Poetry Friday: Head-to-Toe Poetry

I know there will be many posts this week about Western Washington University's wonderful Poetry Camp - attended by interested teachers, librarians and writers in the area, as well as almost 40 poets, most of them contributors to these Poetry Friday posts of ours and to the  Poetry Friday anthologies put together by Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell.  I had the chance to meet people whose names I've seen here for years but whom I've never actually met. And I was asked by Janet and Sylvia to present a 90-minute quick-write workshop the day before Camp, when the PF poets had their own day-long meeting -  I talked about the Oulipo group and their idea that "constraints" on writing (such as wordplay and/or limiting the vowels you can use, or the syllables per line, etc.) actually free you up to be more unpredictable, to surprise yourself and thus surprise your readers. Oh, I could have played around with that all day! But we actually only ended up with 60 minutes, running behind, before the group moved on to more practical matters.  I've come home determined to play around with more constraints.

My favorite moment at Poetry Camp was seeing Sylvia Vardell walk in with poetry stockings and a poetry dress - she was all poetry, outside and in. So I thought today I would share the photo I took, and I would ask if anyone knows what poem was on her stockings. It is awkward to ask someone to stand still while you read their legs (!!) and I missed my moment to ask her. If you were smart and happened to ask Sylvia - tell us what that poem is, will you? There should be two poems, actually, because the first day Sylvia was in white stockings with text and the second day (pictured above) she was in rose pink. And what a dress - "Share Poetry" - we all loved it! Head to toe, poetry!!!!

Added note: For everyone serious about finding a pair of those stockings/tights, they are for sale on Etsy. com - click here for the link. 
-------------------------

Violet Nesdoly is the Poetry Friday host this week. Click here to read her post and link to the round-up.

Poetry Friday: The Poetry of Science

My copy of a newly revised The Poetry of Science arrived today - just in time for Poetry Friday. Hooray! 248 poems by 78 poets - a terrific collection edited by the ever-energetic team of Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell, founders of Pomelo Books.  With a four-page glossary of scientific terms used in the poems, cute illustrations by Frank Ramspott and Bug Wang (yes, Bug Wang - envy-inducing name!) and a detailed list of web pages for students to turn to for more information, this anthology is definitely going to find its way into many classrooms, and I'm proud to have five poems in it. Two are about scientists Rachel Carson and Albert Einstein, one is about a despondent moment in the science lab, one about how it rains metal on Venus (yes, metal) and one about magnets. Many Poetry Friday poets are included in the list of contributors -- you'll find familiar names!

My favorite poem in the collection is by author/illustrator Terry Webb Harshman titled "Queen of Night." It begins like this...

I am the moon, Queen of Night, 
riddle wrapped in borrowed light....   

I haven't had time yet to get permission from the poet to print the entire poem, but I hope to have permission soon. Until then, trust me, it's a knock-out.

Since I don't need permission to share one of my own poems, I'll do that today.  Hope you like questions. For me, questions are the beginning point of all scientific exploration. In fact, for me, questions feel like the beginning of just about everything.

Testing My Magnet

Flowers? No. Dirt? No.
Socks? No. Shirt? No.
Hamster? No. Snake? No.
Plastic scoop and rake? No.
Glue? Paint? Paper? Clay?
Sneakers that I wore today? 
No, no, no, no...

Pile of metal paper clips --
Yes! Hooray for paper clips!
Shiny whistle? Metal fan?
Dented metal garbage can?
Hammer head, bag of nails?
Ring of keys? Rusty pails?
Yes, yes, yes and yes!

Results of my experiment?
Magnets are mag--nificent!
-------------------------------------

The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by Tara over at A Teaching Life. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

Poetry Friday: Josephine Jacobsen, A Poet's Poet.

[Quick note: Don't miss Sylvia Vardell's wonderful article w/ teacher resources about poetry and social justice.]

For my Poetry Friday contribution, I hope you'll head over to Numero Cinq, which has just published my essay about the marvelous and woefully undersung poet, Josephine Jacobsen. In the essay I take a close look at three of her poems, and I consider the fate -in general - of "a poet's poet," which Jacobsen was.  To entice you over to Numero Cinq, I offer here the first two stanzas from her beautiful poem, "Of Pairs" :

The mockingbirds, that pair, arrive
one, and the other; glossily perch
respond, respond, branch to branch.
One stops and flies. The other flies.
Arrives, dips, in a blur of wings,
lights, is joined. Sings. Sings.

Actually, there are birds galore:
bowlegged blackbirds, brassy as crows;
elegant ibises with inelegant cows;
hummingbirds' stutter on air;
tilted over the sea, a man-of-war
in a long arc without a feather's stir.

[read the rest over at Numero Cinq.]
For the Poetry Friday round-up, head over to lovely Renee La Tulippe's NO WATER RIVER.

Poetry Friday Anthology!

SO PROUD TO BE PART OF THIS!

A terrific new anthology of contemporary poems for kids, 

collected by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong. 

One poem per week per grade level, through the entire school year. 

Core-curriculum-specific. 

75 poets, 288 pages

Click here to read more. 

Click here to order.

--------------------------
UPDATE: MARY LEE HAHN HAS GATHERED UP THE POETRY FRIDAY LINKS OVER AT A YEAR OF READING. THANKS,  MARY LEE!

The schedule says the round-up is over at Andi Jazmon's great blog, A WRUNG SPONGE. But I don't see any posts there since July 20, and I know Andi and her family have been having a hard summer. Send good thoughts her way, and I'll update in the morning (it's 1:00 a.m. right now) if there's a change.

