National Poetry Month Issue 16

It happens to me all the time.

I'm in the shower, thinking about how I'm almost out of shampoo, when the poem I've been thinking about will wander into my brain. The hot water must do something to my synapses -- before I can wash the suds out of my hair, I've got lines and ideas and I must go write.

Yes, I have horrified my children by dashing for the laptop sporting nothing more than a towel and an insane look in my eye.

Today's Maryland poet is Bryce Ellicott.  The hot water does something to Bryce's synapses, too. (I'm guessing this poet is a fellow Pisces.)

Shower Sprite
by Bryce Ellicott


Why is it
I must find you
my muse, so often
in the shower?

I step in and
the water fills
my brain with words,
the calling of the thrumming
thermal rush, my hair
absorbing sentences from the flood.
I race through cleaning motions,
dash to my desk
and stand dripping, pen in hand
water running on
the page to find the
words evaporated
from my
drying
skin.


Posted with permission of the author.

High School Writing Prompt:
Write a poem addressing your Muse. Go ahead and ask her about the strange places where she turns up.

Since Bryce brought up the Muses -- three of the nine classical Muses are devoted to poetry: Calliope (epic poetry), Erato (love poetry), and Euterpe (lyric poetry).

I'll be finding inspiration today at Baltimore's CityLit Festival.

The Poe Room -- watched over by a remarkable portrait of Edgar Allan himself -- is where to go for poetry. There are readings and poetry panels throughout the day. I'll be on with a group at 10:45 AM. Hope to see you there!

National Poetry Month Issue 14/15

It's hard to believe National Poetry Month is halfway over. All month, I've been featuring poets from my home state, Maryland.

(Many of them have work in the new anthology, Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems, published by the Maryland Writers Association.)

Can I brag a little bit? Children's author and Poetry Friday blogger Heidi Mordhorst plays for Maryland's poetry home-team.

Another local powerhouse: Mike Clark -- publisher of the Maryland art and literary journal Little Patuxent Review -- who is also a fine poet.

It must be the snuffly smells of spring that inspired Heidi and Mike today. Both sent in pet poems.

In Heidi's poem, there's a little bit of wishful thinking.

Griffin's Stomach Rumbles
by Heidi Mordhorst

In hunger
my furred tail flicks
my muscled hindquarters
set themselves tightly back
ready to spring

In hunger
my wide wings beat
my keen eye climbs
the sky, scans the ground
ready to strike

On how to hunt

only my talons and claws agree

Heidi Mordhorst, 2010

all rights reserved

Posted with permission of the author 

Mike Clark's adorable and chubby little pug is the subject of his poem. 

Rainbow Dog

by Mike Clark

My sad faced pug

with a tongue

that laps his face,

and an under-bite

that surrenders

any chance

at good looks

gets a rainbow

of colors on his

sandy colored coat

to show that Nature

loves the least looking

of us.

Posted with permission of the author.

Student poems from my "Animals are like Feelings" simile workshop is posted here.

You can try that with students, or...

Elementary School Poetry Prompt:
Read today's model poems again. In order to write them, the poets had to put aside how they feel about their fur-friends and just observe.

Heidi noticed that her cat dreams of being a bird of prey. Mike noticed that his so-ugly-he's-cute Pug isn't just a mess, he's a living rainbow.

In both poems, the pet becomes something much grander. What grand thing -- a bird of prey, a rainbow -- does your pet remind you of or wish it could be?

An extension -- read PF Blogger Laura Purdie Salas' Stampede: Poems to Celebrate the Wild Side of School with your students. It's a wonderful collection of animal simile poems.


Today's Poetry Friday host is Diane at Random Noodling. She's got the neon "Welcome" sign out just for you!

National Poetry Month Issue 13

One of my favorite model poems is Mary Oliver's "Bats."

Sadly, the poem is not available online. Trust me -- it's worth a visit to the library to read this poem!

The first half "Bats" is sensory, but factual. Oliver describes where and how bats fly, capture food, and bats' social nature.

Then, a surprising turn in the fifth stanza. We know much about the science of bats, and yet, Oliver surprises with this observation: "But in the night still comes the unexplained figure slipping in and out of bedrooms, in and out the soft throats of women."

The loose form that Oliver uses in "Bats" makes a  great writing prompt:

Poetry Writing Prompt:
Take something from nature -- a plant or animal. First, look at it like a naturalist or scientist. What do you know? What are the facts? What do you observe?

Then, shift to what your subject symbolizes. Mary Oliver's poem works because she reminds us about bat facts before introducing the vampire -- showing how the two are intertwined in our  minds, how science can't overcome superstition.


Here is Maryland poet Brian Smith's poem, "Honeysuckle." Notice how, with Brian's intense observation, the honeysuckle plant is an almost vulture-like aggressor. However, by the end of the poem, we've seen two very different sides of the honeysuckle.

Honeysuckle
by Brian Smith


Tangled mounds of beauty reach
forth in creeping conquest,
ensnare derelict prey, abandoned
pickups, fences, and brazen
saplings that dare to rise
above the twisting grasp.
Yet, for what is taken, such a
gift returned. A pinch and pull
nature's finest mead.

Posted with permission of the author.

Thanks for visiting my National Poetry Month project. All month, I am featuring Maryland poets. Most days, you'll find a writing prompt or classroom exercise related to the poem.

Brian Smith with be with me at Baltimore's CityLit Festival this weekend. Stop by the Maryland Writers Association table and say hello!

National Poetry Month Issue 12

During National Poetry Month, are you looking for ways to add poetry to your English/Language Arts classroom?

One of my favorite suggestions is to use a poem when you introduce a new work of literature. My students and I used to read "The Funeral," by Gordon Parks before diving into his novel, The Learning Tree.

