Poetry 101: First, untie it.

While in Kentucky earlier this summer, Brett was able to attend a poetry reading by Billy Collins. Good man that he is, Brett brought back for me a signed copy of The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems which begins, "The birds are in their trees, the toast is in the toaster, and the poets are at their windows."

Now, as I prepare to share with my students (future teachers) how to teach poetry and incorporate it into their English/ Language Arts classroom, I return to Collins and the idea behind his Poetry 180 project which, simply put, exposes students to a poem a day for the entire school year. Here is the poem he starts with, one of his own:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

five

This time five years ago, we lived in Athens, GA. I was going through a Jolie Holland phase and was trying to read The Economist cover to cover every week. I craved corn dogs frequently and napped a lot. And on this particular day five years ago, one of those daytime naps was abruptly interrupted by a sign. It was the clearest message Olivia had sent to me up to that point. She was ready.

Now we live in Mount Vernon, Ohio. I still enjoy Jolie Holland, among others, but my own Little Bird with her pretty songs prefers Paul Simon. The Economist subscription expired long ago. I'll pick it up again one of these days, but for now it's all things E.B. White.

In my own reading time I often choose poetry. I'm finally starting to get it, and I credit her for that too. It's been in her message to me every day of her life. She is poetry in motion, and this weekend she turns five.

...all the ingredients are here...

Over the years, my mother has acquired some wonderful books of poetry which are now strewn about her house-- on the coffee table, on the side table, on the desk-- easy access for someone like me trying to keep up with a roaming toddler. Certainly some of my richest moments during our recent visit to her house involved recognizing the poetry at play in the motions and conversations of our visit, an awareness which was heightened by a quick but lingering glance at words like these:

Messenger
By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

the imagination, which dwells apart...

"Grace Psalm" from Images of Grace - Charis
by Makoto Fujimura

"But is it not rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose every-day life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning?"

- George MacDonald, Phantastes

A Public Service Announcement

"Listening is a leaning towards others, the opening of ourselves in a receptive attitude toward the reality around us; it is only the capacity to listen that prevents us from revolving around ourselves."

- Sofia Cavalletti

Cracking the Code

The fact that any of us figure out how to read completely astounds me. Watching my 4-year-old master this skill makes her even more mysterious to me. And that her first book would be about a robot riding on an elephant, well that part makes perfect sense.

a better plan

cozy PJ’s? check!

girls asleep? check!

a warm bowl of my neighbor’s blackberry cobbler? check!

a tall glass of milk? check!

a new episode of Lost? check!

Ok, we’re in the past. In the WAY past. There’s Allison Janney. On Lost. Interesting! I bet she’s the original smoke monster....And this other girl. She’s pregnant. Perhaps with Jacob? Ok, J.J.Abrams, where are you going to take me this hour? I’m ready.

but wait...

rain? check.

lightning? check.

thunder? .......... check ... and...

“MOMMY!!” check.

Ok, change of plans. We’re in the present. The actual, real world present. Here’s Olivia. In my bed. With me. It’s just a stage. One day I’ll long for the days I could comfort her during a storm. Lucky for me she’s requested the glow of the computer screen.
No biggy. Tomorrow evening Brett and I will be able to watch Lost together in its entirety. And really the best thing about this evening is that tomorrow morning I’ll wake up to the wondrous, fill-me-up feeling of my 4-year-old daughter draped over my back. Or if she awakens first, I’ll slowly re-enter consciousness as a tiny hand gently tickles my neck.

Good night? check.