Poetry Friday: Owl Feathers

A few Poetry Fridays ago, I wrote about a bear that had been visiting my dreams.

Maybe something similar has happened to you. Every morning, while the tea is steeping, a blue-jay comes to rest on the butterfly bush outside your kitchen window. Or you keep seeing red-tail hawks circling every time you take your dog for a walk. For three nights, you dream about jellyfish. Perhaps, suddenly, you notice foxes everywhere -- in advertisements, songs, peeking out from the raspberry bushes in your back yard, on people's license plates (1FXY LDY).

When this happens to me, I begin to wonder if the animal is trying to tell me something.

A few weeks ago, Sam and I were walking in a nearby field.

Sam says, "What will we find today?"

We found two feathers, a few yards apart.

Guesses were: hawk, turkey, and owl.

Research and Facebook friends confirmed these were probably barred owl feathers. Exciting! Hadn't I heard an owl call earlier that month, when I woke at 5 am to drive Julia to a field hockey tournament?

That night, I was cleaning out an old file of papers. A greeting card, opened but still in its envelope, fell out of the file. It was from my favorite professor from graduate school, Muriel Becker. Muriel was a legend in the New Jersey education scene, but she was also a huge fan of good writing, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Because Muriel passed away many years ago, I checked the postmark. The card had been sent in 1993. Nice, I thought.

[There is a literary award in Muriel's name. One of the winners passed away this week, poet and children's novelist Walter Dean Myers.]

It wasn't until the next morning that I connected card to feathers.

A card from Muriel, sent around the time
of my graduation from Montclair State University,
where she trained generations of English educators.

I choose to believe that the owl feathers and card were meant to tell me that Muriel's spirit is around. I'd been thinking about a work-in-progress during my walk with Sam. Maybe this was Muriel's way of saying: I like this idea! Keep working on it.

The practice of taking nature walks is a nourishing one for me, as a human being and as a writer. That's why I'm such a fan of Amy Ludwig Vanderwater's book FOREST HAS A SONG.

Cybil Poetry Award winner! Available at B&N.

The poems in Amy's book take a path through a year of seasons. Along the way, the reader finds seeds, fossils, and ferns. There are things to see, hear, smell, and touch on this nature walk. And there are animal visitors.

I'd like to thank Amy for giving me permission to post a poem from FOREST HAS A SONG today.

First Flight
by Amy Ludwig Vanderwater

Mommy, I'm scared to be this high.
     All owls are scared on their first try.

My tail feathers feel so tingly with fear.
     You can do it. Calm down. Careful now. Steer.

I can't see a thing through all this black.
     Just go to Spruce and come right back.

FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP--WHOOOSH!
FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP--SWOOOSH!

Look, Mom! I made it! Wow! I can fly!
     I knew you could. You were born for sky.

From FOREST HAS A SONG (Clarion, 2013)
Posted with permission of the author.

Do you think the feathers Sam and I found tumbled from the sky when a juvenile owl took its first flight? Or maybe they are Momma Owl's feathers, shaken off as she followed, just-far-enough behind.

As I transcribed Amy's poem today, the words of the poem had a different meaning for me. I'd been feeling like the little owl -- afraid of trying something new with my writing project. And there was the memory or spirit of my mentor, Muriel, saying "You can do it... You were born for sky."

Thanks for taking a walk with me
on Poetry Friday. We're celebrating
Independence Day and
honoring the work
of Walter Dean Myers
at Heidi's blog this week.
Stop by My Juicy Little Universe
for more poetry links.

If you'd like to learn more about animal spirits or animal medicine, I recommend the book ANIMAL SPEAK: The Spiritual & Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small, by Ted Andrews.

National Poetry Month 2013: Tools for Listening and Keeping Track

When I visit elementary schools, I always begin the residency with two questions for my students: "What do you already know about poetry?" and "Have you ever heard a poet read her own work?"

In response to the first question, children love to show off what they know -- poems can, but don't have to rhyme; there are poetic techniques like alliteration and imagery; poems can be about anything the poet chooses; they are a good outlet for self-expression.

However, my question about seeing or hearing poetry in performance usually only earns a few raised hands. For most elementary schoolers, a poem is text on a page, not a living art.

Today in the TechnoVerse, Poetry Friday blogger Amy Ludwig VanDerwater shares some multi-sensory tools that can enhance poetry on the page.

Amy book Forest Has a Song was just released!

SoundCloud and Pinterest: Listening & Keeping Track

by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

I usually write by hand on creamy journal paper, and our family does not own a television. I call for my husband–“Honey!”–when faced with a computer glitch. My children change my laptop wallpaper to strange scenes of cartoon penguins, and I do not know how to get the cat photos back.  So I’m a bit slow to many new possibilities in the TechnoVerse. Still, here are a couple of tech-y sites that have helped me.

SoundCloud

Poems weave sound with meaning, and most poets will tell you that they read their work aloud as a part of their revision process. I do this too, and for the first two years of my blog, The Poem Farm, I relied on my voice and also the voice of my children and husband to read back poems, so that I could hear “if they sounded right."

