my juicy little universe

making sweet honey from old failures

2012-01-27T06:05:00.001-05:00

This poem came to me as just an excerpt in the book Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. I was so taken by the second, beehive stanza that I went to look up the rest and found that I had mistakenly thought that Antonio Machado was a New World poet, and also that this is a rather well-known poem since its inclusion in a collection called Ten Poems to Change Your Life, published in 2003.

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

~ Antonio Machado
tr. Robert Bly

I've been thinking on this poem for a couple of weeks and found myself a little put off by "--marvelous error!--". It might not have bothered me, except that it's important enough to be repeated in four of five stanzas. Apart from the odd technical quality of the word "error," which doesn't seem to fit here, I kept thinking that "marvelous mistake" would work so much better: alliteration, of course, but also that dreams are full of images that we take to be one thing or another, mis-takenly.

So I thought I'd go and see if anyone else had tranlasted the poem in a different way. And now--duh--I find that Antonio answers my concern himself, with his original version in Spanish (please join me now in trusting the internet). The imaginations of the poem are neither errors nor mistakes; they are "illusions, " and I'm inclined to believe Google Translate when it suggests "blessed illusion!"

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una fontana fluía
dentro de mi corazón.
Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida,
agua, vienes hasta mí,
manantial de nueva vida
en donde nunca bebí?

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que un ardiente sol lucía
dentro de mi corazón.
Era ardiente porque daba
calores de rojo hogar,
y era sol porque alumbraba
y porque hacía llorar.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazón.

I'm so in awe of those who have the language comfort to translate poetry, that most language-bound of genres, or to write in two languages. I'm so far from that, that I have to question my right to nitpick over the choice of a single word, and yet --marvelous, blessed illusion and mistake!--isn't it fun to be led somewhere by a single word?

The roundup today is with Jim at Hey, Jim Hill!, which for some reason I find to be just about the best blog title ever. : )

teach like Ernest Hemingway

2012-01-20T05:00:00.003-05:00

You bet I'm a charter member of Students First. I agree generally with its whole platform and I admire the straight-talking leadership of Michelle Rhee (on this project at least), but the name of the organization does just say it all: the needs of students--that's children and young people we're talking about--should come before the convenience of adults or the demands of a bureaucratic system.

I got an email from Students First yesterday with an intriguing subject line: "Do you write like Hemingway?" It read:

"It's said Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story using just six words: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' He reportedly declared it his greatest work. Words are powerful tools — for learning, for inspiration, for transformation. When we choose our words with precision, we can say so much. It is with Hemingway as our inspiration that I write to you with a fun challenge: Describe what it means to be a great teacher in just six words."

Well, that's a straight-up poetry challenge, and my mind started percolating--but just like I spike my basic drip coffee with a layer of cinnamon, my current reading seeped in and flavored my six-word essay. I'm reading Drive by Daniel H. Pink, which is all about what motivates humans of all ages, extrinsically and intrinsically. He comes at the question of motivation mainly from a business/work perspective, but of course the research he cites and the new "operating system" he proposes--dubbed Motivation 3.0--are entirely applicable to education settings. Here's the conclusion Pink reaches by the end of his exploration of the three elements of Motivation 3.0, which are autonomy, mastery and purpose.

"A CENTRAL IDEA of this book has been the mismatch between what science knows and what business does. The gap is wide. Its existence is alarming. And though closing it seems daunting, we have reasons to be optimistic.

The scientists who study human motivation, several of whom we’ve encountered in this book, offer us a sharper and more accurate account of both human performance and the human condition. The truths they’ve revealed are simple, yet powerful. The science shows that those typical twentieth-century carrot-and-stick motivators—which we consider somehow a “natural” part of human enterprise—can sometimes work. But they’re effective in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. The science shows that “if-then” rewards—the mainstays of the Motivation 2.0 operating system—not only are ineffective in many situations, but also can crush the high-level, creative, conceptual abilities that are central to current and future economic and social progress. The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.

Bringing our businesses in sync with these truths won’t be easy. Unlearning old ideas is difficult, undoing old habits even harder. And I’d be less sanguine about the prospects of closing the motivation gap anytime soon, if it weren’t for this: The science confirms what we already know in our hearts.

We know that human beings are not merely smaller, slower, bettersmelling donkeys trudging after that day’s carrot. We know—if we’ve spent time with young children or remember ourselves at our best—that we’re not destined to be passive and compliant. We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren’t when we’re clamoring for validation from others, but when we’re listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

So, in the end, repairing the mismatch and bringing our understanding of motivation into the twenty-first century is more than an essential move for business. It’s an affirmation of our humanity."

Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Chapter 6.

That's certainly how things look to me. So I submitted my six-word essay on what it means to be a great teacher, and I submitted it although I know it's probably a bit too "spiritual" to win the iPad prize, even for Students First.

Love says, "Welcome." Faith says, "Grow."

I wonder if I successfully captured what I mean. If you're a teacher or a librarian, I invite you to respond with your own six-word essay. The Poetry Friday round-up today is with Elaine at Wild Rose Reader.

OIK Tuesday: don't let the teacher drive the bus

2012-01-17T22:48:00.000-05:00

Overheard in Kindergarten

There's a new girl in my class, Jasmine, who moved here from South Carolina and is still learning how things work at this school and in this community.

Today it was my turn to escort all the kindergarten bus riders --something like 45 kids--down to the APR to wait for buses (which is the recipe for an instant migraine once all the other bus riders in the school have arrived). It was just one day this week rather than the usual five days in a row, thank goodness.

By the time Jasmine heard me announcing that I had "bus duty," I was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt, having shed my cardigan like a mealworm molts its exoskeleton--because even with the windows open it's like 85 degrees in my classroom. Jasmine came right up to me, eyes wide, taking in what must have looked like a uniform.

"Teacher! I didn't know you could drive the bus!"

*******************

I have dreams, you know.

At the end of the day, I'll lead the line,
singing,
all the way onto the bus,
climb into the driver's seat
and zoom away,
without even synching my Palm first.

I bet your mom would let me.

~Heidi Mordhorst 2012
all rights reserved

please hold...

2012-01-13T06:59:00.000-05:00

I'm building the box.

2011 Comment Challenge: eyes bigger

2012-01-12T06:53:00.000-05:00

Many languages have an expression similar to our "her eyes were bigger than her stomach," meaning the food looked so good that she helped herself to more than she could eat. We also have "he bit off more than he could chew," which again applies in this situation.

But I feel I want something less epicurean to describe what I have done, and repeatedly do, with the Comment Challenge mentioned in my last post. I got all inspired because I have been really remiss with comments and have wished to do better. I even applied Wisdom and set a lower bar for myself (I thought two blog comments per day would be manageable), and I signed on! Whoo-hoo! New and righteous obligation!

Unfortunately I already see that I can't manage two comments a day, among a number of other things that attract me but to which I shouldn't be committing in the landscape of my current life.

This post is therefore my public and apologetic outbowing from the Comment Challenge. I think perhaps we do have an English idiom that deftly captures the nature of the situation:

S**t happens.

my first award

2012-01-06T05:44:00.000-05:00

Well, now--what a pleasant surprise! Who knew there was a Versatile Blogger Award? There is, and I have very kindly and unexpectedly received it from Kate Coombs of Book Aunt (who received it in her turn from Adriana, an avid teen reader who blogs at She's Got Books on Her Mind.) While this award is purely subjective--no big long Cybils or ALA process behind it, no big-name newspaper or magazine reviewers lending weight to it--this Versatile Blogger Award is nonetheless precious to me. This is because what I love most about blogging is that I get to build the box...and more on THAT concept in another post.

For now, here are the rules that guide the Versatile Blogger Award:

•Thank and link to the blogger who bestowed the award.
•Share seven random facts about yourself.
•Spread the love by passing the award to five other bloggers--and be sure to let them know.

So, first:

Thank you, Kate, for thinking of me as versatile and for thinking of me at all, when I manage a measly two posts a week, if I'm lucky. Please visit Kate at Book Aunt regularly to enjoy wise, insightful reviews and reflections on children's literature.

Second, seven random facts about me:

*The freshman facebook of my university listed my intended major as philosophy.
*I know how to clog.
*If I had my druthers I'd have dinner at 5, go to bed at 9 each night at get up at 5 every morning.
*I've lived in New York, London, Paris, Munich (everybody talk about popmuzik).
*One of my favorite parts of one of my favorite books is the cake and milk, milk and cake Harriet had after school every day. How I envied her.
*In 1990 I made an entire wardrobe of earrings out of pasta dyed with food coloring and hydrogen peroxide.
*Stories swallow me whole, so I don't dare read much right now. Isn't that sad? And not very random?

