Just the Right Words…

What to choose? What to choose? Tomorrow is “Commit a Poem to Pavement,” at our local Literacy Park throughout the day. Color chalk will be available and all are invited, encouraged, enjoined to scribe a line or two of a well-loved poem on the sidewalk near the library. This day-long event is one of the activities offered by the Newport Library, and adds to the month-long “poem-in-your-pocket” push. (Did you know that the official date for carrying a poem and sharing it with others is Thursday, April 18th?)

I plan to be there tomorrow. The opening question, “What to choose?” I pondered in earnest until yesterday morning. Now I have my answer, and as so often happens, it came in slant.

My son and daughter-in-love are having their celebratory “Baby-Que” this Saturday for their soon-to-be-here son, my first grand-baby, his projected arrival date of June 4th. It’s a couples celebration at the beach, emphasis on “celebration” and “beach”; the baby just gave them a joyous excuse!

I have done little to help with the ‘Que; I figure my role will (hopefully) increase a bit as babysitter in the time to come. When I offered to make an additional dessert, a back-up to the cake, I volunteered cookies. I have quite a bunch of winners to my credit, but yesterday morning the idea seized me: What about some specially designed ones? Wouldn’t that be fun?

I found a place with rave reviews online located in the town where they live, easy for them to pick up as they head to the coast. The website was professional and appealing, understated and —okay, I’ll admit it, no spelling mistakes, an important consideration for me! I filled out the contact form, realizing that I was pushing the timeframe “Cookie Hugs” laid out. Oh well, I could certainly bake cookies if they couldn’t, so why not ask?

In less than an hour, I received a call in response to my inquiry. I do love responsive businesses. There seems to be a dearth of them lately, so the cheery voice on the line was its own kind of embrace. We chatted for a bit. I acknowledged how this was a last-minute decision, that I’d totally understand if she were unable to accommodate my request.

“Oh no, Trish,” she bubbled, “I’m excited to help you with this for your kids’ party, glad to be a part of it. I just love making cookies.” Her voice carried sincere enthusiasm, matter-of-fact pride in her chosen work. We settled the details, and after I hung up, I knew the poem, and the lines to commit to pavement.

The entire poem by Marge Piercy is a longtime favorite of mine, one I have in my head and heart. Do you know, “To Be of Use“? It was added to my 2018-19 journal:

As soon as I heard Valere’s words, her passion about baking an echo of mine about teaching, about living, I knew I had my lines:

“The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.”

Just the right words…

Inspired by “Sick”

I don’t remember what year it was when I heard Shel Silverstein speak at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. What I recall from the event is something he said—or maybe in the revisionist view of my past—something I think he said about teaching poetry to students. Encourage your students not to be slaves to rhyme. It’s a hard sell when he is such a master and was popular beyond all others in my first and second grade classrooms. We do love rhyme.

Today a poem of his is running through my head, a parody of a poem, to be exact. I have had middle school students, on the heels of successfully playing with the copy-change methods from Dunning and Stafford’s Getting the Knack,

embrace the opportunity to play with the poems we’d share in class. Frost’s “Stopping by Woods…“, inspired such classics as, “Whose cheeseburger is this? I think I know…” or lines from William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just to Say” morphed into “I’m sorry I stole your bike from the garage…”

I have Shel’s “Sick” on my mind this morning. My sister-in-law gave me my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends where “Sick” lives happily surrounded by other Silverstein gems. On the inside front cover her son, now a 50-year-old, had written a note in pencil letting me know that he was giving me this book because it’s the BEST BOOK EVER MADE, including page number of his favorite poem, “Sick.” He had struggled to unlock reading, but Shel helped him find the key.

