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 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

 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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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