Last Day Picnic: Food Poems

Happy Poetry Friday! My daughter -- and children  across central Maryland -- are celebrating the end of school today. I'll be taking Julia (middle school), Robbie (high school) and my friend Michelle's son (who says goodbye to elementary school today) out for ice cream as soon as they all get off the bus.

I thought we'd enjoy the last day of school, and Poetry Friday, with a picnic today. Let's see what the Northfield third graders are bringing us to eat.

These poems come from our Food Story workshop. Our  model poem is "Good Hotdogs" by Sandra Cisneros.

Before we write, we spend a lot of time talking about favorite foods, food traditions in our families, meals that our special to our cultures, holidays and the people we love to share food with.

I love the details in Erin's poem, especially the flower-bordered plates.

Find the recipe at My Recipe!
(These are pork, but I am obsessed with shrimp dumplings, shumai.)

Erin L.
 

Dumplings

Yum! I can smell the

Boiling dumplings when

I come home from school.
I hear my mom rolling
The dough and the
Squeaking sound of the
Rolling pin.
Bang! My mom accidentally
Drops the pan’s cap. She
Picks it up and starts
To stir more meat to
Go in the dumplings. Then
The feast begins! My mom
Starts to fill up the flower
Bordered plates with the
Yummy meat dumplings.
Mmmmmmm! My stomach is
Full of eating all of those
Dumplings. I slouch in my
Chair, tired and full. Then
I go to bed and tomorrow’s
Another day.

Katie's poem had me at "chocolate."



French Silk Pie at Tablespoon.com.

Katie O.

Chocolate Pie

I can’t wait till we

Get there

I open the door

Dashing in

I smell it in the oven

I have to eat my dinner

First

So I’ll eat quickly

I munch it and slurp it

Finally it’s all done

Now it’s time for me

To blow out the candles

In the chocolate pie

I’m happy it’s my

Birthday so I get

The first slice

Now I have to

Wait till next year

But at least I’ll get

The first slice

I get back in the

Car and say see

You next Thanksgiving

But all I can think about

Is the chocolate pie

Jill and Arden are both treating us with home-made ice cream! Their poems reminded me of making ice cream at my aunt's house when I was little. We used one of those giant, hand-cranked machines that required a lot of dry ice and elbow grease. What flavor? Strawberry. I've had a love of home-made strawberry ice cream ever since.

 

Jill S.

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Getting home from school

On a Friday

Choosing the best flavor

For my dad and I

Should it be vanilla

Or yummy chocolate

I choose chocolate chip ice cream

Over all the other flavors

Chocolate chip is best to me

Because I love the small, little chips

Time to get ready

To set up the supplies

Time to get the ingredients

First we mix the milk

With the vanilla

Now time to mix the other ingredients

Into the pot

Time to heat it up

Ding

It is finished

Time to mix is up

With ice and salt

We have to wait 24 hours

Until it is finished

24 hours is over now

Time to eat the ice cream

This is really good ice cream

I hope we can make it again

Arden K.

Home Made Ice Cream

Time to make homemade ice cream

Grab the bowl and the cream
Pour the cream
Drop the ice, sprinkle the salt
Kick, kick, clank, clank
More ice
Kick, kick, clank, clank
Get the bowls and the spoons
Scrape, scrape, plop, plop
Mmm…vanilla
TIME TO EAT!!



Blackberry Ice Cream from Cully's Kitchen.

Now our feast is over. Let's give the teachers one last chance to impart some wisdom. Here is poet Joseph Ross, a veteran educator, blogging about why he loves teaching:

"As a teacher of English, one has the profound privilege of reading student writing. When reading what students write, I have come to know how they think and reflect on the world, as well as what they love and sometimes what they fear. Another privilege that comes with teaching English is the opportunity to spend time with students engaged with great literature. Few experiences compare with watching a student wrestle with, and then fall in love with, William Shakespeare, or seeing a student find himself in the poems of Lucille Clifton, or learning of a student’s own confidence growing after an encounter with Henry David Thoreau. Engaging with young people over exciting and challenging literature still lights a fire inside me, even after twenty-four years."

Read the full post, "The Gifts of Teaching" at Joe's blog. Then order his brand new book of poetry, Gospel of Dust.
 
Wishing you all a wonderful summer. Teachers -- enjoy your much-deserved break. Parents -- good luck!

Today's Poetry Friday host is Margaret at Reflections on the Teche. Enjoy the view this summer, everyone.

NPM 50 State Tour: Mississippi

Mississippi, the 20th state, joined the Union on December 10, 1817.

