Poetry Friday: Clifton's Collected Poems

I was sitting yesterday in a bookstore cafe with poet Ginny Crawford, several books of Lucille Clifton's poetry filling our small table. Then I went hunting for Clifton's newly released Collected Poems, which just about collapsed our table. It is a book as mighty, inside and out, as Clifton was in life.

Celebrating the recent publication of
Clifton's mammoth Collected Poems.

Ginny and I are planning an event for this month's Baltimore Book Festival (9/28-30) -- a tribute to Clifton's work both as a poet and as an active, generous member of the literary community. She lived here, in Columbia, Maryland, and taught at St. Mary's College in the southern part of the state.

Me, CityLit Project's Gregg Wilhelm, and
Ginny Crawford at the 2011 Baltimore Book Festival.

Officially:

A panel of local poets and authors who knew and worked with Lucille Clifton discuss her poetry and legacy. Featuring: poet Linda Joy Burke, Little Patuxent Review contributing editor Susan Thornton Hobby, Edgar Silex and Lucille's daughter, Alexia Clifton. Moderated by poet Virginia Crawford and LPR editor Laura Shovan. The panel will include readings of Clifton’s poems from the newly released The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. Attendees may be invited to write on-the-spot poems in response to Clifton’s work. This program is presented as part of the 100,000 Poets for Change annual global event. 

Saturday, September 29, 12-1:30 PM in the CityLit Tent.

Clifton died in 2010 and our local community misses her a great deal, so there is a lot of positive energy around this event.

Ginny and I will be inviting attendees to write poems using first lines of Clifton's work as a prompt, something I invite you to try at home.

Going through the Collected Works, there were so many evocative first lines to use that we had to stop at forty. As Ginny and I scanned the poems, we stopped and read, shared favorite pieces and surprises -- again, more poems than you can imagine.

For those of you who teach older children, middle and high school, I am suggesting Clifton's poem, "Miss Rosie" as a model piece.

Many teens like to write about social issues because they are newly awake to the larger world. In judging teen poetry contests, I've read my share of poems about the homeless. What's usually missing, and what Clifton does so well, is the specificity that takes a problem and invites the reader to see an individual person.

miss rosie
by Lucille Clifton
when I watch you wrapped up like garbage sitting, surrounded by the smell of too old potato peels or when I watch you in your old man's shoes with the little toe cut out sitting, waiting for your mind like next week's grocery I say when I watch you you wet brown bag of a woman

Read the rest at Poets.org.

Like me, Ginny is a poet-in-the-schools for the Maryland State Arts Council. We came across a Clifton poem with this title, "We Do Not Know Very Much About Lucille's Inner Life."

Wow. What a great prompt for middle and high schoolers, "Insert your own name and go with it."

Be brave if you do this prompt with your students. This is a BIG invitation to speak the truth. That's what Lucille Clifton was all about. She spoke the truth through her poetry. She spoke difficult things in a way that invited everyone to listen and to be brave themselves.

Stop by Katya's place at Write. Sketch. Repeat. for more Poetry Friday posts.

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #17: Charles Waters on a Training Regimen

Children's poet Charles Waters and I have a lot in common. We are both from a small New Jersey town in the shadow of New York City -- Teaneck.

We also both believe in the importance of regular writing time. Two hours a day, no matter what. For me, it's 8 to 10 AM, as soon as my kids have left for school. That's when my brain is freshest. It's no surprise that Charles compares this routine to training as an athlete. Writing every day is like boot camp for your poems. The more often you drill, the stronger your work becomes.

Here's Charles:

Well I go about things in a pretty regimented way. Try to get at least two hours in a day. Maybe more, never less. Like an athlete, you need to practice to develop the skills or else you're weakening yourself. 

I also read children's poetry every single day. Anthologies especially rock! Get a taste of all the children's poets, living or not.

You'll find Charles' work in this anthology.

One of the most interesting things I find about writing is that after the two hours are up and you finish whatever the day’s work was, just play around for fun!  I’ve gotten some solid children’s poems out of that. The pump is already primed -- so see what else you have up your sleeve.  Most of what I come up with afterward are short children’s poems; tight, right and to the point.

Good writing is being at your most courageous. As I’ve said before, believe in yourself because your Uncle Charles believes in you! 

SIBLING RIVALRY

We can’t seem to get along

One’s too weak and one’s too strong,

We don’t know who is which –

It always seems to switch.

SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Grandma Betty

Showers me

With multi-colored

Gossamer streams

That looks like

   Paper spaghetti …

CONFETTI!

Now I'm in the mood for cake!

THIS BUCKET

This bucket needs a hand

To fill it up with sand

Or if you flip it over

You’ve got a one man band.

© Charles Waters 2012 all rights reserved.

