"Clear Thinking about Mixed Feelings": A Guest Post at Teachers Write

I'm guest posting about poetry and inspiration at Kate Messner's fabulous virtual writing camp, Teachers Write, today.

You may recognize some of the themes I talk about (and even the actual words!) as drawn from this blog---but then, I see this blog as a kind of notebook in which to gather my thoughts for both now and later.  It turns out there is a cumulative effect of reading, writing, and believing. 

 Come join me!

Poetry Friday: Renku

Poetry ought to be taught in schools as a game.  I mean it. All the way up to high school and beyond.

We start this way---with hand clap rhymes, or raps, or silly jingles which we make even sillier, or perhaps, (gasp!) off-color.

And then...the bell rings and recess is over and poetry gets made "a subject."

PHOOEY on that!

In contrast, there's  an old Japanese game called renku* in which poets build a linked chain of haiku together on the spot. Apparently, in ancient times, it used to get quite rowdy---even a little PG-13 here and there, perhaps like some modern day bouts of Pictionary tend to do...

It was about pleasing the crowd with a sly twist on theme. Or throwing in a tricky word. Or slipping in an allusion that tickled your brain until you had time to look it up and say: Oh, right! I should've gotten that!

So, in the spirit of going back to poetry's roots, the Poetry Seven are at it again with a pickup game of renku.  Liz and Andi threw us the idea a week ago, and presto! by today, we have something that weaves and jinks and laces us all together.  We have a game. Play with us.

*Renku: alternating verses of three lines, two lines (could be 17, 14 syllables) with a linked theme and a shift. Below, the initials at the end of the lines indicate which of the poets wrote it. lps=Laura Purdie Salas, aj = Andi Jazmon (Sibley), tsh=Tricia Stohr-Hunt, kf=Kelly Fineman, sh=Sara Holmes, td=Tanita Davis, lgs=Liz Garton Scanlon




fall leaf in April
wearing last season's fashions--
shunned by the green crowd lps

nature’s first green is gold
progeny emerge in flame aj

white melts into green
gardens blush Crayola proud  
blooming shades of spring tsh

strolling down the pebble path
rose-cheeked dreamer lost in thought aj

palest pink dogwood
April breezes whisper by
petals flutter down kf

ink dries on palest pages
garden rows plow down sillion aj/sh

Brash green garter snake
Hoe laid beside June daisies
Book and tart limeade sh

serpent jewel, puckered words,
work abandoned, glory claimed aj

afternoon drifts by                            lps
wispy clouds, half-closed eyelids
distant playground sounds

cloud congestion, dully pewter
petrichor from distant patters td

tapped on leaden skies                    td
rain’s persistent percussion
arrhythmic ad lib

a morse-code chicken scratch          lgs
a fresh start too hard to resist

the rain leaves its mark --                   lgs
such an inscrutable plot
begs to be re-read

red again so soon and down
persimmon fingers shiver aj



Visit the player's posts today for more about the game:

Tanita Davis (wow! love what she says in the last paragraph about finding April's purpose)
Andi Sibley (took this to a whole new level with her "rules of the game")
Liz Garton Scanlon (chief instigator and rabble-rouser)
Tricia Stohr-Hunt (she recounts the conversations among the poets that led to the chain. Behold the chaos!)
Laura Purdie Salas (started us off with that evocative first haiku)
Kelly Fineman (I followed her in the chain, trying to link her palest pink dogwood to ink on book pages)


Elaine at Wild Rose Reader has the Poetry Friday Roundup today.

April is Poetry #30

 The orange truck moves from block to block.  Sometimes, kids watch.  A cat slinks by.  During the next storm, we'll be glad of the branches trimmed to limits.  But sometimes, I want to tear down the signs that go up overnight: No Parking. Tree Service. Monday 8-5.


Last day; last haiku
A tree dies in sawdust smoke
Who will I tell now?

---Sara Lewis Holmes


Thank you to all my friends who wrote beside me, and to those who commented here.  You made April poetry.

April is Poetry: #28 and #29 (Citizen Science)

Oh, April is speeding by!  This weekend was gone in a flash, but that's because any time I have with the fabulous Loree Griffin Burns is always too short. Loree was in town for the USA Science and Engineering Fair, and I caught her presentation on Citizen Science.  After writing about scientists who track trash and scientists who investigate honeybees, Loree decided to write about something powerful and simple: how any human being with alert senses and a willing heart can participate in the grand adventure of scientific discovery.

