Poetry Friday: The Peace of Wild Things

I’ve been thinking about and searching for peace after the turbulence of the past few months and came across this poem. I hope it brings you peace, too.

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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Poetry Friday: Mixed-Up School

I hope your classroom is not feeling this mixed up yet!

Mixed-Up School
By X J Kennedy

We have a crazy mixed-up school.

Our teacher Mrs. Cheetah

Makes us talk backwards. Nicer cat

You wouldn’t want to meet a.

To start the day we eat our lunch,

Then do some heavy dome-work.

The boys’ and girls’ rooms go to us,

The hamster marks our homework.

At recess time we race inside

To don our diving goggles,

Play pin-the-donkey-on-the-tail,

Ball-foot or ap-for-bobbles.

Old Cheetah with a chunk of chalk

Writes right across two blackbirds,

And when she says, “Go home!” we walk

The whole way barefoot backwards.

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Poetry Friday: What We Have in Common

Just like Kate Messner, I don’t like to get political either. But I just had to post her lovely poem. Let us all remember the things that bring us together:

What We Have in Common
By Kate Messner

For just a minute, let’s look at the leaves together.

Do you see how this one blushes pink around the edges?

How that one is all red, its neighbor halfway gold?

I like the way it is leaning toward autumn

But isn’t quite ready to leap.

Read the full poem on Kate’s blog.

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Poetry Friday: Three Songs at the End of Summer

You can definitely feel that change is in the air, right? The days are getting just a bit shorter and the evenings are getting cooler. And of course, we are all heading back to school! Here is a poem by Jane Kenyon to celebrate this season of transitions.

Three Songs at the End of Summer

By Jane Kenyon

A second crop of hay lies cut

and turned. Five gleaming crows

search and peck between the rows.

They make a low, companionable squawk,

and like midwives and undertakers

possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,

parting before me like the Red Sea.

The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned

to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.

Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone

suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,

fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.

The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod

brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;

water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

*

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks

over me. The days are bright

and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today

for an hour, with my whole

body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,

and a crow, hectoring from its nest

high in the hemlock, a nest as big

as a laundry basket …

                                    In my childhood

I stood under a dripping oak,

while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,

waiting for the school bus

with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off

this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books—words, numbers,

and operations with numbers I did not

comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled

by use, in a blue canvas satchel

with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien

I stood at the side of the road.

It was the only life I had.

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Poetry Friday: What Can Poetry Do for Parents?

For this Poetry Friday I wanted to share this great essay I found on the Poetry Foundation’s website. Author Elliott Vanskike makes the great point that in order for children to know that they can turn to poetry during confusing times in their childhood and adulthood, the foundation has to be built early by parents and teachers. Not to mention, poetry can also bring comfort to sleep-deprived parents: ” Poetry offers other benefits for the beleaguered parent. A large part of parenting consists of mindless repetition—changing diapers again, cutting pancakes into triangles again, saying, “How do we ask for things nicely?” again. But poetry uses repetition to sound new depths of meaning and find nuance in sameness,” writes Vanskike.

Read the full essay on the Poetry Foundation website and then share how you incorporate poetry into your child’s everyday life.

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Poetry Friday: Fibs

I came across this essay recently on the Poetry Foundation’s website. What a great poetry exercise to try with children of all ages! And since I’ve been knee-deep in editing my new math video, I thought this was especially appropriate. Enjoy! And stay tuned next week, when I will be posting a sneak-peek of the math work stations video. Happy Poetry Friday!

Fib Time
Tell
Fibs.
What time?
Every day
Two seconds before
Clocks hit 11:24.

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Poetry Friday: Writing

Have you ever thought about what handwriting looks like — not what is written, but how it’s written? This poem made me think of that — all of those elegant, connected lines. We lose some of that on the computer, don’t we?

