in response to one very original gift: a pine cone.  You'll find it at her blog, The Poem Farm. And congratulations, Amy, on winning the Cybils Poetry award this year - Forest Has a Song is a lovely book!!!

 

Poetry Friday: Drifting with a Sonnet

Hi, All! Poetry Friday is here today! (Of course, I"m posting it Thursday around 9:00 p.m. PST, but it's already Friday somewhere, right?) Add your links in the comments field below and I'll round-them up here.Scroll to the end of my post for the round-up.

It's launch day for The Poetry Friday Anthology: Middle School Edition. Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell do a wonderful job of seeking out and collecting poems (and adding teaching tips) for classroom use. Janet and Sylvia's production standards are always high for these anthologies. The books are a pleasure to hold in your hands - well-designed covers, lovely paper (can you tell I spent years as a bookseller?), real heft. I'm proud to have poems included.

 

I haven't been back to The Drift Record for awhile because I've been meandering over at Books Around the Table with friends/writers/illustrators  Laura Kvasnosky, Julie Paschkis and Margaret Chodos-Irvine. But the calendar says March 1st and spring is in the air, and I'm home at The Drift Record for Poetry Friday.  I'll be rounding the links up all day, all night, Mary Ann, down by the seashore sifting sand....Oh, I'm drifting to the Brothers Four!!! (If you're in the mood to drift, click on the arrow):

Can't wait to see what everyone posts as March comes roaring in! Here's a sonnet by the under-appreciated poet John Malcolm Brinnin (American, 1916-1999.) It's been on my mind with all the headlines from Rome and the Vatican in the the last few days. I guess it's not really a spring poem, though it does have to do with things coming alive. I just love how it moves between divinity and details. They say that's where God is, right? In the details? Of course, they say that's where the Devil is, too....

Creation of the Animals - Il Tintoretto - ca. 1550

LA CREAZIONE DEGLI ANIMALI

Here that old humpback Tintoretto tells

Of six day’s labor out of Genesis:

Swift from the bowstring of two little trees

Come swans, astonished basilisks and whales,

Amazed flamingos, moles and dragonflies,

to make their lifelong helpless marriages.

Time is a place at last; dumb wonder wells

From the cracked ribs of heaven’s gate and hell’s.

The patriarch in that vicinity

Of bottle seas and eggshell esplanades

Mutters his thunder like a cloud. And yet,

much smaller issues line the palm of God’s

charged hand: a dog laps water, a rabbit sits

grazing at the footprint of divinity.

                              John Malcolm Brinnin

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[Dept. of This-Matters-to-People-Who-Throw-Popcorn-Parties-on-Oscar-Night: I'm in Seattle and I had this scheduled to post at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Everyone on the East Coast would be in bed. My thinking was that if I have to watch the Oscars at 5:00 in the afternoon so everyone back there can watch it in prime time, posting late Thursday night would be fair. Then I thought, "Oh, heck. I'll go ahead and post it right now and show people that there are no hard feelings." So I 'm posting Thursday night....]

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AND HERE'S TODAY'S ROUND-UP
Note: Be sure to notice all the Slice-of-Life poems today 
and follow them day-by-day through the entire month of March.

 

NIGHT OWLS: 

There's a original Fibonacci poem about Coyotes at Poems for Kids Joy - and you can put your name in the hat there to win an autographed copy of Charline Profiri's new rhyming riddle picture book GUESS WHO'S IN THE DESERT.

Over at teacherdance, Linda's reflection on the idea of "convergences" inspires an original poem. 

Robyn Hood Black gives a shout out to The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School and gives us a look at one of the two poems of hers that were chosen to be included in it. 

Poets are invited to share the titles of their favorite old children's poems at Charles Ghigna's Father Goose blog. 

Diane Mayr is a busy blogger, with an original ekphrastic poem at Random Noodling, an Eve Merriam poem at Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet, and a quotation of Ms. Merriam's over at Kurious K's Kwotes to celebrate Women's History Month.

Earlier this week, April Halprin Wayland issued a writing prompt about monsters at Teaching Authors. You'll also find a note there about the March Madness competition, fast approaching! 

Also at Teaching Authors is Carmela Martino's interview of verse novelist Tamera Will Wissinger. You can get a glimpse there of Wissinger's work for Gone Fishin' (and sign up to win an autographed copy!)