Citizen Scientists
by Loree Griffin Burns
photographs by Ellen Harasimonwicz

From listening to frog calls to hunting for lost ladybugs, each citizen scientist is asked only to be an expert in their own local community, and to observe and share the data he or she collects.  It's a bit like Twitter science.  (I hope Loree won't object to that description!)  Just like Twitter has enabled millions of people to be on-the-spot reporters, observing and relaying what they see and hear, citizen science empowers kids, families, scout troops, classrooms, 4-H clubs, nearly anyone--- to take what they see and hear in the small square of their backyards and add that knowledge to the vast earth-wide pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Cool, huh?  You can read more about citizen science and Loree's fascinating path to writing the book here.

Loree and I also talked about haiku----since she knew I was writing some for Poetry Month--and because she believes science and haiku have a lot in common. By focusing on the very small and the very particular, we gain access to the profound.  She even recommended a poetry book to me that I can't wait to find: Seeds From a Birch Tree. For now, though, I'm paying attention only to what I heard and saw and learned from Loree today.



Shh! I'm listening
Spring peepers caught on iphone
shared sound grows louder


Red binoculars
Held breath, sharp eyes, open ears
One sky; many wings

Poetry Friday: A Love Song

This has been a week of singing.  My fledgling efforts to learn a single song have been alternately giddy and frustrating.  For one thing, I've discovered that I'm completely unused to singing to music.

Ha!  That's not really a joke.  To Mike's horror, I told him the accompanying chords he was so lovingly playing for me were a distraction.  I know. Awful.  But I've always sung with a crowd, and for me, what I listened to was them, their voices, so I wouldn't screech off-course.  I had no idea what to do when the only thing I could hear was a steady beat of chords.  What I really needed was to SEE how my voice was supposed to compete with lovingly entwine with that.

To help, my husband laid down a guitar track in Garage Band.  Now the measures click by and the sound waves pulse in and out. I can see it.  It's helping.

But it's also incorruptible. Tying to sing with music is thrilling in a way that trying to jump on a spinning carousel is fun.  I keep mis-timing my leaps and winding up in the dirt. But the lights! Those prancing steeds!  The hypnotizing spell of the notes pouring out and up and down and around and around...

Which brings me to the poem for today.  It's one that's I've shared on Poetry Friday before, back in 2009. But I love it for how it can gush without being mush. How everything spins and stays hyper-still at the same time. And it's so much about timing.  Love often is.

A Love Song by William Carlos Williams What have I to say to you When we shall meet? Yet— I lie here thinking of you. The stain of love Is upon the world. Yellow, yellow, yellow, It eats into the leaves, Smears with saffron The horned branches that lean Heavily Against a smooth purple sky. There is no light— Only a honey-thick stain That drips from leaf to leaf And limb to limb Spoiling the colours Of the whole world. I am alone. The weight of love Has buoyed me up Till my head Knocks against the sky. See me! My hair is dripping with nectar— Starlings carry it On their black wings. See, at last My arms and my hands Are lying idle. How can I tell If I shall ever love you again As I do now?

Listen to this poem read aloud.


Poetry Friday is hosted today by Tabitha Yeatts.

P. S. The poetry haiku daisy-chaining project I alluded to yesterday? Stay tuned for it next week!

April is Poetry #26

Poetry with friends
Interlacing daisy chains
Forgot yoga class


Ah, well. My head was in the poetry clouds. Working on a new group poetry project for tomorrow! Hint: it's haiku and it's the Poetry Seven.

April is Poetry #25

Every morning on the back patio, my dog, paws delicately crossed, keeps watch like a stone lion  for the neighbor's cat.  At least, so she says. What really happens is that she leaps for the first available squirrel.


Statuesque canine
daily seeks SBS*
To uncross my paws


*Single Brown Squirrel


Are you tired of haiku about my dog yet? I find her more interesting than flower blossoms.

April is Poetry #23 and #24

Last night, my dear husband and his age-mellowed guitar took it upon themselves to help me begin to learn to sing a song. A single song.  ONE.

We aren't going for "teaching me to sing." No. This is going to be like those beauty pageant contestants who create the illusion of vast talent by pouring tens of thousands of practice hours into three minutes.  At least that's what Mike says.  It can be done.

I have no idea what can be done. I don't even know what my real singing voice is because it's always throttled by fear.  I do best when I'm surrounded by deep, true voices in church, voices that I can lean on and hide behind.  Singing on my own is like being lost in a vast, foreign city---I can't read the signs, I only know I've made a wrong turn somewhere, and everyone is politely looking away from the panic in my eyes.

