2013 Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem

I hope you will join me along with 29 other Kidlitosphere friends who are participating this year in Irene Latham's Progressive Poem Project. Each April day, in honor of National Poetry Month, invited poets will add one line a day beginning on April 1st. No one knows where the poem will go, so the twists and turns come as each poet adds his or her take on the direction it's already going. At any point, a stanza may break, or a line may be enjambed, leaving it up to the next poet to decide how to finish the thought. It's a roller coaster ride, or (as Irene's logo for the project shows) a lovely wall being built brick by brick. Something tells me that 30 bricklayers might make for a crazy wall, and there might be extra mortar in places or a lack of mortar in others - but that's all part of the fun. For me, it's hardest to follow a line with abstractions in it - I think poetry does best when it looks at those abstractions indirectly. "Show, don't tell" applies to poetry along with fiction - and staring too directly at an abstraction or a sentiment is the telling side of things. I like poetry that comes at things sideways. As Archibald MacLeish famously said, "For all the history of grief / An empty doorway and a maple leaf." Get too sentimental, and you get abstract - and abstractions can take all the breath away from a poem. That's my approach, anyway. With a poem written by many people, there are many ideas of what is best for a poem, so hang onto your hat, the roller coaster ride is about to begin!

My day to add a line is April 8th and I'm looking forward to it.

You can click on dates below to see how the poem is progressing. I will also add the growing poem to my Poetry Friday posts this month. 

Here we go, with the first line, second line, etc.

When you listen to your footsteps       (Amy, 4/1)
the words become music and              (Joy 4/2)
the rhythm that you're rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.     (Matt, 4/3)
Your pen starts dancing across the page  (Jone, 4/4)
a private pirouette, a solitary samba until   (Dori, 4/5)
smiling, you're beguiling as your love comes shining through. (Gayle, 4/6)

Pause a moment in your dreaming, hear the whispers (Janet, 4/7)

April

1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

2  Joy Acey

3  Matt Forrest Esenwine

4  Jone MacCulloch

5  Doraine Bennett

6  Gayle Krause

7  Janet Fagal

8  Julie Larios

9  Carrie Finison

10  Linda Baie

11  Margaret Simon

12  Linda Kulp

13  Catherine Johnson

14  Heidi Mordhorst

15  Mary Lee Hahn

16  Liz Steinglass

17  Renee LaTulippe

18  Penny Klostermann

19  Irene Latham

20  Buffy Silverman

21  Tabatha Yeatts

22  Laura Shovan

23  Joanna Marple

24  Katya Czaja

25  Diane Mayr

26  Robyn Hood Black

27  Ruth Hersey

28  Laura Purdie Salas

29  Denise Mortensen

30  April Halprin Wayland

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading. Head over there to see what other people have posted. And wow, it's April - a lot is happening for National Poetry Month!

Poetry Friday: The Games Have Begun!!

Round One of the 2nd Annual March Madness competition (a thrilling, maddening, intoxicating poetry-under-pressure playoff) is underway at Ed DeCaria's THINK KID THINK. How he manages to organize and keep up with the avalanche of  work involved (this first round = 64 poems from 64 poets!) just boggles the mind. He designed the competition, posted the brackets, posted overviews and a calendar, assigned us all our Round One words (no, we can't just write anything we want - we have assigned words, with different levels of difficulty.) Tomorrow? New words, new poems.  For a good explanation of how it all works, click here. Ed, thanks!

What makes it a competition?  Readers get to vote for their favorites! (Don't hesitate - voting ends on a staggered basis throughout the day today.)

Here's my approach to the contest: If, as a poet, you enter the Madness feeling anxious, terrified and/or cutthroat, it's probably not too pleasant. But if you enter for the delight of it (it's amazing to see what people can come up with quickly) then it's a lot of fun. 64 poets at play!

My assigned word for Round One? "Diphthongs."

English Vowel Sounds (those with two separate symbols in one box are gliding vowels, aka diphthongs.....as in #20 - "how")

Yes, DIPHTHONGS! (I thought that was bad - someone got "anthropomorphization" and someone else got "necrotize.") My word turned out to be the perfect challenge - I had a ball coming up with something kids might enjoy (and I might, too.) Bottom line: Win or lose, I have a new poem I like.