The poem helped generate some pre-reading discussion on themes related to the novel. At the close of the unit, we looked at the poem again and saw that our ideas  had developed over the last few weeks.

I've also paired W.B. Yeats' poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which helped students work deeply on the theme of aspirations vs. dreams.

Here is Maryland poet Patricia VanAmburg's poem, "World Literature." The prince of Denmark makes a cameo appearance in this poem, so why not pair it with your unit on Hamlet?

World Literature

by Patricia VanAmburg

Wherever one thing stands,

 something stands beside it.

~ Dr. Chudi Okpala

Do we read another culture with

our eyes or its own? Will either way

of looking work? Must we soften

the focus—novice seekers hoping for

an aura—gazers of stars in the night

sky whose steady stare can make light

vanish.  The camera obscura, and

our own brains, see things backwards

first—projecting silhouettes and

ghosts.  Like Hamlet, we know “there

are more things under heaven, Horatio…”

Like seers, we sense “wherever one

thing stands, something stands beside it.”

When those things fall like dominoes,

we  choose to see, or not.  Stories tell how

love and faith cure blindness—love and

faith and spit.  Spirit.  The physical thing

and the thing beside it—reading all that is.

Posted with permission of the author.

National Poetry Month Issue 11

It happens every National Poetry Month. I start April 1 so excited about my blog project. Then, life gets in the way.

Let's just have a sense of humor about it. To help us, here is a school-friendly (if gross) poem from one of my heroes -- Maryland poet John Hayes. This poem and writing prompt fall in the wordplay category.

John is 89 years old. He's a photographer (which is the subject of  his poem, "Pixels," in Life in Me Like Grass on Fire), a sculptor, playwright/director/actor and a wonderful poet. He's also diligent about sending work out to literary journals, which means dozens of acceptances a year.

John a twisted sense of humor that often involves werewolves, zombies and other strange beasts. Here is John's poem, "Parasite Lost."

Parasite Lost

By John Hayes

Sarah and me

loved our pet flea.

She taught her to read.

I taught her to plead.

We fed her our blood

let her hop in the mud

but one frosty day

she jumped away

to live on the butt

of a friendly white mutt.

Published with permission of the author.

previously published in Kids Vision, September 2005

Kids' Writing Prompt (Elementary School and Up)

This poetry exercise starts with a title. Pick a well known book, movie or TV show and change one of the words around. Once you have a silly or strange title, write a poem to go with it.

• iCarly could be "iSnarly" -- a poem about a cranky cat.
•  Mission Impossible becomes "Mansion Impossible" -- a poem about the unusual rooms in a magician's home.
•  The Lost Hero of Percy Jackson fame, could be "The Lost Zero" -- a poem about an adventurous number with nothing to lose (get it?!)

Have fun with these! More poems from Maryland poets to come.

National Poetry Month Issue 9/10

One of the easiest ways to teach children how to use similes and metaphors is through animals and insects. You can read my full lesson on animal simile poems here.

I'm featuring two Maryland poets for this weekend's National Poetry Month post -- Barbara Morrison and Fernando Quijano III -- both with poems about bugs.

I love bugs. When other moms were grossed out by cicadas in their hair, I was chasing my kids with a whirring bug in my hand saying, "It has red eyes! Isn't that cool?"

If you're working on similes and metaphors with young poets, ask them to look for commonalities between themselves and a specific insect. If a teen can find a connection with a gypsy moth or a butterfly, he or she can write a simile.

In the poem, "Gypsy Moth," notice how the poet uses form. The opening stanza is observation/description, which makes the simile in stanza two both eerie and surprising.

Gypsy Moth
by B. Morrison

Their sound is like the lightest
sprinkling of rain tapping the leaves
somnolent and steady, eerie only if you know
that what you hear are tiny jaws
consuming leaves and dropping tiny
hard brown beads: Gypsy moths.

Yet the words themselves hold no horror;
they might describe me:
the gypsy, the moth, restless and wise
unable to take even the best of men
and stay with him, moving on when
a town goes stale  you've seen me at dances,
my skirt flying, my eyes held fast
by my partner's, but fickle like a gypsy--
look around and I'm gone.

Posted with permission of the author.

In Fernando's poem, "Orange Eye," watching butterflies is a meditative act. The bugs become a metaphor for finding joy in simple things (a theme we've already touched on this April).

Orange Eye

by Fernando Quijano II

I don’t have to write

this poem

it writes itself

how could it not?

At ten

the monarchs come to feed

on the purple orange eyes

outside

the kitchen window

as I wash dishes

monarchs & bugs that look

like little hummingbirds

fan tails and all

buzzing bud to bud

to suck on the sweet nectar

At three

the brothers come

butterflies wearing tiger skins

with iridescent blue

spots for wings

dangling upside down

with their black

winged cousins

to catch

the undersides of the buds

that previous bug

gourmands have missed

The tigers patiently probe

each bud

with their probosci

while the jet

butterflies flutter

frenetically before moving

on, looking for the easy meal

I could wash this dish

for days

I don't have to write

this poem

The Universe wrote it

for me

long ago.

Posted with permission of the author.

MS/HS Writing Insect Poems Exercises:

1) Use Barbara Morrison's form to write an insect simile poem. Choosing a bug with a cool or evocative name is a good place to start. Stanza one is for observations and sensory description. Stanza two is where you introduce the simile and compare the insect to yourself.

2) Write about a time when you were watching an animal or insect and became lost in the act of watching. What were you doing at the time? Describe what you saw in detail -- the more closely you observe, the more your reader will understand how deeply you were paying attention.

I'll be back tomorrow with a satirical bug poem from Maryland poet John Hayes.