Third, I'll spread the love and pass the award to five more Versatile Bloggers:

*to Tabatha Yeatts of The Opposite of Indifference, who weekly amazes with the range and variety of her topics and threads;
*to David Elzey, who quietly gets on with all kinds of ruminations and renderings at fomagrams and at the excelsior file;
*to Diane Mayr, who offers up oodles of haiku and haiga at Random Noodling, and masquerades as Kurious Kitty with both Kurious K's Kwotes and the Kurio Kabinet. Who can keep up?!
*to Jama Rattigan, who always tantalizes with the most nutritious Alphabet Soup and doesn't leave out the sweets; and
*to Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading, who goes off early each day to teach just one class of 4th graders but keeps her eye on the big wordly world that they're inheriting.

Happy First Poetry Friday for 2012--at Teaching Authors today. Maybe I'll take up the Comment Challenge posted by Lee Wind et al...certainly I owe a good deal to all the folks I read but don't take time to comment on!

OIK Tuesday: opposites

2012-01-03T22:04:00.002-05:00

In the last decade the seven intelligences described by Howard Gardner in the 80's have been updated to include three "new" ones. One of these new intelligences is undoubtedly the oldest: "naturalist" intelligence, handy for actual survival throughout most of human history, and the only one of the three to be added to Gardner's original list.

In my class there are a few children who demonstrate marked naturalist intelligence, but none so strongly as Cale. When we go out for "Outdoor Education," inevitably he's the one who spies a praying mantis on the school wall or digs up a clump of wormy grass roots to bring inside. He knows a lot about animals, especially dinosaurs, and so as we tried to identify the creature illustrating a math worksheet, I looked to Cale for help. (The worksheet was handed to me by a colleague while we were all in the midst of The Gingerbread Man, so I just assumed that the plump, cheerful figure wearing an artist's beret and holding a paint bucket was a gingerbread man, but on closer inspection I found it to be a rather human-looking seal.)

Me:
At first I thought this creature was a gingerbread man with a raisin nose and a cute cap like the Gingerbread Baby, but then I noticed the hands. Do you all see what kind of hands it has?

Class:
[confused silence]

Me:
To me those hands look more like flippers on a swimming animal. What could it be? It's hard to tell because its body is hiding behind the paint bucket....does anyone know a swimming animal with flippers like that?

Cale:
[finally] I know! It's not a...it's a...it's...it's the opposite of a beaver!

*******************************

slender and sleek
not round and fat

lightly downed
not thickly furred

tiny useless tail
no water-slapping paddle

sharp fish-shredders
no tree-felling chisels

nature-boy is right:
a seal is the opposite of a beaver

Heidi Mordhorst 2012

MyPoPerDayMo

2011-12-30T07:38:00.000-05:00

And lo, the blog went forth and multiplied, and there appeared on the face of the earth a new page chronicling my efforts during November 2011 to write one poem per day. Jump to it here:

http://myjuicylittleuniverse.blogspot.com/p/mypoperdaymo.html

Poetry Friday--the last of 2011--is at The Drift Record with Julie. Happy New Year to all.

and lo, sickness fell upon the house

2011-12-23T00:01:00.009-05:00

amoxicillin ibuprofen
double triple dose
fever lingers glands are swollen
only fit part is my nose
hives and itching hands ballooned
I hope I hope to get well soon

hope you all are healthier over the holidays!

taking care of business

2011-12-21T13:54:00.000-05:00

Home sick today, but not too sick to appreciate this, posted on the listserv of the large, diverse middle school where my daughter attends a magnet program. Hooray for a stroke of sanity in the world!
*****************

EMS Families,

At Eastern Middle School we are committed to creating opportunities that support each and every student being the best that they can be. Recently we have been investigating ways to help all students improve their reading ability. The research we found told us that in order to be a better reader a person must read 20 minutes per day. The teachers discussed the research and decided that our "Taking Care of Business" time could and should be used to give everyone at Eastern 20 minutes to read every day.

When we return from break we will make a change to how we use the TCB time. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday students will report to their sixth period class during TCB. Students and staff will be expected to use the TCB time to read quietly. You can read any item of your choice… a novel, a magazine, a newspaper, a graphic novel… whatever you like. You can read in the language of your choice. Teachers and staff will be reading too… and reading email will not count!

For those students that were at Eastern last year and participated in Maryland State Assessment prep activities in January and February --- this silent reading program will take the place of MSA prep. This is your time to take a break and enjoy a good book. We believe that taking time every day to read will help all of us… students and adults become better readers.

During winter break visit the library and select books that you would like to read and bring them to school when we return from break. If you don't have time to visit the library or you forget… don't worry, your teachers will have materials in the classrooms for you.

If you have any questions about this change your are encouraged to contact any staff member at Eastern for clarification. We hope that you will enjoy and take advantage of this opportunity to get lost in a good book!

