National Poetry Month Issue 8

Happy Poetry Friday! It's the second Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month 2011.

Last year for NPM, I profiled the state poets laureate. This year, I'm keeping it close to home -- featuring a different Maryland poet every day.

Ann Bracken is a poet and a special education teacher. She has been writing a series of portrait poems, character sketches of the teens she works with in a self-contained classroom.

Liam Sits Folded 

by Ann Bracken  

Liam sits folded on the floor

outside my classroom,

his six-foot  frame  crumpled

like a discarded origami bird.

Liam waits next to the lockers,

head back, mouth open, eyes closed

with his backpack propping him up.

Everyday he wears too-short pants,  

shirts faded and full of holes, 

and white, threadbare socks.

Liam’s glasses, thick and brown,

help him make sense of what he reads,

but cannot provide the necessary clues

to help decipher a grin from a grimace.

Without words of explanation,

Liam sees threats

instead of invitations.

“I can’t do this,” he tells me

over and over again,  stabbing

 the erase-end of a yellow lead pencil

into his arm.

When I reach my hand out to stop him,

Liam smiles in relief.

“I really don’t want to hurt myself,” he tells me.

“I just get so frustrated,”

and the stabbing starts again.

Liam sits folded at his desk

feet tucked up under him,

backpack ever strapped

and sagging on his back.

Folded into his world of contradictions are

piles of papers 

with words  running together

like melting crayons.

Yet when he draws a cartoon figure

I instantly recognize it as

Mama from A Raisin in the Sun.

“You see, the plant in the picture stands for hope,”

Liam tells me.

“To everyone else, it is a worthless, scraggly stalk with leaves.

To Mama, it’s a rich, red geranium.” 

Posted with permission of the author.

You can read more of Ann's work at the online journal Praxilla, and see a video of her reading her poem, "Wine and Water" at a Little Patuxent Review launch.

HS Writing Prompt
One of Ann Bracken's favorite sayings is: you could love anyone if you knew their story.

Write about the moment when you learned something surprising about an acquaintance or classmate, something that shifted your view of that person. Try to use at least one line of dialogue.

Lesson Extension
Use "Liam Sits Folded" as a companion to Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun. Which character in the play does Liam most resemble?

Our Poetry Friday host today is Madigan Reads. Stop by to check out other poetry bloggers' National Poetry Month projects.

National Poetry Month Issue 6/7

Spring fever is more than just the restless excitement we feel with the coming of warm weather. We've had wild temperature swings, thunderstorms, and late snow here in the Baltimore area.

Stinkbugs aren't the only bugs around. Strep throat and stomach flu are making the rounds. My 11-year-old daughter had strep last week. Her fever topped 103.3.

Here is Maryland poet Adele Steiner Brown's poem, "Fever Healing."

It's told from the point of view of a sick child. The precision of Adele's descriptions, especially in the last four stanzas when a parent comforts the speaker, ring true for me. When a child is sick, everything slows down as we wait for the fever to break.

 Fever Healing

 by Adele Steiner Brown

You offer to say a prayer for me,

but I don’t know what prayer is.

I hear no words, only sounds your voice makes.

It quivers and shakes as if afraid

                   

of its own rising, and I know that you

are frightened by heights:  The farther

you distance yourself from the earth, 

the more aware you become of its turning,

of time passing and your inability

to slow either of them down.

Heights place you face to face with your

other fear too—falling toward the ground

                                   

at speeds high enough to skin your elbows

knuckles, or knees because flesh in those

places grows so thin over bone that

it tears whether you shake your fist or

                                   

flail the full length of your limbs against

the wind.  So, you tend to your old wounds

instead:  Your hands rub the bruises hard

enough to let you know that each new pain

they bring cancels out the old and that

pain-on-pain makes a balm.  I can feel it

in your fingers the moment they reach out

and begin to stroke the side of my face.

From the tip of my brow, past one eye,

and along the jawbone to the center

of my chin, your fingers follow the same

path over and over again until

they wear it deep and wide enough for me

to rest my head in, close my eyes, and sleep. 

Posted with permission of the author.

Since I didn't post yesterday, I have a bonus for you and your high school students today. (Advanced-learners in middle school will like this, too.)

Writing Prompt:

Write a poem -- not about being sick, but within illness. What does it feel like when you have a fever? How does the mind work? Being sick can make your skin and hearing hyper-sensitive. Do you remember touching something while you were ill and being surprised that it felt different?

Bonus! Lesson Extension:

There are two Ray Bradbury stories that take two very different views of a feverish tween. The two stories would make a great compare/contrast lesson or essay.

In "Dandelion Wine," Doug's fever is brought on by a summer with too many changes and he can't be cured by traditional medicines or doctors. (This one has a literary tone.)

For your speculative fiction buffs, "Fever Dream," 13-year-old Charles is convinced his fever is taking over his body.

Use Adele's poem to introduce the short stories and you'll prompt a pre-learning discussion that will prepare students for a deep understanding of Bradbury's characters.

 Adele Steiner Brown is a fellow Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Education for poetry. If you'd like to read more of her work, check out her books, The Moon Lighting and Look Ma, Hands on Poetry.