Last year, however, I thought that it would be interesting to add audio to my posts, so that children could hear the way I read my own poems. I like listening to the voices of poets, so why not add this feature to my own work? Video was not necessary; it’s the “book version” of a poem over the “movie version” here. My face need not distract. Not knowing what program or app to use, I played around a bit on my iPhone and found SoundCloud. It was free (I recorded 121 poems for free before needing to upgrade yesterday to a Pro Plan for $33.99.) And it was easy. Just a few button presses, and I can save and upload my readings of poems.

Many teachers have told me that they appreciate the addition of audio on my site; it helps children develop an ear for reading poems and for hearing line breaks read by someone else. I did not anticipate, however, that recording my poems would also help me revise. But it does. Many times, reading my “finished” poem aloud, I would record only to discover that something was off, even after many out-loud readings without SoundCloud.  Many times, I have gone back to the notebook to fix meters and rhythms, line breaks and rhyme. SoundCloud has become a final check for me. I recommend that teachers use this, or another similar site, to help children listen to their own voices and poems.

This is a simple site to use, and recording on my iPhone allows me to find a quiet place (usually on my bed) away from barking dogs and violas and giggling children. Uploading is quick, and it is easy to embed the HTML code into a blog. You can see and listen to my SoundCloud tracks here - https://soundcloud.com/tags/Amy%20Ludwig%20Vanderwater

Pinterest

For anyone unfamiliar with Pinterest, it is a series of online bulletin boards that you make yourself. Pinterest is one way to keep track of sites and posts, books and interviews that interest you, information that you want to keep somewhere safe. Online goodies that you wish to keep, but that you don’t want to print and keep. What you pin can be seen by the world, and what the world pins can be seen by you. It’s a big ol’ flea market of everyone sharing their favorite stuff–for free.

[Amy's "Poetry Crafts" board on Pinterest is here, and it includes this pinned poetry craft: 

http://nycpix.wordpress.com/tag/arts-and-crafts-union-sq/]

To sign up for Pinterest, you simply enter through a Facebook account, and from there on out, things are quite easy. It’s overwhelming at first to see the whole world of people’s favorite dresses and recipes, crafts and home décor ideas, but just like with Facebook, you may choose who to follow. You may even choose which bulletin boards (“boards”) of which people you would like to follow. So in this way, you have control over what you see. You do not have to be real friends, or even real Facebook friends with people on Pinterest. You follow by interest, and you pin what you like. Following someone on Pinterest does not mean that you will be Facebook friends. These are separate.

So, how do I use Pinterest with poetry? To save things. It’s my online notebook. I’m quite disorganized, and so when I see a site with promise or a post with an idea I’d like to save, I simply “Pin It” to a board that matches it. I’ve made the boards myself (everyone makes their own custom boards), so this takes no time at all. The “Pin It” button on my task bar makes saving a new site a one click job. Most of the sites I visit regularly are not on my boards as I have them in my heart, but I have plans to link to more and more both for myself and to give exposure to my friends’ and colleagues’ sites. Many people have found my blog through what I have pinned, and in this way my online community has widened.

While I have aspirations to improve my organization and categorization of my pins, right now, for poetry, I keep the following boards:

Poetry Teaching Ideas - http://pinterest.com/amylvanderwater/poetry-teaching-ideas/

Poetry Teaching Resources Online - http://pinterest.com/amylvanderwater/poetry-teaching-resources-online/ 

(I plan to combine these first two boards)

Poetry Crafts - http://pinterest.com/amylvanderwater/poetry-crafts/

Poem Farm Poems - http://pinterest.com/amylvanderwater/poem-farm-poems/

FOREST HAS A SONG - http://pinterest.com/amylvanderwater/forest-has-a-song/

There are limitless possibilities for pinboards around poetry. Off the top of my head, I am imagining boards around types or subjects of poetry (pin bibliographies), photos for writing-inspiration, writing contests/retreats, and on and on.

Neither of these sites–SoundCloud or Pinterest–take a lot of my time, but in small ways, each has helped me to learn more about poetry and to manage these new understandings too.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is an author and teacher living on Heart Rock Farm (The Poem Farm) in Holland, NY. Her first poetry book, FOREST HAS A SONG, was published by Clarion/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Spring 2013) and her second book, READING TIME, will be published by WordSong/Boyds Mills Press (date TBA). Amy is also co-author with Lucy Calkins and Stephanie Parsons of the grade 2 book POETRY: BIG THOUGHTS IN SMALL PACKAGES (Heinemann, 2013). In addition to poetry, Amy has written local NPR commentaries as well as a column for EDIBLE BUFFALO, and she works in many school districts teaching about writing. Amy blogs at The Poem Farm and Sharing Our Notebooks, both sites for anyone who is interested in poetry and notebook-keeping.

Amy, I can't wait to try out SoundCloud. You  make it sound like a great and simple tool for revision. I have to admit, I've been avoiding Pinterest--worried that I will use it more for procrastination than productivity--but you've encouraged me to at least give it a try.

Tomorrow in the TechnoVerse, poet Ken Ronkowitz tells us about his longstanding poetry site, Poets Online.