Sick

I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more—that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut—my eyes are blue—
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke—
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is—what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

From Shel Silverstein: Poems and Drawings; originally appeared in Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. Copyright © 2003

In my head I am hearing, “I cannot write a post today/all my ideas have gone away./my pen lacks ink/my thoughts, they stink/I can’t imagine what to say./ What if I never find my words/ is that a thought beyond absurd?/ Around me people buzz and prate/ they seem to think their words are great./They do say much I wish I could/but my stories really aren’t that good!/I know I have no writer’s skill/to face the page takes more than will./ I’ve told some tales that make me smile/but not today, I’ve lost my style./Wait, you urge, just give it time/those challenging days are not a crime./Who knows if later on today/you’ll not be grabbed by what to say?/ You’ve started now, you’re on a roll/ You’ll end this now; you’ve reached your goal!

Post 29 of 31! (Thanks, Shel🙏)

The Well Being…

Metropolitan Museum of Art Night Fountains (Brecht Bug)

I’ve been thinking about the coupling of the words “well” and “being” this week. Perhaps it started because of the poem posted at the Poetry Monday website, Kay Ryan’s “The Well or the Cup:”

Yes, I’m sure it started there. I remember meeting Kay Ryan at the Dodge Poetry Festival one fall morning, lined up in front of her book signing table. She was the Poet Laureate; I had already brought her collection, The Best of It. 2010 was a banner year for the festival with luminaries around every corner. It’s been over a decade ago now, and I am far from my feeling then—that I couldn’t imagine a year without being there—the magic of it, the very air, a well I would draw from often.

This week, Pádraig Ó Tuama wrote about happenstance conversations, the encounters with strangers both desired and not. He referred to a poem by Gregory Pardlo,”Wishing Well,” shared on the Poetry Unbound podcast in October, 2020. (I urge you to read this one aloud, or listen to the podcast.)

“Outside the Met a man walks up sun
tweaking the brim sticker on his Starter cap
and he says pardon me Old School he
says you know is this a wishing well?
Yeah Son I say sideways over my shrug.
Throw your bread on the water.
I tighten my chest wheezy as Rockaway beach
sand with a pull of faux smoke on my e-cig
to cozy the truculence I hotbox alone
and I am at the museum because it is not a bar.
Because he appears not to have changed
them in days I eye the heel-chewed hems
of his pants and think probably he will
ask me for fifty cents any minute now wait
for it. A smoke or something. Central Park displays
the frisking transparency of autumn. Tracing
paper sky, leaves like eraser crumbs gum
the pavement. As if deciphering celestial
script I squint and purse off toward the roof
line of the museum aloof as he fists two
pennies from his pockets mumbling and then
aloud my man he says hey my man I’m going
to make a wish for you too.
I am laughing now so what you want
me to sign a waiver? He laughs along ain’t
say all that he says but you do have to
hold my hand. And close your eyes.
I make a starless night of my face before
he asks are you ready. Yeah dawg I’m ready.
Sure? Sure let’s do this his rough hand
in mine inflates like a blood pressure cuff and I
squeeze back as if we are about to step together
from the sill of all resentment and timeless
toward the dreamsource of un-needing the two
of us hurtle sharing the cosmic breast
of plenitude when I hear the coins blink against
the surface and I cough up daylight like I’ve just
been dragged ashore. See now
you’ll never walk alone he jokes and is about
to hand me back to the day he found me in
like I was a rubber duck and he says you got to let
go but I feel bottomless and I know he means
well though I don’t believe
and I feel myself shaking
my head no when he means let go his hand.”

From:  Digest Copyright ©:  2014, Four Way Books

Oh, this story and the unlikely encounter hold me; I can feel the “rough hand…like a blood pressure cuff.” And maybe it’s the title “wishing well,” the hope now added to my sense of “well,” the phrase both noun and action, that moves me, that makes me think of our collective well-being and whether each of us today has untapped depths to draw from or is at the bottom of the cup.

“The Blue Way Out of Here”

Michael Ondaatje is returning to poetry after 25 years I learn this morning in a LitHub article. Ondaatje has been a North-Star author on my horizon, his memorable novels pinpoint lights in the darkness. This news, the publication of a poetry collection, The Year of Last Things, sends me to our local library website to put a copy on hold. I will likely purchase it; poetry remains an investment in my well-being.

