We Got the Beat: Fibonacci Poems Part 1

National Poetry Month is over, but I am still teaching poetry.

The third graders at Northfield E. S. were blown away by Fibonacci poems. We were actually doing math, science and poetry at the same time. This was a great lesson for our first workshop together. Our main goals were counting beats and sticking to a theme -- plenty for the third graders to handle.

I'll post the first half of my Fib lesson today with some student poems. We'll do the second half of the lesson for Poetry Friday.

For several years, I've been using Robert Bly's poem "Conversation with a Mouse" as a first day elementary school warm-up. The poem is in the anthology Poetry Speaks to Children.

 

I use "Conversation with a Mouse" it to talk about how a poem can grow or travel in just a few short lines. Bly's poem begins with a mouse in its tiny nest. (I always have the children sit on the floor. It's a cozy poem, and sitting close together helps them appreciate the poem's tone.) By the concluding lines, Bly has taken us all the way to the Milky Way galaxy.

A Conversation With a Mouse

by Robert Bly

One day a mouse called to me from his curly nest:
"How do you sleep? I love curliness."
"Well, I like to be stretched out. I like my bones to be
All lined up. I like to see my toes way off over there."

"I suppose that's one way," the mouse said,
"but I don't like it.
The planets don't act that way, nor the Milky Way."

Read the rest of the poem here.

 

"Conversation with a Mouse" was a particularly good way to start a lesson on Fibonacci poems. I read the poem and we discussed its meaning. The children and I talked about the shape the Milky Way galaxy makes -- even shaping a double spiral with our hands. I asked them to remember the spiral shape. We'd be seeing it later in the workshop.

After the children returned to their desks, we looked at the science picture book Growing Patterns by Sarah C. Campbell. (Here is the author talking about the book.)

Growing Patterns explains the Fibonacci sequence in simple terms. The basics are: start with the number zero. The next number in the sequence is one. From this point, always add the two previous numbers to figure out the next number in the sequence.

0

1

(0+1=) 1

(1+1=) 2

(1+2=) 3

(2+3=) 5

(3+5=) 8

(5+8=) 13

and so on.

This sequence is seen frequently in nature, particularly in shapes like hurricanes, nautilus shells, and spiral galaxies (remember the Milky Way from "Conversation with a Mouse?") When I show the children a graphic of the Fibonacci spiral and then we look at a nautilus shell, I can see the brains lighting up!

"So," I ask the class, "can you predict how we are going to make a poem out of this pattern of numbers?" They quickly figure it out ... by counting syllables.

Tomorrow (second part of the workshop), we'll talk about the inventor of Fibonacci poems and read sample fibs.

For now, here are some Fibonacci poems by the Northfield third graders. I asked the children to aim for a science theme. Thank you to Northfield's staff and families for giving me permission to share these wonderful poems.

Storm Fib

by Stefan C.

rain (1)

storm (1)

lightning (2)

brightest bolt (3)

gigantic red flame (5)

animals running from big fire (8)

dangerous flame burning down a big brown and green tree (13)

Mars Fib

by Zachary D.

Mars (1)

red (1)

in space (2)

cold at night (3)

flying to this place (5)

darkness and stars surrounding it (8)

Moon Fib

by Brynn L.

Moon (1)

rock (1)

shining (2)

has craters (3)

smiling down at me (5)

crescent making the sky light up (8)

universetoday.com

I was at the USA Science & Engineering Festival this Saturday. There, I ran into some super mathematicians from The Association of Women in Mathematics. What were they teaching kids at the festival about? Fibonacci numbers. They were so excited when I told them about our poetry workshop. Of course, math is a language we use to describe the world around us, just as we do in poetry. 

You can check out the AWM website for some kid-friendly math worksheets. Then come back for the rest of the lesson and more Northfield poems tomorrow.

Prose Poetry Friday or a Flash Fiction Fete?

Happy Poetry Friday! I'm still working through the 50 States.

It was Minnesota's 152nd birthday this week. It became the 32nd state on May 11, 1858.

The North Star State has had a poet laureate since 1934, but the position wasn't made official until recently (2007). Why?

In 2005, then-Governor Tim Pawlenty vetoed a Minnesota poet laureate bill, citing fears that an official poet laureate would lead to "a state mime, interpretive dancer or potter." Read more about it at the Library of Congress.

Current state poet laureate Robert Bly is only the third to hold the lifetime post.

I love his poem "Conversation with a Mouse," which is in the Poetry Speaks to Children anthology. If you've never discussed that poem with little ones, you're in for a treat!

My friend Christine Stewart of the Maryland State Arts Council and I were having a "warm" Facebook discussion about prose poems. (Read a definition of the term at the Academy of American Poets.)

She says, stop being lazy and work your line breaks.

I say, some narratives lend themselves to the form. If you force them into poetic lines, you pull the threads out of the story. Build them into a short fiction piece, the images lose their focus.

What do you think? In the era of Flash Fiction, is there a place for prose poems?

Here is a prose poem by Robert Bly to help you ponder the question.

A Caterpillar on the Desk


by Robert Bly

          Lifting my coffee cup, I notice a caterpillar crawling over my sheet of ten-cent airmail stamps. The head is black as a Chinese box. Nine soft accordions follow it around, with a waving motion, like a flabby mountain. Skinny brushes used to clean pop bottles rise from some of its shoulders. As I pick up the sheet of stamps, the caterpillar advances around and around the edge, and I see his feet: three pairs under the head, four spongelike pairs under the middle body, and two final pairs at the tip, pink as a puppy's hind legs. As he walks, he rears, six pairs of legs off the stamp, waving around the air! One of the sponge pairs, and the last two tail pairs, the reserve feet, hold on anxiously.

Read the rest of the poem here.

Still haven't decided? Here's an extra prose poem -- one of my favorites -- "A Story about the Body" by Robert Hass, with commentary by Robert Pinsky.

My friend Jama Rattigan is hosting Poetry Friday at her wonderful blog, Alphabet Soup today. Stop by for something poetic and tasty!