Poems celebrating women's suffrage are posted at Tabatha Yeatt's The Opposite of Indifference today.

Head over to Gathering Books for Fats Suela's celebration of the poetry of Janet Wong.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater has a sweet dog (a sweet-dog poem, that is)  visiting The Poem Farm. 

I'll continue with the round-up in the morning -  when the sun comes up over Seattle!

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BIRDS OF THE DAYLIGHT KIND

Tara at A Teaching Life features a poem by Rita Dove about Rosa Parks, as well as a look at the new statue honoring Parks in Washington D.C.

You'll find a postcard poem about "Alligator Wrestling" and an invitation to participate in a National Poetry Month project called "Exploring the TechnoVerse" at Author Amok.

An original poem about a young Haitian girl with AIDS, based on a prompt from a Wordlab writing workshop,  is featured at Reflections of the Teche,

Laura Purdie Salas is in with an original poem - and a video of her reading it! - along with suggestions for teachers about how to use the poem in the classroom. 

Steve Peterson sings an operatic ode to his ax over at Inside a Dog. 

Using Ralph Fletcher as a mentor poet, Ashleigh Robek wrote a poem titled "The Good Old Days," posted by her mom over at Enjoy and Embrace Learning.

Hooray for the spoken word! I love to see/hear audio presentations on more and more poetry blogs - Matt Forrest Esenwine recites an original poem over at Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme.

Katya Czaja at Write. Sketch. Repeat. offers up a poem about spiders by Emily Dickinson.

At Live Your Poem, Irene Latham invites you to sign up for her annual KidLit Progressive Poem, which was such fun last time around!

Poems our mothers shared with us or hung up framed in our house somewhere - there's one today called "Children" over at Across the Page.

"Porkers, oints and grunts" -- poems in honor of National Pig Day over at Jama's Alphabet Soup, where Jama hams it up, of course!

There are three (yes, three!) original limericks from Liz Steinglass over at her blog today.

News of both the March Madness competition and the Slice of Life challenge comes to us from Mainely Write.

Betsy at  Teaching Young Writers returns to Poetry Friday with a Slice of Life-challenge poem.

You'll find an original poem inspired by a story in the Bible over at Violet Nesdoly's blog.

An original poem about a yoga disaster? Yes, and it's called "Yoga Gone Awry" - find it at Wee Words for Wee Ones today.

Be sure to check out Ed DeCaria's March Madness selection video where he seeds the competition - fascinating stuff, and it is causing shouts of delight along with a monumental rash of nerves and hand-wringing all over the kidlitosphere.  For Poetry Friday, he begins a series about his Top Ten Poems of 2012. Check it out at Think Kid Think.

Buffy Silverman practices her free throw with an original poem at her aptly named Buffy's Blog.

Bildungsroman gives us  a poem by Erica Westcott titled "Enigma."
There's a tribute to Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham plus a link to Eric Van Raepenbusch's Happy Birthday Author blog over at Renee LaTulippe's No Water River.

A poem by Robert Hershon is featured at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. (Every time I read the name of that blog, I think of Barstow, California, and wonder if it's true....)

Steven Withrow has an interview of poet Kate Coombs for us over at Poetry at Play. 

Lori Ann Grover offers us a poignant original poem inspired by the a viewing of the last episode of M*A*S*H (among other things.) Find it at her blog, On Point. I felt like I lost a friend when M*A*S*H ended - 30 years ago?? Oh, my.

Check out Check It Out, where you'll find that Ms.Mac has posted some pretty sophisticate haiku by 5th graders! 

Cathy at Merely Day by Day is in for her first post of 2013 with an original poem about small moments, inspired by a visit from some old 1st-graders.

And Janet Squires has posted a review of Paul Janeczko's The Place My Words Are Looking For: What Poets Say about and through Their Books over at All About Books. 

Catherine Flynn and her class took on Rachael's Challenge and wrote about kindness and compassion. Read about it at Catherine's blog, Reading to the Core.

And that's the way it is, March 1, 2013 - another Poetry Friday put to bed (though I"ll add you in if you're still on the fly later tonight.)

Thanks, One and All!