Ondaatje explains the fine difference between novels and poetry. (Screenshot from LitHub article)

I remember the attention I gave to selecting the first poem welcoming my summer-sated eighth graders back to school. In retrospect perhaps I worried too much about this introduction. After all, while first impressions matter, we were going to spend the year together reading poems. Nonetheless, that first poem felt so critical, weighted with hopes and dreams of our precious time together.

Often I tendered Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” it closing lines, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?” enduring with so many of them, so “sticky” it would show up in graduation speeches.

Other years, Marge Piercy’s “If I Had Been Called Sabrina or Ann She Said” captured the students’ prone-to-sarcasm side with its invitation to explore our names, both real and imagined, the possible selves we carry within—or might have. If names were to initiate our year, Sandra Cisneros’ prose poem from The House on Mango Street, “My Name” would extend and enhance the journey.

Then came the September I returned from a summer course at the University of New Hampshire with the amazing Linda Rief. We had focused on developing our visual responses in the classroom, working with drawing and sketching. I was a fish out of water, and those are the classes that, while they make me uncomfortable, push me forward.

This push complicated the September opener. Then I found Ondaatje’s poem “Inner Tube:”

Inner Tube

On the warm July river
head back

upside down river
for a roof

slowly paddling
towards an estuary between trees

there’s a dog
learning to swim near me
friends on shore

my head
dips
back to the eyebrow
I’m the prow
on an ancient vessel,
this afternoon
I’m going down to Peru
soul between my teeth

a blue heron
with its awkward
broken backed flap
upside down

one of us is wrong

he
his blue grey thud
thinking he knows
the blue way
out of here

or me

Ondaatje’s words winged me away to summer days on rivers, swimming in the reflection of green branches. I heard the cries of the bold jumping from rocks, basked in the sun-zapping languor of late afternoons, the perfume of sun block and river water mixed with pitch-warmed pine. I could draw this poem, both what it said and what it suggested. “Let’s draw today,” I’d say. “Let’s get started.”

Wee Baby Moon

“That tiny silver sliver in the sky is still full”

Oh, I wish I could claim those words for my own, like an irresponsible AI bot, but I cannot! The perfect caption for my husband’s photo comes by way of poet Denise Krebs, (fellow blogger and friend, too). In her post yesterday, she shared the True/False poem by Dean Young, a form she’ d discovered at the Poetry Foundation website.

I have written before about our face-to-face meeting at the NCTE Convention last November in Columbus, about her dedication to the craft of poetry and her writing community at EthicalELA. I sheepishly owned my fear of publishing poems I write. It is not my genre even though I embraced poetry explorations with my students, knowing that writing together was good for us all.

Are you expecting a poem from me today? Oh no.

Yesterday’s sickle moon, a pearly-edged thumbnail, cradled in the muzzy- morning, waning-winter sky brought two powerful memories. Almost three years ago, to the day, I stood in full dark in the same backyard, tears causing the sky to swim, and contemplated the news that a dear friend had been given a terminal diagnosis. The stars and that brash, almost-full moon offered me cold comfort. She is gone now. This is no elegy, only a memory the now-gentled moon invites.

When I was a little girl, songs filled my daily life—singing them, “crowing” my siblings would correct—sharing them unbidden. When I saw that moon yesterday, I stood staring up and sang, “There’s a wee baby moon, lying on its back, with its little silvery toes in the air. And he’s all by himself in the wide, blue sky, but the funny little moon doesn’t care.” I continued to hum the tune even as the frosty morning pushed me back inside.

I will be a grandmother soon. June. My grandson will one day look into the heavens and marvel. Overseeing all: this guardian moon.

(for Michele—and the future)

Out of the Mist

Ideas coalesce like mist coming together on a shelf of leaf, once diffuse now wholly a drop, undeniable—this morning’s post.

I receive an email inviting me to meet online with colleagues from the other coast to discuss opening routines for a podcast episode they are planning with their cohort of teen creators. How have my classes with middle schoolers begun? How has each class period dawned throughout the day?