Charles Waters poems have appeared in THE ARROW FINDS ITS MARK: FOUND POEMS edited by Georgia Heard  and will appear in the upcoming anthologies AMAZING PLACES edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BOOK OF ANIMAL POETRY edited by J. Patrick Lewis (Children’s Poet Laureate of the United States), and AND THE CROWD GOES WILD: A GLOBAL GATHERING OF SPORTS POEMS edited by Carol-Ann Hoyte and Heidi Bee Roemer.

He performs his one man show POETRY TIME WITH UNCLE CHARLES to elementary and middle school audiences.

Please check out his website at www.charleswaters.net

YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCharlesWaters

Twitter: https://twitter.com/waterscharles

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/waters.charles

Thanks for the reminder to be courageous, Charles. It's especially important in our poems for children. Kids connect with poems that describe the experience of childhood in an authentic way. It comforts them to know, even when I am a grown-up, I'm going to remember how it felt to be me -- a kid -- right now!

It's Tuesday, so let's do a writing prompt. Working from Charles' simile that poets are a kind of athlete, write about a word workout.

In this poem, think about: 

• What are you lifting instead of weights? Maybe you could start by pressing a short line and work your way up to a line (can you see the barbell?) that's longer, heavier.

Olympic weightlifter Liana Lambert (Australia).

• What are you doing to get the heart pumping?
• How about the abs? Some crunchy onomatopoeia words will get that six-pack of syllables into shape.
• What music do you listen to during your word workout?

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #3: Allan Roy Andrews on Dreaming

A few weeks ago, I caught my twelve-year-old out of bed near midnight. She was sitting in the hallway. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I was sleeping and I had an idea for a poem I'm working on," she said. "It's dark in my room, so I came out in the hallway to write it down."

"Carry on," I said, "but then straight to bed." In the morning, we talked about how many writers keep a notebook at their bedsides for just this reason. The dream or semi-wakeful state is a time when ideas we have been grasping at during the conscious day come floating into our minds.

Today, Maryland poet Allan Roy Andrews shares a poem about the compelling lines of verse that come to us in dreams. Scroll to the bottom for a related prompt.

Dream Muse

by Allan Roy Andrews

I seek the diction for my poem

and lonely as a cloud I roam

the pages of anthologies;

but finding there no words to please,

I gentle go to that good night

and in my dancing dream I write

a poem as clear as ear has heard

then wake--and can’t recall a word.
 

Posted with permission.

 
Your Tuesday Prompt:

In "Dream Muse," Allan Roy Andrews incorporates phrases from famous poems (Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night") into an original poem.

www.eyeonlifemag.com

Choose two well-known poems that you admire. From each, select a  line or phrase. Do some free-writing, incorporating the two phrases. Don't edit. Invite whatever floats into your mind onto the page.

If you want to take this practice a step further, read the two famous poems before you go to bed. Be sure to leave a notebook or paper and pen at your bedside. If an idea or a line bubbles up in the night, or as you are waking, write it down.

Tomorrow's guest poet is Justine Rowden. See you then!

National Poetry Month Issue 25

I first met Maryland poet Vonnie Winslow Crist because we had not one, but two shared aspects of our writing life.

We are both members of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and we have both taught school poetry workshops for the Maryland State Arts Council's Artist-in-Education program.

Vonnie's writing is imbued with the magic of fairy tales and fantasy. Some of her poems are realistic, but even those have a sense of magical sense of awe about the natural world.

Vonnie's essay on the role of monsters and magic in modern culture will appear in the Summer 2011 issue of Little Patuxent Review.

If you can't wait until then, pick up a copy of her new book, The Greener Forest, which I blogged about here.

For a taste of the fantastic, click here to read Vonnie's poem "Dragons" in EMG-Zine, which specializes in fantasy and SF.

I'm sharing her ekphrastic poem, "At the Asian Art Center, February 21." The speaker in the poem is transported, not by fairies, but by a work of art.

At the Asian Art Center, February 21

by Vonnie Winslow Crist

Listen.
Hee-Young Kim has written
a poem
on four horizontal banners pressed
edge to edge like
river, grass, mountain, sky.

Look.
Strokes on these panels
translate odes chanted
by air into
the ear of Hee-Young.
And she, treasured interpreter, used
brush, paper, inkstone, ink stick
to paint mementoes of
the wind’s meeting
beneath the Coincident Moon
with shy bamboo –
beyond graceful
in her robe of silvered jade.

Read the rest of the poem at Vonnie's website.

Writing Exercise:
In this ekphrastic poem prompt, go beyond simply reacting to a work of art. Take some time to imagine the artist and his or her process in creating the painting, sculpture, graffiti.

Extension for upper elementary/middle school:
Linda Sue Park's Newbery Award winning novel A Single Shard is a work of historical fiction, but it could also be a response to today's prompt. Have students discuss how a work of art -- even a fragment -- could inspire an entire novel.