Click here to read it (I've also pasted it in below) and also read its rival, a poem by Victoria Warneck (assigned word: "dazzle) yesterday.

And click here for "the scoreboard" - a list of links to all Round One pairings, divided into Flight One (vote by early afternoon today - Friday) and Flight Two (vote by 7:30 tonight.) You can vote easily at each link.

I know that by the time you read this, there might not be much time left to vote. But if you miss the Round One deadlines you can still vote in all the other rounds - they'll come fast and furious in the next few days (which is why we say "poetry under pressure"!) so be looking for new scoreboards and poems posted overnight at Think Kid Think.

Many regular Poetry Friday poets are part of the competition - check out poems by Laura Purdie Salas, Renee LaTulippe, Mary Lee Hahn (whose poem sent me down for the count in Round Three of last year's Madness!), April Halprin Wayland, Amy Vanderwater, Heidi Mordhorst, Robyn Hood Black, Greg Pincus, Katya Szaja, Linda Baie, Laura Shovan, susan Taylor Brown and Charles Waters - all of them have poems up in the First Round. Special shout-outs to Vermont College of Fine Arts students and alums Anna Boll, Callie Miller and Jim Hill. Go, Team VCFA!

Take a few minutes to vote for your favorites!

Here's what I submitted for Round One:

Hound Dog’s Lament


I’m the Duke of Diphthongs – I know that it sounds nuts,
but when I howl the vowels glide around, unlike a normal mutt’s.
I howwww-owwww-owwwl my head off. I never bark, I mourn.
I have to play my diphthongs just like Louis Armstrong played his horn.
A dachshund is no Blues Man – his song consists of yips.
But I’m a hound, my sound is true
to how-owwwwww-OWWWWWWWWWW a diphthong dips.


[Ed. Note: Alas, my poem did not prevail! Hound dog, I still love you, but I am out of the running, so I'm going to kick back and enjoy the show for the rest of the tournament.Have fun, poets!] 

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The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by Jone at Check It Out. Head over there to see what other people have posted.  

Poetry Friday: Lions, Primroses, Sighs, Moans

March roared in like a lion in Seattle, though it was hard to tell the difference between that lion and the February lion that roared in four weeks earlier. Lions of the weather variety do plenty of roaring in the Pacific Northwest. Wind, rain, roar, bluster, rain again, roar again. 

Maybe what differentiates March from February is the display of primroses everywhere. How do those little flowers face all the roaring...yet remain so cheerful?

For Poetry Friday, I'm offering a little something about wind - though this wind sighs rather than roars. Maybe this is the wind after the lamb has made an appearance. Or maybe it's not really the wind sighing....?  The poem was written by the wonderful English writer, Walter de la Mare, and if you don't know his collection titled Peacock Pie, here's my advice: Find it, read it, and revel in it. And read the poems out loud. They were made to be heard.

Tille

Old Tillie Turveycombe
Sat to sew,
Just where a patch of fern did grow;
There as she yawned,
And yawn wide did she,
Floated some seed
Down her gull-e-t;
And look you once,
And look you twice,
Poor old Tille
Was gone in a trice.
But oh, when the wind
Do a-moaning come,
'Tis poor old Tillie
Sick for home;
And oh, when a voice
In the mist do sigh,
Old Tillie Turveycombe's
Floating by.

Walter de la Mare...

...and Walter de la Mare.

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe. Head over there to see what other people are offering.

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 Blessed Illusion for the New Year

Antonio Machado and his wife, Leonor.

For the new year, here is a poem from Antonio Machado. I found it while reading Naomi Shihab Nye's lovely collection, HONEYBEE,  in preparation for my January residency lecture at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Nye uses Machado's poem as an epigraph to her book, guiding the tone and musical key of her own poems.

Last  night I dreamed -- blessed illusion --
that I had a beehive here
in my heart
and that the golden bees were making
white combs and sweet honey
from my old failures.

          --Antonio Machado
             Translated by Robert Bly


"Old failures" - I can think of many of my own. But here's wishing us all a 2013 filled with white combs and sweet honey. 

Naomi Shihab Nye with her father, Aziz Shihab

P.S. When I read interviews, I'm often impressed by the intelligence of the people being asked questions, but I don't usually find myself thinking, "This person would be a lovely friend." In the case of of this interview of Nye, I did think so.
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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today over at Carol's Corner. Head over there to see what other people have posted.