The song is Kasey Chamber's "If I Were You." The occasion is that I'm forty-nine today. Don't you think forty-nine is a fine age to finally learn to sing one song?


Fingers shift on frets
you easily hold my gaze
I am deaf to fear


Forty-nine reasons
to sing louder and longer
than each year before


I wish each of you love today, and a reason to sing.

----Sara

April is Poetry #22: Open House at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Some pictures from the annual open house today at the Folger Shakespeare Library: 

 

Happiness reigned.

For some.

I think the little one in the pink bow is saying: This is SO not my century.

But again: check out how regal that girl in blue behind her looks!

I wonder which one Shakespeare would've written about.

What would the bard do?

Praise blue bird of happiness

Or ensoul a pout?

There was also this highly uncomfortable looking chair.
Perhaps that would make someone, even a princess, unhappy.

My favorite reading nook

Shelves of folios

The famous Seven Ages of Man window

You could roast a moose in there.

Emerson Fireplace

I looked up the quote in Barteby's online, which says these lines are from Emerson's  “Solution,” lines 35–42, Poems, p. 222 (1918).

England’s genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame. Ah, well, then. I would've liked to breathe that air.

April is Poetry #21

I wrote about the dog park earlier.  One of the nicest things is how well the dogs get along, even with my grumpy pet, a miniature Australian shepherd.  Naturally territorial and excessively protective, she makes me crazy at home. But at the dog park? She's Miss Social.  She sniffs and greets and meets and generally schmoozes like she's at some fancy fund-raiser.

 But nothing gives her more happiness than an escapee. Once, a small dog kept running off from its owner, and my dog kept zipping after it, grinning with glee when she blockaded his mad dashes for the grass on the far side.  The other day, she had wild romp with a rescue dog from Mexico, which she was sure was making a break for his homeland, thousands of miles away.


blue-eyed cattle dog
sunlight and torn rubber ball
my dog shepherds all

---Sara Lewis Holmes


Here's a short video of her, herding a remote-control helicopter:

Poetry Friday: Postcards from Poets

Postcards from Poets: advice to young poets, gathered from "old" poets, at the 2012 AWP Conference.

by Heather Christle

"Read beyond that which
immediately pleases you,
please."  ---Heather Christie


I resist this advice.  I want to follow my nose in choosing what to read, and in poetry, especially.  But I notice that the poet simply said read BEYOND.  She didn't recommend replacing pleasure. Only swimming out a few yards more.

Here's one that I had to swim for.

A Bird in Hand  
by Amber Flora Thomas

I’ve memorized its heart pounding into my thumb.
Breath buoys out. My fingers know how to kill,
closing on the bird’s slippery head.

I don’t remember. Was it that beak bit my chin?
Was it a claw cut my wrist? I blow feathers
away from its chest, smelling pennies and rain.

the rest is here.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Diane at Random Noodling.

 

April is Poetry #19

Running through the Capitol Building grounds is like being in a movie. No matter how many times I do it, it still feels a bit unreal, as if suddenly dancers are going to emerge and begin singing about democracy.  This is especially true after hours when the the plaza seems huge in its emptiness.

During the day, though, people are snapping pictures EVERYWHERE and it’s useless to dodge them.  I try not to cross in front, of course, but when I cut across the main steps, I have to accept I’m going to be a blur in a few dozen photos.  (Not a fast blur, mind you, although I do pick up my feet to get past in a hurry.)  I wonder where my pixels end up, in digital land?


Mobs in matching shirts
Capitol crowds poke and pry
I am deep background

---Sara Lewis Holmes

April is Poetry #18

It's always a good time at the dog park.  Dogs know how to make fun out of nothing.

dried puddle and dog
ecstatic flailing backstroke
dust shakes off in sparks

---Sara Lewis Holmes

April is Poetry #17

There were pictures all over Facebook.  People lined the highways.  I just happened to see it out my car window as we drove over the 14th Street Bridge.

Cars pulled off the road
White humpback whale in the sky
Ah, rubberneckers.

          ---Sara Lewis Holmes

April is Poetry #16

Using creative math, I've now caught up the post title (#16) with the actual date (April 16.)  This was to cover some lapses in my daily output, some double posts, and some uncounted poetry Fridays.  

In general, I like math. I think of it as another language, one that's fun to learn, and capable of saying some amazing things.  But as much as I'm impressed by writers who adhere to strict word counts, with flashy online gadgets that tick over the daily output, I don't want to know such stuff. *


Let others count days
All is relative to me
Am I writing now?