We began with writing, what Corbett Harrison called “Sacred Writing Time.” It was a hybrid opener: projected slides as Promethean boards became ubiquitous; Linda Rief Quick-Writes; Nancie Atwell’s Lessons that Change Writers; Tom Romano’s try-it-in-another genre. Any entry in would do, but the opening invitation was the expectation of notebook time.

I’m harboring that thought when I open yesterday’s “Teach This Poem” email. If you are in the classroom and unaware of this weekly offering from poets.org, then take a look. The featured poem is “The Wild Swans” by Chinese poet Li Qingzhao. Beneath the poem, as always, are suggestions for use with students. Today the middle school recommendation links to “Translating a Peony” by Ilya Kaminsky, “In honor of National Translation Month.”

I go there—a route I often avoid—and discover:

Website screenshot

There I find the original Chinese with five translations “claiming to be authentic.” Ilya Kaminsky declares, “…when we put all these versions together we also see how many different poems can be written with the same number of words; this shows us what a rich variety of possibilities the English language offers to its poets.” This might not be my conclusion, but what an invitation for writers…all these words, all this possibility; discovery everywhere.

That’s what I think I’d say about my opening routines: open the door to possibility. Come on in. There is mist everywhere, but you can be a rainmaker.

Twenty-Two Years

Could Have

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck—there was a forest.
You were in luck—there were no trees.
You were in luck—a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.
You were in luck—just then a straw went floating by.

As a result, because, although, despite,
What would have happened if a hand, a foot,
within an inch, a hairsbreadth from
an unfortunate coincidence.

So you’re here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave,
reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn’t be more shocked or speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

—by Wislawa Szymborska

I think about the events of September 11, 2001 both predictably, as I will most certainly next Monday on the 22nd anniversary of the day, and unexpectedly as I did today when I read this poem by Wislawa Syzmborska posted on the Poetry Monday website yesterday.

Teaching in a school where, from the nearby shore, students could view smoke rising from the ruins in New York City on that day, everything that happened was personal, proximate, and profound. Each successive 9/11 brought both the possibility of a fresh start as another school year began and the need to find a way to remember, to remember, to heal, to share.

With my eighth grade students, old enough in the five years immediately following that day, to harbor vivid and disparate associations, the commitment was a balancing act. I turned to poetry as we did on many days, an invitation for “Sacred Writing Time, ” ten minutes dedicated to our notebooks. “Could Have,” a poem I first shared on 9/11, was one that evoked some of the most powerful responses and conversation.

So much of the time adults seem to have answers, but as teens approach that threshold, they realize that sometimes there are no answers; sometimes we all struggle with the unknowables irrespective of age. This poem invited them to sit with one person’s thoughts about that in language they could visualize, complexity simply rendered.

Some students resisted the interpretations of their peers, the ideas of the poet; some embraced them. Almost all paused and thought, and shared stories of how they had been lucky, or not so much, stories about the role chance plays in our lives. And most, because of the date, reflected on those who had been victims, the unfathomable whys and why nots.

When I read the poem now, I can picture the earnest faces in that room, feel their engagement with the world they are navigating, the one where “your heart pounds inside me.” Still…

Right Now

I’m staring at the poetry books I’ve assembled in a stack

and an unruly row, wondering if I’ll ever get through

them, especially since I keep buying more every time I read

a poet who says what I mean but haven’t found

my own just-right words, or makes me think in a tangent

that gives me hope

there are some hallways in my brain

still unexplored.

Right now, it’s Tiana’s turn ,

Tiana Clark,

you know her?

Right now, as I return to her poem

“After the Reading“

Right now, recalling

months ago meeting

her on the page

words welling, “My Therapist

Wants to Know about My Relationship

to Work,” I almost

drowned in that truth:

hers mine.

Right now

I’m standing on solid ground,

well, waiting

for a light in the hallway

right now.

(Thanks to Tiana Clark and Poetry Unbound for introducing us.)

Dear Jane,

I am writing you to thank you for sending yet another perfect poem to my inbox. I wanted to let you know, as the energizer bunny of daily poetry, your well-crafted words land and stay with me throughout the days. I am so very grateful that I discovered your mailchimp missive.