Casey Crouse
Proud Principal

red and gold the fluffy threads

2011-12-16T00:01:00.003-05:00

It's taken the best part of a week, but our tree--not a Christmas tree exactly, but an evergreen Yule tree--is finally "quite dressed." Reading at that link, I found something I didn't know, that the Druids decorated their evergreens with "images of what they wanted the waxing year to bring." By design, our tree is hung with flora and fauna: many rustic and realistic animals, fruit and flowers, stars and snowflakes, sweet Laplanders and Alpenkinder. I guess these images from nature are what I'm always wishing for. (Our tradition of hanging plain little gingerbread men rather confuses the concept, but as I've done it every year since I was born, it's not December without them.)

Tonight the kids pulled a slip from the Solstice countdown calendar which invited them to make a fire in the fireplace (for Duncan), roast marshmallows (for Daisy) and read from our collection of holiday books and poems. We worked our way through toddler favorites (Happy Christmas, Maisy; lifting the flaps is still fun), classics ("The Night Before Christmas") and finally the lovely spangled little tree by e.e. cummings, illustrated by Deborah Kogan Ray.

[little tree]

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look...................... the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

by e. e. cummings

Put up your little arms, world.

The rest of Poetry Friday is with Kate Coombs at Book Aunt.

OIK Tuesday: desert island coconuts

2011-12-13T23:30:00.001-05:00

Today's Overheard in Kindergarten is actually "Overheard at Hinode," the sushi restaurant where Duncan, now 9, and I have been eating together since he was a toddler. We enjoyed the buffet dinner there the other night and had some interesting conversation during which we each schooled the other on the question of perspective.

Duncan posed me a problem involving a desert island, coconuts and some "nerds." He then answered all my follow-up questions, though somewhat impatiently. When I finally got to the end of my earnest and strategic adult plan to solve the problem, he said, "Wow. You really think differently about this than anyone else I've asked. They all just throw the coconuts at the nerds."

Of course, everyone he's asked is a 3rd-grade boy--except for Bella, his good friend who first got the nerds to help her build a cannon, from which she then fired the coconuts at the nerds! (That right there is why they're such good friends.) Here's my poem.

What To Do If You Are Stranded On a Desert Island
with Nothing But a Lot of Coconuts and Some Nerds

Who are the nerds?
Am I friends with them?
What is my aim?
Are there coconut palms or just coconuts?
Am I trying to survive there
or am I trying to escape back
to civilization?
What time of year is it?
Why are they nerds?
What are they passionate about?
(After all, nerds are just people who are so focused on one or two things, like physics,
that they forget to notice other things, like what clothes are fashionable.)

First I would introduce myself to the nerds.
I'd ask them to help me devise a way to
crack a lot of coconuts in a short time.
We would drink the coconut water and eat the meat.
Meanwhile we would design and build a raft
out of the coconut shells and palm fronds.
Through cooperation and ingenuity
we would triumph over adversity and the ravages of nature!

Or maybe I would just
throw the coconuts at the nerds.

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved

picturing writing: literacy through art

2011-12-09T05:46:00.001-05:00

At NCTE I found myself laughing at myself, because with 700 sessions to choose from, I managed to attend a session that I had already attended last year! Not so surprising--the concept of "Picturing Writing: Fostering Literacy through Art" is right up my personal alley, and the collage-based approach called "Image-Making Within the Writing Process" is my back door. Thanks to Beth Olshansky and her teacher colleagues for leading me home (two years in a row).

So, in our new 2.0 Elementary Integrated Curriculum we are supposed, as winter sets in, to be studying plant and animal life cycles, planting seeds and learning about baby animals. (Never mind that all around us dying, darkening, sleeping.) To tie it all together and to lead us into a poetry project, I chose Leo Lionni's Frederick and Eric Carle's The Tiny Seed, which we have been comparing and contrasting, enacting and evaluating: which parts of this story could really happen? do Frederick and his family do what real mice do?

Meanwhile, each child used watercolors to paint 3-6 papers for collage, in the manner of both Carle and Lionni. As the class worked to see what animals, plants and weather their unpredictable painted papers suggested, I learned quite a lot that will help me support the project next time! (Note to self: 20 collaging kindergarteners at once is too many.) Still, their collages are very pleasing, often striking, and most importantly, quite individual.

This week we're placing our collages in front of us and writing poems. While a couple of the 5-year-olds are able to write their compositions on their own, for most I'm scribing with strategically placed blanks for them to spell juicy words like fish, rain, float and lion. I cannot wait to share the whole collection with you, but for now I have only two to hand. Jordan cut 4 shapes from a pinkish-purple paper, arranged them as a fish on a stripy bluish sea paper, and then painstakingly cut and glued maroon and ochre spots from another paper to create a bubbly surface. Here is his poem.

