National Poetry Month Issue 21

It's Day 21 of National Poetry Month. I'm blogging from sunny Bradenton, Florida -- spending spring break with my family.

Three generations living in the same house:  my parents, my husband and me, and my children. With a teenager in the mix, and my father about to celebrate his 70th birthday, relationships are in a state of flux.

At last weekend's Baltimore CityLit Festival, we had a panel discussion about our new poetry anthology, Life in Me Like Grass on Fire -- which features love poems by Maryland poets.

Panelist Barbara Westwood Diehl wrote the introduction to the "Friends and Family" section of Life in Me. It was interesting to hear what she had to say -- that family relationships are complicated things.

That is the case in Sue Ellen Thompson's poem, "Napping." She captures a shift in the relationship between mother and daughter.

Napping
 
My mother, who had walked six miles,
six days a week for years, knew
that her life was ending.  One day she smiled
at me and said, “I’m not in the mood
 
for walking today.  I think I’ll take
a nap instead.” She never napped
before lunch.  But how else could she say
it?  All morning she lay wrapped
 
in an afghan on the sofa, her eyes intent
upon a pattern taking shape in the air. 
 
Read the rest of the poem at Sue Ellen's website.

If you're local to Maryland, Sue Ellen is teaching some workshops in May at the Writers' Center's new Annapolis satellite location.

Sue Ellen's poem, "Shaken," is the source of the poetry anthology's title: Life in Me Like Grass on Fire.


Writing Exercise:
Sometimes it is the small moments that signify large changes in people.

For my 14 year-old son, a disappearing act during my high school friend's visit with her kids told me he'd hit the in-betweens -- not comfortable playing with the children, not comfortable chatting with the adults.


In "Napping," the nap itself is the signifier of a shift in the mother.


Can you pinpoint a small moment that marked a change in a family member?

Question & Answer

I'm about to leave for a group reading at the Writers' Center in Bethesda. Reading poems out loud to myself, stop watch ready.

One of the poems I'll be reading is my most widely published...a persona poem called, "Brother." (An odd choice for me, as I'm not a conjoined twin -- but you'll see why I loved Stephenie Meyer's The Host so much.) Most recently, it was published in the Maryland Writers' Association anthology, New Lines from the Old Line State.

Re-reading this piece, I realized that it has themes in common with May Swenson's "Question," posted for this week's Poetry Friday.

Here is "Brother":

Brother “Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim – who had been joined at the top of the head – were separated… after neurosurgeons finished dividing the boys’ venous systems and brains.” CNN, October 13, 2003 When did I become aware of my brother? I can feel him only if we stretch our arms overhead at once, our fingers touch. From above my eyes, I hear laughing, crying, words not my own. An echo self? Are there two of me? No. Not me exactly, but me. We are a continuous line, a human palindrome, my twin doing a headstand on my skull where people imagine light bulbs or dark clouds reside I have myself again, but not myself. Has God melded us, or has he never unmelded? Those dancing mitochondria swaying apart have never stopped holding hands. I have been given a word for the voice beyond my sight and would like to face my brother. I have never seen him, except at night when I walk my feet up the crib slats and he walks his feet up the other side. If I raise my eyes almost to their lids I can see – are they his toes? -- moving. And I have no sense of moving them.

I'll be busy this week prepping our regional SCBWI conference, but look for a classroom lesson on writing the persona poem.