Poetry Friday: Kites, Books and Blogs

------------------------------------------------

I'm pleased to say that Sylvia Vardell's new book is out, titled The Poetry Teacher's Book of Lists. It contains "155 different poetry bibliographies and research-based strategy lists featuring 1500 poetry books for children and teens (ages 0-18.)" Click here to go to Sylvia's blog, Poetry for Children, where you can learn a little more about the new book.I'm going to get a copy for sure and recommend it to my MFA students. It sounds like a wonderful reference tool.


Hopefully, getting poetry into more teachers hands will help answer Janet Wong's recent call-to-arms over at Friends of the ALSC Poetry Blast (on Facebook):  "If you are in a position of power in ALA, how about asking (again) why there isn't a poetry award? If you are active in IRA, NCTE, or some other group that is planning a big convention/conference, how about suggesting a poet for the keynote or luncheon speaker? Lee Bennett Hopkins or J. Patrick Lewis or Joyce Sidman or Nikki Grimes? We cannot be content with preaching to the choir at our lovely poetry programs (where everyone in the audience knows everyone else); we need to get out and reach those people who haven't heard a poem in 20 years."


----------------------------
Head over to my juicy little universe to see what other people are sharing for Poetry Friday.

Also, don't miss new posts over at Books Around the Table - Julie Paschkis reflects on Imperfectionism, Margaret-Chodos Irvine on Beauty in Limitations: A Printmaker's Perspective, Laura Kvasnosky on Responding with Wonder, I offer up my choices for the Best Children's Poetry Books of 2011. 

There have been some lovely posts lately by colleagues of mine (in the MFA-Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts) over at Write at Your Own Risk.

Librarians' Choices...and My Choices

Sylvia Vardell is a treasure in the world of children's poetry books, so I hope everyone reading this will follow the link to her blog, Poetry for Children,  to read about the seventeen books of poetry which made the Librarians' Choice list for 2011. Laura Purdie Salas's BookSpeak! Poems About Books is on the list, as are two other favorites of mine from last year, Never Forgotten by Patricia McKissack and Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word by Bob Raczka. All three of those books are included on my own slightly belated list of Best Poetry Books 2011. You can find that over at the Books Around the Table blog my writing friends and I have just started. And Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 has written about Lemonade, too.

I'm in awe of what Raczka manages to do with a single word in Lemonade. In case you can't make out the poem in the image below, he takes the word "constellation" and creates the following poem, which spills down the page according to the letters' positions in the original word:
 

"a silent lion tells an ancient tale"

If you don't think that's hard, take a single word and give it a try yourself.  You can only use letters from the original word, and the poem must define or conjure up an image of what the word suggests - in this case, the constellation of Leo. Amazing!! I don't spend a lot of time envying other poets, but I sure wish my name were on that book.
------------------------------------------------

The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by Myra (Happy Birthday, Myra!) at Gathering Books - head over there to see what other people have posted today. And don't forget to check out the new blog I'm contributing to (I've posted my Best Poetry Books for Kids 2011 list there) called Books Around the Table.

ALA Poetry Blast

Sylvia Vardell has a wonderful round-up of ALA's Poetry Blast, which was, as the title implies, a BLAST! And the dinner afterward got as crazy as you want a dinner to get - good conversation about life and writing and food and poetry and pets and New York City and politics. Firm opinions, fine cuisine, and lots of laughter - what more can you ask for? Here is the link to Sylvia's blog, Poetry for Children:

http://poetryforchildren.blogspot.com
[see the July 3, 2008 post for the Poetry Blast description.]

And here is my poem about paint chips, which Sylvia mentions. This poem is the result of an experiment my friends and I carried out - we drew random paint chips from a collection of over 100 of them, then had to write a poem including as many of the color names as possible. I drew 28 colors and managed to get them all into the following poem. Paint names follow the poem. Give this experiment a try!:

LOVE BY PAINT CHIP


She was a Shy Violet in a Plum Swirl.
He was a Baritone, solid as Rockwood Jade.
She was a White Egret kind of girl.
He was a Goal Post, Mainstreet U.S.A..
The first season of their Cucumber Crush
he Soft-Heathered her, called her his little Lemon Sorbet,
Sunflowered her. By summer it was all Chocolate Froth,
he overpowered her the way a Florida Mango
overpowers Fresco Cream. By autumn, her dreams
of a life of Quiet Waterfalls had fallen by the wayside.
Love was large as a Wine Barrel, it clanged like a Trolley Car,
burned the Maple Leaves right off her branches.
She turned Foxen, heated up, began to Caramelize,
began to fill with the scent of Toasted Nutmeg, he dizzied,
he fell like a downed Sequoia Grove, yes, her Sugared Peach
unmade him, she teased and Truffled him, polished him off
like a Bermuda Shell. That winter they made love over
and over again, as if a China Rain were flooding them.
They were brilliant as Beryl, oh, they Blazed.


[28 colors used: Baritone, Bermuda Shell, Beryl, Blaze, Caramel, China Rain, Chocolate Froth, Cucumber Crush, Florida Mango, Foxen, Fresco Cream, Goal Post, Lemon Sorbet, Mainstreet U.S.A, Maple Leaves, Plum Swirl, Quiet Waterfall, Rockwood Jade, Sequoia Grove, Shy Violet, Soft-Heather, Sugar Peach, Sunflower, Toasted Nutmeg, Trolley Car, Truffle, White Egret, Wine Barrel.]