I remember writing to you during March, 2019 on the heels of reading another of your poems; I wanted to excerpt a few lines to use in a blog post for that year’s Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge, but I needed to ask your permission.

In your prompt reply, you assured me it would be fine and thanked me. Today I am writing again with gratitude for your poem,”My Son on His Small Island,” and for these lines particularly:

“There the sun shines, the waves

break only themselves on the shore.”

What is it about the perfect lines that do as Emily Dickinson said,“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Your lines did that for me when I read them—do that for me as I read them now.

Your poem came on the heels of my finishing Amy Sarig King’s middle-grade novel,  Attack of the Black Rectangles, an exploration of the right to read, with you as its standard-bearing champion in its powerful climactic moment. The middle-school rebels are standing up for themselves, confronting the elimination of “offensive” language in your stunning novel, The Devil’s Arithmetic, the book their class has been reading in book clubs…with black rectangles added by the well-meaning(?) teacher.

In the scene at the public board meeting where the censorship is being hotly discussed, and it seems as if the passionate arguments of the sixth graders are being dismissed, you show up and sit in the audience. Your support is silent, but your presence means everything to these young activists campaigning for readers’ autonomy.

In her afterword, Amy Sarig King gives you, Jane Yolen, credit for your trailblazing, your steadfast example, your honest-and-true self. I am sure you communicated with her as she completed this wonderful novel; you are a hero.

And those lines:

“There the sun shines, the waves

break only themselves on the shore.”

They endure.

Sincerely, Trish

Flagged

(I have been motivated by so many writers during the Challenge. Today, in the spirit of rich lists, I used flagged emails still lingering in my inbox to get me going. Thanks, Everyone.)

Your package has shipped: What I’m awaiting: college paraphernalia—my first ever college sweatshirt. I figure it’s my 50th year as an alum; I may not get another chance.

A most amazing graphic novel, Little Monarchs, by genius-on-the-page Oregon Coast writer/illustrator Jonathan Case. It is a gift for my great-nephews-in-law to be hand delivered this weekend if the USPS is timely in this first leg.

Your package has arrived: It was a big delivery day yesterday. The dog’s auto-shipment of Chewy hit the doorstep. (Have you seen the ads? They are not exaggerating…much.)

Lush bar shampoo, an extravagance? Maybe, but I have yet to find any equal for my chlorine-zapped hair, and in my rural community, options are limited.

Snyders Sourdough Pretzels, six boxes. See above. What is it with the lack of chunky pretzels in this town? I bought a case of six boxes. (They will last awhile.)

Rethinking Traditional Grading: Susan Barber’s Sunday emails usually get the flag. I am hardly ever ready to parse all the great thoughts she sparks at the time I read it. I hate to stash it in a folder, so I “Keep as New” and return often. By the time another Sunday rolls around, I’m ready to file under “Barber Gems,” and move on to her next iteration of inspiration.

“I Can Buy Myself Flowers”: Do you know Wendy Mac (MacNaughton)? I subscribe to her Grown-Ups Table (GUT) substack, found her by sheer accident during the pandemic, and encourage anyone who wants practical drawing tips—this is a dream for me, not a practice…yet to check her out. She has just opened up a FREE social emotional learning set of videos and resources for educators. Check them out here. She has done, and continues to do, engaging work for kids—and the kid in each of us!

What Compels Us: I’ve written about Pádraig Ó Tuama and his poetry podcast Poetry Unbound (if you’re hankering for a soft and sweet poetry meet…), but subscribing to his free substack to carry me through until the next season begins has added a layer of mindfulness and joy to my weekend. He, too, sits flagged in my inbox until the next wisdom arrives.

Global Read-Aloud Choices: Pernille Ripp has unveiled this year’s Global Read-Aloud options with a lovely explanation of her rationale, the responsibility she feels as its originator and coordinator, this mammoth enterprise that is a game-changer and saved me during the opening weeks of my online pandemic teaching.

I’m sure today will bring a few more flags. What’s in your inbox?