Mighty Minnow
by Jordan

mighty minnow swimming fast
in a deep, deep sea
pinkish-purple spots and dots
do you see any more colors
or anything else on me?

Ezekial is my youngest nearly 6-year-old and My Project for the year. We worked very closely to make the lion he imagined out of a deep muddyish turquoise paper. Here is the poem we negotiated.

Lion
by Ezekial

the blue dad lion
is walking to his wife
the playground is their house
they eat leaves and grass
they climb up the ladders
and they jump!

Extra poet's note: My plan, of course, was to model the collage-to-poem move using my own giraffe-under-sunset collage...but as my colleagues often say, "Kindergarten happened," and I found myself sitting down to write with children without ever having modeled. Guess what? For this class anyway, it has not mattered. Perhaps the other poetry we've been reading (most recently Frederick's "Sky Mice" poem and Douglas Florian's Beast Feast) and all the singing we've done has been enough. Their words sing, too!

Bonus activity: the children are loving acting out each poem as it's completed. More soon...

OIK Tuesday: guts

2011-12-06T23:55:00.000-05:00

Back before Thanksgiving, when I asked the children to list what they were thankful for, I went for variety by specifying some categories: a person, a food, something in nature, something at school, something you like to play, a part of your body. Talia suprised me by writing "my intinestinse" (which, unlike the average 5-year-old, she felt confident to spell independently).

Clearly intestines remain of great interest to her. Having read Frederick all last week, we are looking forward to a visit from real pet mice and listing what we know and what we wonder about mice. On our KNOW chart, Talia's statement reads, "Mice have intestines." On our WONDER chart, her question reads, "Do mice have intestines?" She has a sense, very vague, of what intestines are for. But I think she could use some further information.

I'm working on a mouse intestines poem for Talia--do you have one too?

give e-poetry this season!

2011-12-02T04:45:00.002-05:00

Folks, there could not be an easier, cooler stocking-stuffer for your iGeneration kids than p*tag, the downloadable poetry anthology for Kindle, Nook or iPad. For a mere $2.99, you can send a collection of fresh, original poems for readers 12 and older straight to their digital devices!

In addition to p*tag for teens, there's Poetry Tag Time, perfect for your elementary teacher friends, and Gift Tag (pictured here), which features poems about presents. All can be enjoyed on iPhones, Kindles, Nooks, computers and interactive whiteboards.

For a taste of p*tag, here's my piece "The Wishing Tree," introduced this way:

People (adults, mostly) say that “money doesn’t grow on trees, you know,” like it’s no work at all to produce a crop of juicy peaches or shiny acorns. Other people (little kids, mostly) think that lots of things grow on trees, like corks and popcorn. This photo came with the title “Wishing,” so it was easy to embrace the intriguing idea that wishes grow on trees. Does that mean there’s a Come-True Tree somewhere?

A Wishing Tree

on every star
every puff of birthday breath
every penny down the well
you wish for the same thing

on every four-leaf clover
every loose eyelash
every turkey’s furcula
you wish for the same thing

(can’t tell us, can you?
if you do it won’t come true)
you wish it every day
until one day you’re walking along,

secretly wishing on random things:
cloud shaped like a duck
three green punch-buggies in a row
your own lucky-left blue shoe

and you find—who knew?—a wishing tree
hung with white wishes as light as popcorn:
“I wish I could fly”
“I wish for a slumber party with a rock star”
and of course
“I wish to have three more wishes”

reaching deeper between the leaves
you find riper, heavier wishes:
“I wish my dog was still alive”
“I wish I had stuck up for myself”
and then—no way!—
“My wish is the same as yours”

this one you pluck, fold in half and
tuck into your right shoe,
waltzing away on the soles
of twin wishes

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
from p*tag, compiled and edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong

To give p*tag as an online gift, go to Poetry Tag Time. Click on the "Give as a Gift" button at the Amazon listings for our books, follow the prompts, and a book will be ready to download instantly on a Kindle or iPad. Be a poetry elf!

OINK Tuesday: Dad is a...

2011-11-29T20:26:00.000-05:00

Part of the reading we do in Kindergarten is in “guided reading groups,” where I sit with a small group and a set of little beginner books such as Moms and Dads. I read it to them, they read it with me, they read it independently, and then they take it home to read with their families.

Moms and Dads was Group One’s greatest challenge yet:

“Mom is a bus driver.

Dad is a window cleaner.

Mom is a police officer.

Dad is a vet.