----Sara Lewis Holmes

* I might do better if said gadgets plunked out M&Ms; five or so per line.

April is Poetry 14 and 15

I believe I owe you two haiku.

It was my husband's birthday this past week. We celebrated aboard a military jet, with a group of wonderful folks singing to him in Hebrew, a first for him.  (We were escorting Israeli guests around the U.S. on an adventure I can hardly believe was real now that we're back home.) But I didn't get to cook for him, so tonight, I made up for it. Almost.  

coffee-rubbed rib-eyes
homemade coleslaw and cold beer
Cake: sweet IOU

Also, last night, we went to see Eugene O'Neil's A Long Day's Journey into Night, which isn't for the faint-hearted.  We nearly forgot we had tickets; I remembered over dinner, and we had to scramble to make curtain.  But it was completely worth the rush and bother.  Wow.

But for some, it was too much.

Production notes read
Oh, it's about family!
Intermission: gone.


I'll try to keep the daily in daily haiku next week...

Poetry Friday: Book with Wings

Anselm Kiefer
Book with Wings, 1992–94
Lead, tin, and steel
74 3/4 x 208 5/8 x 43 3/8 inches (189.9 x 529.9 x 110.2 cm)
Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth,
Museum purchase, Sid W. Richardson Foundation Endowment Fund
Acquired in 2000

Prose, soaring? Muse flash?
Poem as hymn, hosannah high?
Lopsided wings flap.

           ---Sara Lewis Holmes


I woke up today, glad to be home from a week of travel, and was suddenly aware it was Poetry Friday.  No need to panic. My iPhone held this photo of a sculpture from the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, where we spent an hour trying to understand the questions modern art flings at us. Not nearly enough time, of course.

But I have you guys, and this day of poetry, and lots of time now to think about it all. Happy Poetry Friday!

The host today is Booktalking.

April is Poetry #10

My sister's in the house today, with a haiku inspired by her studies in clinical psychology. Yes, poetry IS everywhere.


Subrosa

Hallucinating
flower voices plotting to
insinuate Spring.

       ----Ruth C. Lewis

Inspired by this quote from a clinical personality assessment true/false item:

“The flowers talk to me and tell me of their secret plans.”

April is Poetry #9

Slipping in under the wire here...

I was fortunate enough to be in the front row of a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier today at Arlington National Cemetery. I'm speechless at the hours that went into the perfection of those few minutes. Also, I want the voice of the sergeant-who-must-be-obeyed; when he instructed the crowd to stay standing and quiet, there was nary a cell phone beep or a whispered comment. I need him to ride herd on SO many places.

But the best was when the honor guard marched by so closely that I could count the moles on their cheeks.  The unknown soldier was suddenly known. It was him and him and her and him and her...


Known

hat brims slant; pitched roofs
one like one like one like one
underneath, all eyes

----Sara Lewis Holmes

April is Poetry #8

Last night, I had an appetizer I've never had before:

white bread on white plate
pale square of butter and knife
oysters tucked inside

----Sara Lewis Holmes

More daily haiku at Liz's place.

April is Poetry #7

on the oldest grave
cold stories told before dawn
then light, light, light, light



It’s Easter.  And oh yes, I love me some jelly beans.  Big, fat, pink ones especially.

But I also love deep, ancient church services filled with lovely theatrical tellings of our stories.

Especially when those stories are told in graveyards.

A church in New England that we belonged to once was lucky enough to have an adjacent cemetery, which meant a century or more of dead souls surrounded them. Easter sunrise service began at the oldest gravestone, where the story of Genesis was told in the complete darkness before dawn.

Then a torch was lit, and the congregation processed toward the church, stopping to tell more of the Easter story through the Old Testament and into the New, until they reached the sanctuary, where the lights there were thrown on, and everyone marched in, singing and lit from within.

It was pretty spectacular.  As are pink jellybeans, little boys in Easter suits, eggs hidden within easy reach, and being part of a story that goes so far back that you need lots of people tell it.


More daily haiku at Liz's place.

April is Poetry #6

One of our favorite Saturday rituals is walking with the dog to Peregrine Coffee, near Eastern Market.  When I go inside the shop, the dog, leashed outside with my husband, lets loose howls that no one wants to hear that early in the morning. She is happier when it's me, waiting on the bench, while my husband buys a mocha, a pour-through for himself, and usually, a bag of freshly-roasted beans.  We are spoiled.

On the way home, we buy a Street Sense newspaper from the Cat in the Hat guy, who cheerfully hawks his own story "on page 8."  I remember that I have promised to write, too, even on Saturdays.