The Magnolia State's poet laureate -- a lifetime post -- is Winifred Hamrick Farrar, who began her appointment in 1978. She is co-author of a book called "Poems Past Eighty."

I couldn't find any poems by Farrar on the web, so here is an imagery poem about the Mississippi River.

On the Mississippi
by Hamlin Garland
Through wild and tangled forests The broad, unhasting river flows-- Spotted with rain-drops, gray with night; Upon its curving breast there goes A lonely steamboat's larboard light, A blood-red star against the shadowy oaks; Noiseless as a ghost, through greenish gleam Read the rest at the Academy of American Poets.   I did find something while researching Farrar. A group of state poets laureate have started a blog, United Poets Laureate. Check it out!

Amok in Texas

We're visiting the Lone Star State for the first time -- spending time with family who moved to Dallas a few months back. Spent a morning in lovely Chisolm Park and found a letterbox (our first!)

Since it's National Poetry Month, I've been wondering about Texan poets. The state has a long standing poets' laureate program. The current poet laureate of Texas is Larry D. Thomas. His webpage has some amazing poems -- love the sensory details, his attention to landscape.

Because we were just with the park with my young niece, here is Thomas's poem, "Out of the Blue" --

Out of the Blue But for the three of us, the park that day was deserted. Mom meant no harm and said she was just kidding when, out of the blue, she sped off in the Buick and left me and my little brother stranded on the blanket we’d spread for a picnic. Beyond the elm-shaded acres of Cole Park, in far West Texas, the flat red earth ran unobstructed for miles in all four directions all the way to the horizon. Sam clutched his teddy bear and started crying. I stood in my white, suspendered shorts and watched the car dissolve in a cloud of dust.

Read the rest of the poem here: http://www.larrydthomas.com/poems.htm. You might also like the humor in Thomas's "The Red Raging Waters," which can be found on the same page.

While they're having freak 1-minute blizzards back home in Charm City, we'll be enjoying the 80 degree weather here in Dallas. See y'all!

Writing Exercise: A Tasty Treat

Recommended for: All ages, all genres

On Poetry Friday, I shared Laura Purdie's Salas' poem "Come in, Come in!" about a snake enjoying its dinner.

Food is evocative. Eating involves all five senses (taste, smell, touch, hearing, seeing). But food also connects us to memory. That's what makes food such a good writing prompt.

Writing Exercise: Food Glorious Food!

Step 1: Wake up your senses.

Take an object. "Experience" it with all five senses. I use baby powder with students (more on that later). Yes, we taste a tiny bit. If it wasn't safe, we wouldn't use it on babies.

Step 2: Write about it.

For each of your five senses, write a simile. Example..."The baby powder tastes like Violet Gum." The kind my English grandmother chewed. I'm suddenly awash in her smell, how her hugs felt, the soft curls of her hair.

Now, we're getting somewhere.

Step 3: Read a model poem.

You can find wonderful food poems for kids in, "Food Fight" (ed. Rosen, sadly out of print but you can still find it). However -- we're going a little deeper in this prompt.

Just as the taste of baby powder grabbed my hand and took me for a jog down memory lane, we're trying to connect a food to something more. A memorable incident. A person.

My favorite model poem for this exercise is by Sandra Cisneros:

Good Hotdogs

for Kiki

Fifty cents apiece To eat our lunch We'd run Straight from school Instead of home Two blocks Then the store That smelled like steam You ordered Because you had the money Two hotdogs and two pops for here Everything on the hotdogs Except pickle lily Dash those hotdogs Into buns and splash on All that good stuff Yellow mustard and onions And french fries piled on top all Rolled up in a piece of wax Paper for us to hold hot In our hands

Read the rest of the model poem here.

Kids as young as third grade love hunting through the poem for clues about who Cisneros means by "us." The last lines of the poem "you humming and me swinging my legs" sends the reader off with a tactile image of contentedness.

Step 4: Write!

Write about a favorite (or hated) food. Use all five senses. Include who you were with, where you were and what was going on around you.

A memorable moment for me: at a third grade Poets' Tea, one student read a poem about his grandmother making oatmeal for his breakfast. Grandma, Mom, teachers -- we all started tearing up. Turns out, Grandma wasn't much into cooking. Our young poet captured making oatmeal as an act of love.

Another student (different school) wrote about eating cake at her birthday party and learning for the first time that a favorite friend was her cousin.

And one I've saved for years: a boy writing about rough-housing with his cousins at a family reunion, only to be drawn to the kitchen by a delicious smell. When they opened the pot on the stove, the family was cooking a goat's head. (He said the meat was as good as it smelled.)

Have fun playing with your food!