Mom is a librarian…”

On page 11 we learned that “Dad is a farmer,” and we had to look hard to see that he was a pig farmer, because only parts of various pigs were visible in the photo illustration. It was much easier to see that “Mom is a farmer, too,” because her cows were very apparent (and complete). However, for this group that includes four English learners, the tough part was remembering the vocabulary for all the jobs.

During the unison reading, I paused on page 11 to let the children refer to the photo and recall that “Dad is a… a…” Silence.

After studying the picture again, finally Marla said, “Pig!” We all laughed.

*****************************

Dads at Work (#29 in MyPoPerDayMo)

His dad is a window cleaner;

Her dad drives a rig.

Your dad is a dentist, and

My dad is a pig.

He goes to work in black and white.

They call him Spotted Swine.

He roots and snuffles, rolls in mud;

He snorts and is porcine.

At home he cleans his hairy ears

And tucks away his tail.

He joins us at the dinner table,

Then reads through all the mail.

Tomorrow will be like today:

My dad will go to work.

He’ll eat his lunch out of a trough—

post-feast poetry fest: black friday

2011-11-24T23:14:00.012-05:00

Welcome one and all to what I hope will be a blockbuster day in the poetry market!
Come early, stay late and shop til you drop without ever leaving home or---this is key--spending a penny. At the poetry mall, all the flavors & favors, subjects & objects, treasures & pleasures are yours for the mere click of a mouse. I'll be rounding up the posts periodically all day with the help of Mr. Linky below.

I spent time yesterday trying to explain "Black Friday" to my 9-year-old and why we will be avoiding Target like the plague, also known as The Black Death. I'd like to reclaim the beauty of black this Friday with a piquant excerpt from Mary O'Neill's deservedly classic Hailstones and Halibut Bones, and a video featuring the whole poem.

What Is Black?

...Think of what starlight
And lamplight would lack
Diamonds and fireflies
If they couldn’t lean against Black.

Interesting musical treatment, don't you think? For more black beauty, go here for said 9-year-old's take, and here and here for some adult poems on black. Then be sure to leave your link below, with a word about your post in parentheses after your name. Thanks for ~~shopping~~ stopping in!

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Early Birds

First up today is (as far as I know) a newcomer, Karissa Sorrell, with a lovely "Blessing" by James Wright, posted at The Iris Chronicles. Nice to meet you, Karissa!

At The Write Sisters, Jet has Robert Frost's "Reluctance," which is a do-not-go-gentle poem I didn't know. I am so grateful to PF for repeatedly introducing me to new Frost poems--it seems I missed most of them in my education. Was he considered too traditional by my hippie English teachers?

Myra posts on the cemeteries of New Orleans today with photos and video and lyrics and poem today, all on the theme of passing. Rich and interesting stuff at Gathering Books.

Over at Paper Tigers, Sally has a review and commentary on the oral tradition of the Ainu people of northern Japan....lots of links to follow!

Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference is also up early and sharing the excellent "common book of prayer" by Chris Clardy. Click around this blog to find endless collectibles you didn't know you needed.

At The Poem Farm, Amy has, as always, a post full of juicy details about the new e-book Gift Tag, the snow poem she contributed, and a story about a miracle of a teacher who knows which is more important: a math test or the first snow of the season.

Janet at Across the Page, shares some fabulous photos of neighborhood hawks, along with Ted Hughes's "Hawk Roosting." How did she know that we spotted (and heard!) some in our neighborhood yesterday?

Coming to us from Haiti, Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken place, has a rumination on brokenness, gratitude and Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Broken Things."

And Tanita concludes a month of Thanksgiving with an essay on "difficult patriotism" and a paragraph that sounds like a poem called "I don't like you." Journey with her at [fiction, instead of lies].

Mary Lee explores the very small and very large with the help of Robert Creeley at A Year of Reading. You can also go there to sign up to enjoy the Poetry Friday hosting experience in 2012. I can recommend it. : )

Steven at Poetry at Play gives mouthwatering thanks for...penguins! If you haven't joined Poetry Advocates for Children and Young Adults, today is your day.

Oh, boy--Maria at A Poem A Day shares Eavan Boland's "A Moment," which is a cousin to Robert Creeley's "One Day." Lovely.

Linda has an original and personal sestina which honors the passing down of traditions, Thanksgiving and otherwise, from mother to daughter. You'll find it at TeacherDance.

At Random Noodling, Diane has a hoot of a haiga--or should that be hogga? At Kurious K's Kwotes, we hear from Fabu, the poet laureate of Madison (Wisconsin, I believe). And at Kids of the Homefront Army, Diane shares another authentic take on the Black Friday/Black Market thread with a WWII-era voice.

