Become a Violin in Poem #358

Lynx in a Violin Case

Photo by Amy LV

Students - our children all play musical instruments, and so we are lucky to have a house filled with songs.  Sometimes when I listen to Hope, Georgia, and Henry playing, it feels as if their bodies have joined with their instruments - they sound so good!  This reminds me of the feeling I used to occasionally have when playing piano or the all-happy-lost feeling I have sometimes while writing.  

It is a wonderful gift to be at one with  your passion.  Today's poem came from that place, that feeling of connectedness to music and an instrument and all who have played it before.

Before bed last night, I read some poems aloud from A CHILD'S ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY edited by Elizabeth Hauge Sword.  This is a splendid collection mixing old classic poems with new to-be classics.  Highly recommended for reading aloud together or for adults and children to read quietly on their own.

Last's night's selections were, "in Just-spring,"  "maggie and milly and molly and may," and "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by E.E. Cummings.  We also read Jack Prelutsky's "The Spaghetti Nut" and "Homework! Oh, Homework!,"  Randall Jarrell's "Bats," Ogden Nash's "The Adventures of Isabel," Lewis Carroll's "Father William," and Christopher Morley's "The Plumpuppets."

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Parents and teachers - never underestimate the power of reading poetry aloud.  In a short time, you crack open a whole world of language, experience, and beauty, of fun, playfulness, and wonder.  There is always time to read a poem.  And once you do...the poem is there forever.

I snapped today's photo at the girls' violin lesson.  Their teacher's cat loves to snuggle into the instrument cases!

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Poem #318 Celebrates a Basket of Kittens

Georgia & Kittens in 2008

Photo by Amy LV

Students - we each have life topics, memories, special times that we think and reflect upon over and over again.  I have written about these kittens before, in honor of their mother for Mother's Day.  Somehow I believe that I will return to this memory of kittens again and again, in both my writing and heart.

Pat Schnieder's poem, "How the Stars Came Down" speaks to the power of memory, especially these lines:

...when I got home

home wasn't my real home any more.

I had a new home in my remembering

and it was dark and safe and beautiful

with shooting stars all around.

Read the whole poem, in all of its gorgeousness, here.

I love this idea of "a new home in my remembering." What can each of us do to create internal "homes of remembering" for our loved ones and strangers too? 

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Christmas Trees Wait for Homes - #257

 Boy Scout Tree Lot in Yorkshire, NY

Photo by Amy LV

Going Home

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Yesterday our family went to find our Christmas tree.  Sometimes we chop a tree down, and sometimes we find one on a lot.  This year we bought one from the Boy Scouts, and they were so helpful showing us all around, bringing the tree to our car.  Later in the day, driving along, the first two lines of this poem popped into my head.  Our daughter Georgia loves the song "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" so that song has been in my mind lately.  I wrote down those two first lines and the rest followed.  

Students - I did try writing this poem in stanzas of four lines, each of two couplets.  But because of the way that lines 12 and 13 flow into each other, beginning a new stanza didn't feel or sound right to me.

One bit of writing advice for today: do NOT put a frozen pizza in the oven before you write a poem with the intent that you will interrupt your writing to pull it out.  That's what I did last night, and let's just say that dinner was a bit hard to eat.

Here is an incredibly dear Christmas poem, "little tree" by e.e. cummings, one of our family's favorites.

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