I hope you are having a fabulous National Poetry Month. Life in Me Like Grass on Fire has sold out of its first printing (in 2 days!) For me -- best NPM ever.

National Poetry Month Issue 5

Last week, I posted a wordplay lesson.

The middle schoolers I was visiting had a great time with the prompt, which is kind of like filling in a jigsaw puzzle with no clues and a handful of filled in words. Their poems are here.

When we were editing the Maryland Writers Association poetry anthology, poet Douglas William Mowbray (Towson, MD) and I talked about the importance of wordplay.

He'd changed two lines in his "Another Love Poem." The submitted version read, "You ain't up/ No point in the sun getting up." Doug revised those lines to sound more formal and poetic, but sometimes, bending the rules of form and grammar -- wordplay -- create voice in a poem.

We returned the lines to their original, sassy diction.

Doug sent us two wordplay poems for his National Poetry Month, classroom-friendly selection.

Fall Isn't Falling
by Douglas Mowbray


The still dead dry leaves dance.
The dead dry leaves dance still.
The dry still dead leaves dance.
The dry dead leaves still dance.

HS Writing Prompt:
Write one good sentence, not too long. Try re-ordering the words, creating new sentences. See how the meaning changes.

Life's Not Pair
by Douglas Mowbray


All the missing socks
cling on inside of sweaters
rarely ever worn.

MS/HS Writing Prompt:
This poem is a senryu. It follows haiku form but takes human (or sock) behavior as its subject. In five lines, reflect on something you find odd.

There are many events going on for National Poetry Month. The Academy of American Poets has information here.

Douglas is a proprietor of twentythreebooks, a Towson Arts Collective Board Member, and co-founder of the Baltimore Center for the Emerging Text. TAC has a great NPM program, the Cruellest Month reading series. Here is the schedule.

Hope to see you at the April 25 reading.

National Poetry Month Issue 4

Spring is a time to welcome simple gifts. After winter's blankness, I'm pleased to see the flash of red that means Brenda and Bob, our resident cardinal couple, have returned to nest in the backyard.

Today's featured Maryland poet is Mary Westcott. Her sonnet, "Slow Music," is featured in Life in Me like Grass on Fire. It is an ode to the simple gifts a pet cat offers.

Mary sent me her poem, "A Child's Wishes" for readers to share with elementary students. It's a list poem, but notice that the wishes are for simple things -- Sun, Moon, rain -- that we realize, by the end of the poem, are remarkable gifts we've already been given.

A Child's Wishes
by Mary L. Westcott

I'd wish for the sun
As my lamp, the clouds
To shade my fears,
The moon to climb
On when I need to stretch.
I'd like the rain to wet
The grass each day,
Slippery on my bare feet.
I'd like a butterfly
As a friend to walk beside
Me on the forest path.
She'd flutter like an eyelash,
A third eye, a witness
To the bright and beautiful
Future.

Posted with permission of the author.

Mary has been volunteering for 10 years at Maryvale Elementary School in Rockville, MD. She works with ESOL students on their reading and writing. Mary gets to teach the third graders poetry!

Early Elementary Writing Exercise
Let's structure this list poem for young writers. We'll use some of Mary's phrases as line starters for the children to fill in:

I'd wish for the sun as my...
the clouds to...
the moon to...
I'd like the rain to...
I'd like a butterfly as...
She'd flutter like a...
A witness to...

Happy National Poetry Month. I'll be back with another Maryland poet tomorrow.

National Poetry Month Issue 3

I first read Janice Lynch Schuster's poem "Teaching the Girls" as part of a Poetry Friday post. In it, the speakers children spar in the kitchen before dinner.

At the time, I was in residence at a middle school. I thought, "I love the poem, because I am a parent like the speaker. But I wonder what the girls in the poem have to say about this scene."

Middle and high schoolers, your National Poetry Month prompt of the day is to remember a family scene like the one in "Teaching the Girls." It's dinner, and the kids are messing around. The adult in the room joins in, or balks the fuss.

Tell one stanza from a kids' point of view, but the second stanza from the parent's perspective.

Teaching the Girls
by Janice Lynch Schuster

After dinner the girls shadow box

In the kitchen. There is small space
For their joy, their blonde energy
As they bob and weave near the counter.


I warn them about the hot
Burners, coffee pot and knives.
Metaphors fly; they are merry and warm,
I am their crazy coach, reciting
Combinations as what’s left of dinner burns.

Chin down, guard up!
Light on your feet,
Snap that punch!

I’ve been training them for years
For the punches life will land,
The world beautiful and brutal,
Everyday and extraordinary.

I want them ready to slip
Through it as we do this night,
So wired by their own lives,
Nothing crowding them in a corner
The whole arena of my love
Resounding in their laughter.

Posted with permission of Janice Lynch Schuster.

Alternate prompt:
If the two-point-of-view prompt doesn't work for you, try this instead:

I found it surprising that the parent in the poem is teaching the girls how to box. Did anyone ever teach you how to do something out of the norm or unexpected?

Maryland poet Janice Lynch Schuster is a contributor to Life in Me Like Grass on Fire, which I'll be featuring all month. She has a book coming out this year, Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Living with Serious Illness, which she co-authored.