Robyn and G.K. Chesterton are making sure that we are thoroughly grateful today and every day over at Read, Write, Howl.

Over at A Teaching Life, Tara shares "Before the World Intruded" and view into the backseat at (grown-up) sleeping children. The traditions of Thanksgiving took me to some of these bittersweet thoughts about my children, too.

Sylvia compellingly advertises her latest e-book poetry anthology, Gift Tag, published with Janet Wong, at Poetry for Children. If you scroll down you can also enjoy her comprehensive report on the poetry doings at NCTE's annual convention in Chicago, a poetry party I was privileged to participate in. (Is my favorite letter P?)

Carol's Corner features a review of Jane Yolen's new Birds of a Feather and some nice excerpts, plus a reminder that poets and scientists have a lot in common. Go, observers of the world!

Greg at GottaBook didn't eat too much for dinner, oh nooooo. At least he's got his priorities straight.

I apologize to Charlotte of Charlotte's Library, whose link I missed earlier today. She's got spoofs of A.A. Milne (sacrilege : ) by a British humorist known as the Beachcomber. Don't miss it!

And last for today is Adrienne at What Adrienne Thinks About That, with a Stanley Kunitz poem called "The Layers" and a knowledge that she is not done with her changes. Me, either, Adrienne. Me either.

Thanks for playing poetry today, everyone! I've enjoyed sampling everyone's posts and will return to make proper comments soon. All the best until next time!
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house prayer

2011-11-24T10:07:00.002-05:00

Welcome to all on this Thanksgiving Thursday introduction to tomorrow's Poetry Friday feast. I heard a piece on NPR this morning on civility around the table which intersects nicely with this poem-set-to-music that has been running through my head. It's #1 in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal (wish I could link to a recording). May it be so at your house today.

House Prayer
by Louis Untermeyer

May nothing evil cross this door,
And may ill fortune never pry
About these windows; may the roar
And rain go by.

Strengthened by faith, these rafters will
Withstand the batt'ring of the storm;
This hearth, through all the world grow chill,
Will keep us warm.

Peace shall walk softly through these rooms,
Touching our lips with holy wine,
Till every casual corner blooms
Into a shrine.

Laughter shall drown the raucous shout;
And, though these sheltering walls are thin,
May they be strong to keep hate out
And hold love in.

See you tomorrow, poems abounding!

this is a test

2011-11-24T06:52:00.002-05:00

While most are busy stuffing and basting and peeling and mashing, I'm messing with HTML code...Mr. Linky is invited to my feast!

Let's see how he fits at the table....

Well, he's not particularly handsome, but he's a fine conversationalist, and really, what's more important?

boots in Chicago

2011-11-20T12:29:00.000-05:00

It's chilly here and everybody's wearing boots, including me. (I didn't need those other pairs of shoes I brought.) I got to thinking about my first pair of boots, c. 1980, and what they did to me--on the inside. This is #19 in MyPoPerDayMo.

Boots
George Sand on her men's hob-nailed boots: "I would willingly have slept with them, as my brother did when he was very little, when he was given his first pair. With their little metal heels I was firmly grounded on the pavement."

These boots are a black mask for my feet.
Far from my face, still
they shift my balance, turn me into a bandit
who steals into secret identities, then

sneaks out wielding Xena’s sword
and George’s pen,
climbs into Amelia’s Electra
wearing Nancy’s miniskirt,
mouth full of Penelope’s bubblegum
as she blows out a story
as fireproof as Saint Joan’s.

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved

feeling small: from NCTE in Chicago

2011-11-17T16:53:00.002-05:00

Thursday was a beautiful day in Chicago, and not just because I'm here all on my own for four days. I arrived for the NCTE Convention early enough to be a tourist, and although the temperature was a bracing 33*, the sky was as blue as in the (stock) photo. Millenium Park is a marvel. Here's #17 in MyPoPerDayMo.

scaled

I swim the serpentine spine of a
steel-shingled leviathan

it skims the base of a canyon of coral
steeples skinned with glass scales

even deeper, schools of flashing
fish swarm north and south

a lattice of ribs arches above
the sea bed, something shipwrecked

nearby a steely cephalopod
crouches enormously over its cave

I’m one of the
slow-motion minnows
that bumps its nose bumps its nose
against a shiny sea-cloud, asking

in all this vastness
where am I?

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved

I'm looking forward to greeting some PF regulars in person for a change! For those enjoying it from the comfort of their own homes, Poetry Friday is with my neighbor Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference.