 

 

Poetry Friday: A Triptych of Tournament Poems

JUMP ROPE STEW

One, two, double-dutch stew,

cook up a kettle of skip-a-rope stew,

mulligatawny and mulligan, too,

chicken cocido and beef ragout.

Into the broth goes this and that,

spuds and turnips and bacon fat,

dumplings to the dog, carrots to the cat,

and peas to the lady with the porkpie hat.

Today I'm posting all three of the poems I've written as part of the March Poetry Madness tournament (Round One - above - and Round Two and Regional Semifinals - below.) The voting is still going on (no registration necessary - just click on "Vote") and Ed Caria (who designed the tournament) is hoping for a big surge in votes for this round of match-ups. I hope if you're reading this you'll go over and vote for your favorite. It's like a basketball tournament, but the outcome is determined not only by the skill of the players but the taste of the crowd. Some of my favorites have moved forward, other favorites have gotten clobbered, but I think all the poets are having a good time. Click here to go vote for your favorite in my current match up through Friday around 6 p.m.  - and you can vote for all the other Regional Semifinal match-ups via this page. Doesn't take long - it's good for morale - and it's good practice for next November (better choices in poems than in some of those candidates, definitely.)

Jump Rope Stew was written for Round One - the assigned word was "mulligan." When I was a kid, jump rope was a passion.

One, two, double-dutch stew....

Here are the other two poems:

Round Two - Assigned Word: "barrage"

PLAYGROUND COUNTING SONG 

One barrage, the battle’s over,

Best friends now, like cows in clover.

Kiss me quick, then chew your cud –

Rain comes down, and up comes mud.

Fee, fi -  fiddle me a song,

Everything’s right but something’s wrong.

Cows in the corn and the moon is blue –

Fo, fum, foo -  out goes you!

Best friends now, like cows in clover....

Regional Semifinals - Assigned Word: "heft"

A YEAR OF KENNINGS

Nest-chirp, feather-float, lamb-laugh, wind-waft.

Lake-lap, night-smile, flame-call, star-breeze.

Leaf-lift, mower-bite, shovel-lug, hammer-heft.

Sky-scowl, snow-show, sled-slip, face-freeze. 

lamb-laugh, wind-waft...

Kennings are an Old Norse riddle form, joining two independent words with a hyphen, making one compound word for the original word which is not mentioned (in this case Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall.)
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Poetry Friday is being hosted this week by Mary Lee Hahn, my worthy opponent for the Regional Semifinals, over at A Year of Reading. She's already put her Poetry Friday post up today (Thursday) so you'll have an extra day to vote in the March Poetry Madness tournament over there, too. I'll post this now, though here on the West Coast, it's still a few hours from Friday!  Head over to Mary Lee's site to see what other people are posting.

Poetry Friday: Atwood, Cats, Dogs, Primroses and Optimism

This poem says just about everything I felt when my husband announced, the other day, "Hey - it's February!" Well, maybe there's a little more Cat to it than would be my way - I prefer Dog. And I might not go for the part about the testicles. Or the part about eating our young. Come to think of it, this poem is a little scary. Atwood is nothing if not fierce and direct. But I'm all for those last couple of lines. One other quick thing: Primroses are showing up outside all the markets. Hooray!!



FEBRUARY 

Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,   

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries   

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am   

He’ll think of something. He settles

on my chest, breathing his breath

of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,   

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,   

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,   

which are what will finish us off

in the long run. Some cat owners around here   

should snip a few testicles. If we wise   

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,   

or eat our young, like sharks.

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over   

again, He shoots, he scores! and famine

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing   

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits   

thirty below, and pollution pours

out of our chimneys to keep us warm.

February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries   

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.


Quick note for those of you who follow The Drift Record - I am part of another blog that's just started up (it's called Books Around the Table - check it out here) with Julie Paschkis, Laura Kvasnosky and Margaret Chodos-Irvine, all members of my kids book critique group (and all illustrators as well as writers - time for me to go to art school!)  We'll be posting thoughts about writing and illustrating, about critiquing, about kids books in general. Laura, Margaret and Julie P. have all contributed their first posts, and mine will be going up next Friday. Hope you will join us for conversation around the table.

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Poetry Friday today is being hosted by Karissa Knox Sorrell at The Iris Chronicles. Head over there to see what other people have posted.