So.

Saturday morning

peppered bacon; walnut toast

coffee beans rattle

More daily haiku at Liz's place.

Poetry Friday: Poetry Forgives

[Flickr: Robyn Gallagher]

Poetry Forgives

I can’t believe I left

you at the market

lost you to a shiny eggplant

so smooth you could read

by its reflection, as if purple

were a midnight lake

and you a word dropped in;
illuminating a thousand nests, dark
from dark, along the thistled shore

while I went home 

plastic bags of groceries 

on my arms, low-hanging fruit

dumped to the tiled floor

while I ran back, calling

loon-like, in hunger 

to the eggplant, 

singing now with oiled

throaty pleasure

---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)

A friend and I were discussing how I'd let this blog and my poetry fall idle.  After he gently scolded me for that, I said, thank goodness, poetry forgives.  

I believe that. Poetry forgives a reader's first attempts to hold it, awkwardly like a baby. It forgives the insults and slander we hurl at it at times. It overlooks how ridiculously we pose it, in a velour track suit, on a pedestal, then ignore its musty gaze.  It  even forgives our insecure, pretentious stabs when we take sharpened pencil in hand and poke holes in the paper of our lives to see what bleeds. 

All we need do is return.  Poetry is nothing if not a way home. 

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Robyn at Read, Write Howl. The full schedule is at A Year of Reading, here. 

April is Poetry #4

pine-thick rosemary
pressed deep in foccacia
still leaves child-height fence


----Sara Lewis Holmes


This is my neighbor's rosemary bush. She generously shares with me. For Christmas, I took several branches and placed one over the hall mirror, a row along my mantle with a string of tiny jingle bells, and one in a white stocking on the door.

I have yet to make focaccia from it, but I plan to, using this recipe from Handle the Heat.

More daily haiku from Liz.

April is Poetry #3

I'm off by a day
# 3 on April 4
subtract one add more

----Sara Lewis Holmes


Better haiku at Liz's place.

More poetry, plus links to other daily poetry bloggers (and a wonderful progressive poem project!)  at Mary Lee's.

Lots of juicy finds from Tanita at [fiction, instead of lies].

The poetry potluck with recipes and delicious images and poems at Jama's Alphabet Soup---so happy this is a recurring Poetry Month event.

April is Poetry #2

Caught by cracked sidewalk

white blooms darken underfoot

branch into fault lines

---Sara Lewis Holmes

More haiku with Liz. 

April is Poetry

My dear friend Liz is offering one haiku a day for the month of April.  Won't you join her?

Here's mine for today.

I love to pause and look out my window while I eat lunch:



two wrist snaps of wind
sting of blooms reddens window
sticky fork idles


---Sara Lewis Holmes

What I'm Reading Now: Darth Paper Strikes Back

Darth Paper Strikes Back by Tom Angleberger


Is it real? Should I believe? That's what Tommy always wants to know about the paper Yoda finger puppet Dwight uses to dispense wisdom and advice to his classmates. Especially now that Yoda is challenged by another force, Darth Paper, a scorn-spewing puppet wielded by hard-hearted Harvey---and Dwight is sinking under the full weight of a school system which wants to expel him.

The brilliance of this book is that the intended readers---upper elementary and middle schoolers---will absolutely know the answer to the "Is it real?" question. They are long past believing in the magic of inanimate objects. So they get to revel in the question behind the question: What is true?

This is exactly what author Tom Angleberger gives them as his hero, Tommy, with an earnest dedication to justice, gathers stories from his classmates of Dwight's benevolence, with the intent of presenting them to the school board. Each tale ("Origami Yoda and the Pre-Eaten Wiener", "Origami Yoda and the Exploding Pizza Bagels of Love") is told by a different kid---in voices that refreshingly reveal their own struggles and mistakes, but also show Dwight's clearly weird approach to life. What's more, some of the episodes result in outcomes probably not appreciated by the adults at the school (who have to clean up vomit from pre-eaten wieners, after all) and you become seriously worried these stories won't be enough to save Dwight. Especially not when Darth Paper.... okay, I won't ruin it.

Ultimately, this is a story that respects kids enough to let them be juvenile and flawed--- and yet totally affirms their power and goodness in the face of "dark times." Read it you will for the humor, the Star Wars insider jokes, the lunch table power struggles---but changed you will be by the power of paper. And yes, I do mean the paper that makes up the pages of this book. But only because it's real. Only because it makes you believe. And only because it is truly good.

This blog entry is cross-posted on Goodreads