OIK: the sun's belly

2011-11-15T22:24:00.001-05:00

Today we did our first official science investigation, a very simple one: which powder makes Oobleck? Afterwards, sitting in a circle, we talked about how we liked being scientists and about all the kinds of scientists there are, including archaeologists, which led to some discussion of meteors and dinosaurs, which led to this.

Sara:
My mom says the sun is really a star, and its belly is so big that those points have to come out all around it.

If you like the idea of the sun's big belly, write a poem about it! Here's mine:

sun
you have eaten up
sand and snow, leaves and lava flow

now your belly glows so big
that you have to lie back
in your blue hammock
your many arms thrown wide
and shine

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved

Missing word to be entertained tomorrow.

let the trio lay

2011-11-12T09:23:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of BLTN rather than TGIF, I'm here to post something, anything, for Poetry Friday.

The Word-of-the-Month poetry challenge at David Harrison's blog is FLAMBOYANT, and Steven Withrow put up a flamboyant triolet, which got me all rhyme-and-metered (which is the poet's equivalent of hot-and-bothered)....so here's #11 in MyPoPerDayMo series.

Triolet for 11.11.11

Flames are floating on the frost,
Torches throwing off their sparks.
The lake of green is crackling, lost.
Flames are floating; on the frost
Flamboyant tongues of light are tossed.
They ride the wind in waves and arcs.
Flames are floating on the frost,
Torches throwing off their sparks.

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved

Poetry Friday *was* hosted by April at Teaching Authors yesterday, and it's never too late to stop by!

OIK: nothing to see here

2011-11-09T05:57:00.000-05:00

No one said anything ticklish in Room 144 this week.

Well, they did--lots of things--but it would be so burdensome to explain the context that the lightness of the tickle would be spoiled. And anyway, having embarked suddenly on MyPoPerDayMo (My Poem Per Day Month) on November 1, I now have a good handful of poems to pick from and post.

Here's #8, thanks to Tricia Stohr-Hunt's Monday Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect suggesting that we write a commemorative poem (happy bloggiversary, Tricia!). I ended up commemorating my favorite part of our classroom day.

2:27 pm

Each afternoon at this moment
if I could
I would kneel facing Mesopotamia,
touch my forehead to the clay soil
and honor the broad-shouldered,
tip-toeing gods of writing.

Instead at this moment
because I must
I bend facing Kindergartenia,
touch my hand to the fresh toil
and honor the tender-voiced,
heart-shouting words of writers.

Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved

never mind TGIF...CIPBFA?

2011-11-04T06:14:00.001-04:00

I lament "the TGIF mentality" and the way we teach our young people that what we do during the week--our work--is distastefully less worthy than anything we might do during the weekend (like grocery shopping, laundry and yard work). I think it's especially sad in the context of early childhood education, where every day is Today and every day's work can be thrilling and important (cf. the spontaneous burst of cheering and clapping in my class when we reached the 40th day of school and were able to make another bundle of 10 popsicle sticks!)

Of course, if I were in the position of having to do a job I didn't enjoy, TGIF might make a lot more sense to me. I take this moment to be grateful that through a constellation of circumstances within and beyond my control, I get to spend Monday through Friday doing the work I was born to do.

This blessing may be also why I woke this morning thinking not "TGIF" but "CIPBFA?" Can It Possibly Be Friday Again? Where do the weeks go? Did I use all those six days since last Friday well enough? Can I even remember their quality, the highlights and challenges, the quips and quirks of this particular fraction of my life? Do I think too much?

And now I go searching for a poem that delicately wraps a muscled hand around these thoughts and feelings, molds them into a more pleasing shape and holds them outstretched on its palm for me (and you) to observe, consider, admire. In three minutes I have several options (and I take this moment to be grateful for the World Wide Web). Here's one that slows the day down and turns the idea of weekdays vs. weekends inside out.

Friday Snow

Something needs to be done—like dragging a big black plastic sack through the upstairs rooms, emptying into it each waste basket, the trash of three lives for a week or so. I am careful and slow about it, so that this little chore will banish the big ones. But I leave the bag lying on the floor and I go into my daughter’s bedroom, into the north morning light from her windows, and while this minute she is at school counting or spelling a first useful word I sit down on her unmade bed and I look out the windows at nothing for a while, the unmoving buildings—houses and a church—in the cold street......

continued at moving length here

by Reginald Gibbons

Poetry Friday continues at the new and improved Writing the World for Kids with Laura Purdie Salas, and if you write as well as enjoy poetry, don't forget to stop by here every Tuesday evening for the "Overheard in Kindergarten" poetry tickle.