My month of Maryland poets continues tomorrow. National Poetry Month is almost over.

National Poetry Month Issue 19

National Poetry Month spring break continues.

We've had an "Iced Latte" with Shirley Brewer, gone on a family outing with Sonia Linebaugh, and today we are at the beach with Barbara Westwood Diehl -- all Maryland poets. All three have work in the anthology, Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems.

In today's poem, Barbara looks at something we often try to overlook: vacation traumas. My memories are filled with them -- my brother's hand closed in a hotel door (he still has the pins in his fingers), my friend Pam coming home from Ocean City with the worst black eye you've ever seen (her youngest daughter was the accidental culprit).

Even when the family in the poem moves their  beach towels away from an upsetting scene, and the poem moves on, the family -- and the reader -- can't forget what has been seen.

Migration

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

We are on vacation. We migrate every morning toward the shore,

scattered, at first, like kites pulled through the sky on taut strings,

then reeled in, an embroidery of beach umbrellas on sand.

Every morning, we pull toward the ocean. We are refugees

stumbling through sand, carrying babies and beach blankets.

Planes pull banners through the sky, telling us where to go.

There are boats, but not for us. We watch them far away,

the sailboats and fishing boats, the cruise ships and cargo ships.

They are our horizon. When boats come close, we wave at them.

We do this every day. We walk among the living and the dead

the ocean leaves for us. The waves have swept a sea turtle to shore,

fearsome even in death, like a long sunken ship raised from the deep.

We cannot look away. There are always the claws and shells,

the empty eyes of fish, but the turtle is whole. The great head

lolls like a grandfather's. The arms and legs dig like a child's.

Read the rest of the poem at Tarpaulin Sky.

Writing Exercise:

You know you have a vacation story. We all do.

The temptation is to put the surprise or turn -- in "Migration" it's spotting the dead turtle -- at the end of the poem. For today's poem, though, let's avoid ending with a bang. Put your dark moment closer to the middle of the poem. Let the people in the poem try to get on with their holiday. See what happens.

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 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 1

National Poetry Month is finally here! Did you order your free NPM Poster from the Academy of American Poets?

National Poetry Month 2011 is extra-special for me. Life in Me like Grass on Fire: Love Poems hits the shelves today.


The book was my first editing gig, a project for the Maryland Writers Association.

This month, I'm going to introduce you to some of Maryland best poets -- many of whom are contributors to Life in Me. All of the poems are classroom-appropriate. Some may be for high schoolers. Others will work in elementary schools.

Today's writing prompt is for high schoolers. You'll find it at the end of the post.

I've come to know Dennis Kirschbaum's poetry through the anthology. Nostalgia is one of the themes of Dennis work, but he always manages to look at the past without rose-colored glasses.

Dennis' poem X-Men speaks to the trappings of childhood. We understand the speaker's youthful admiration for the Fantastic Four, but also how they help the speaker navigate his way into adulthood.

X-Men

by Dennis Kirschbaum

John’s “Avengers” numbered 16 to 127 formed the core

so we kept the collection at his house.

I was sucked in through the Fantastic Four, whose stony,

aloof, orange Thing spoke to me at a gamma level.

Iron Man and the giant, emerald Hulk,

hid tender emotions beneath impenetrable metal

and impervious hide.

Tapping superhuman powers, I bought hundreds.

I earned a small fortune, bringing the daily “Sun”

and spent it in 25 cent increments,

flying to Jeppe’s Comic World in the summer heat,

burning like the Human Torch, and cooling down in the rare air

conditioned basement where a crisp stack waited in a milk crate

with my name on it.

Each was read once, then catalogued on blue-lined

index cards, and carefully protected in special plastic

that could withstand water, extinguish fire,

and repel radioactive spider venom.

By the time I left for college, the boxes filled half the room.

Later, I returned to find John had sold every one.

Mortally wounded by the Abomination and his Forces of Evil,

I remembered my training. I didn’t cry.

Just a grimace, as I slunk from the scene,

tattered shirt clinging to my swelling green skin,

purple pants stretched, ripped,

and blown apart at the knees.

Posted with the permission of Dennis Kirschbaum.

Dennis Kirschbaum is the associate vice president for Campus Advancement at Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. He runs, bakes and writes a poetry blog, The Steaming Cup, from his home in Washington Grove, Maryland.

HS Writing Prompt:

After reading "X-Men," have students choose a favorite super-hero. Real heroes need not apply. It has to be a fictional character. Someone with powers.

Next, ask students to free-write any memories they have connected with that character.

Once the memories are written down, ask them to write what aspects of the character appealed to them as little kids.

Enough brainstorming! Time to write. I was always partial to Storm.

Who gets the honor of hosting Poetry Friday on the first day of National Poetry Month? It's Amy at the Poem Farm. Stop by the farm and enjoy all of the NPM posts and projects.