Writing

By Howard Nemerov

The cursive crawl, the squared-off characters

these by themselves delight, even without

a meaning, in a foreign language, in

Chinese, for instance, or when skaters curve

all day across the lake, scoring their white

records in ice. Being intelligible,

these winding ways with their audacities

and delicate hesitations, they become

miraculous, so intimately, out there

at the pen’s point or brush’s tip, do world

and spirit wed. The small bones of the wrist

balance against great skeletons of stars

exactly; the blind bat surveys his way

by echo alone. Still, the point of style

is character. The universe induces

a different tremor in every hand, from the

check-forger’s to that of the Emperor

Hui Tsung, who called his own calligraphy

the ‘Slender Gold.’ A nervous man

writes nervously of a nervous world, and so on.

Miraculous. It is as though the world

were a great writing. Having said so much,

let us allow there is more to the world

than writing: continental faults are not

bare convoluted fissures in the brain.

Not only must the skaters soon go home;

also the hard inscription of their skates

is scored across the open water, which long

remembers nothing, neither wind nor wake.

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Poetry Friday: Ars Poetica

In honor of Bastille Day tomorrow (France’s Independence Day, if you will), here is a poem by French poet Paul Verlaine.

 

Ars Poetica

By Paul Verlaine
Translated By Norman R. Shapiro

for Charles Morice

Music first and foremost! In your verse,

Choose those meters odd of syllable,

Supple in the air, vague, flexible,

Free of pounding beat, heavy or terse.

Choose the words you use—now right, now wrong—

With abandon: when the poet’s vision

Couples the Precise with Imprecision,

Best the giddy shadows of his song:

Eyes veiled, hidden, dark with mystery,

Sunshine trembling in the noonday glare,

Starlight, in the tepid autumn air,

Shimmering in night-blue filigree!

For Nuance, not Color absolute,

Is your goal; subtle and shaded hue!

Nuance! It alone is what lets you

Marry dream to dream, and horn to flute!

Shun all cruel and ruthless Railleries;

Hurtful Quip, lewd Laughter, that appall

Heaven, Azure-eyed, to tears; and all

Garlic-stench scullery recipes!

Take vain Eloquence and wring its neck!

Best you keep your Rhyme sober and sound,

Lest it wander, reinless and unbound—

How far? Who can say?—if not in check!

Rhyme! Who will its infamies revile?

What deaf child, what Black of little wit

Forged with worthless bauble, fashioned it

False and hollow-sounding to the file?

Music first and foremost, and forever!

Let your verse be what goes soaring, sighing,

Set free, fleeing from the soul gone flying

Off to other skies and loves, wherever.

Let your verse be aimless chance, delighting

In good-omened fortune, sprinkled over

Dawn’s wind, bristling scents of mint, thyme, clover . . .

All the rest is nothing more than writing.

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Poetry Friday: An “If” for Girls

What a great take on Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem! Share with your girls — students, friends, sisters, daughters, mothers!

 

An “If” for Girls

By Elizabeth Lincoln Otis

(With apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling)

If you can dress to make yourself attractive,

       Yet not make puffs and curls your chief delight;

If you can swim and row, be strong and active,

       But of the gentler graces lose not sight;

If you can dance without a craze for dancing,

       Play without giving play too strong a hold,

Enjoy the love of friends without romancing,

       Care for the weak, the friendless and the old;

If you can master French and Greek and Latin,

       And not acquire, as well, a priggish mien,

If you can feel the touch of silk and satin

       Without despising calico and jean;

If you can ply a saw and use a hammer,

       Can do a man’s work when the need occurs,

Can sing when asked, without excuse or stammer,

       Can rise above unfriendly snubs and slurs;

If you can make good bread as well as fudges,

       Can sew with skill and have an eye for dust,

If you can be a friend and hold no grudges,

       A girl whom all will love because they must;

If sometime you should meet and love another

       And make a home with faith and peace enshrined,

And you its soul—a loyal wife and mother—

       You’ll work out pretty nearly to my mind

The plan that’s been developed through the ages,

       And win the best that life can have in store,

You’ll be, my girl, the model for the sages—

       A woman whom the world will bow before.

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Poetry Friday: The New Colossus

On this Poetry Friday before the Fourth of July, I thought it was fitting to re-read and share Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus. Its words still give hope to many around the world.

The New Colossus

By Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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