Write to Someone & a Peek!

Singing Chickadee

by Ava

I will record this poem as soon as my voice returns!

Students - This week I was tickled to find the tweet from Kindergarten Teacher Christie Wyman along with a charming singing chickadee drawn by Ava. Seeing her art inspired me to make something too. I wrote a poem to go with this art, especially for one person, Ava.  Many times, a writer will write to one person, but a reader might not know this unless the writer tells.

I began writing this poem with the word If....  If is a magical word, really, as a writer can follow it with anything at all.  I chose to write about sharing songs with the world, just as Artist Ava shared a song drawing that brought joy to my day.

You may notice that this poem repeats just one rhyme...with the oo sound.  In my notebook, I made a list of words rhyming with you to help me choose words that would make sense in my poem.  This is a technique I often use.

Word List

Photo by Amy LV

Chickadees are dear to our family. Years ago, I purchased the Dylan Metrano's beautiful chickadee piece from our book EVERY DAY BIRDS.  Unbeknownst to me, my husband Mark was planning to purchase it at the same time!

Original Papercut Chickadee from our EVERY DAY BIRDS

by Dylan Metrano

Here is our Georgia a couple of years ago, holding a stunned chickadee who flew into our window.  She has done animal rehabilitation work for many years, and she knew that this little one just needed a bit of rest before returning to the air.

Georgia and Chickadee

Photo by Amy LV

Sometimes the smallest birds, the smallest words, the smallest of gestures can be big indeed.

One hundred thousand welcomes to the Newfane Library Poets!  Last year, Director of Children's Programming, Cassy Clarcq, shared these wonderful poems with me, and at long last I am grateful and excited to be sharing them here.  Please enjoy the joy and variety in this selection of poems from last year's Newfane Library Poetry Celebration!

Please Click to Enlarge

I feel very lucky to host teacher and writer Brett Vogelsinger over at Sharing Our Notebooks this month.  Please drop by my other online space to read his post about notebook poetry drafting...and to be entered into a cool notebook giveaway as well.

Catherine is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Reading to the Core with a celebration of International Women's Day! I will be celebrating this day by celebrating my wonderful mother's birthday this evening. Tonight we will share Chinese food, the carrot cake I just made from my great friend Sallye's recipe, and as always, this poem. Please know that the Poetry Friday community shares poems and poemlove each week, and everyone is invited to visit, comment, and post.  And if you have a blog, we welcome you to link right in with us.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Record - Poem # 20 for April 2014 Poetry Project

LIVE!

Learn about this, my April 2014 Poetry Project, HERE!

Record

Photo by Amy LV

Students - I am forty-three years old, and in the span of my life, I have seen all of these types of music containers.  I had my own yellow portable record player when I was a little girl, danced to Mom's Neil Sadaka 8-tracks with my little sister, recorded my own voice on a tape recorder with cassettes, and now drive a car with a CD player and means to plug my mp3 player into the car jack.  Time does fly, and these containers have certainly changed.

But music, and our desire to connect through music is the same.  Voice to ear, heart to heart.  

Today, day 20, is a free verse day, just as #5 - Clock, #10 - Dancing Shoes, and #15 - Two Couches were.  I got the idea to write about the family tree of music containers about a week ago, and so for today, I simply sat down and explored the words.  I wanted to go way back to when people shared music together with only their voices and instruments.

We like to have bonfires here at home this way.  Actually, I am about to learn to play the autoharp so that I can play along with our songs.

In the draft below, you can see on the left hand page where I began sketching out the family tree of an mp3.  Realizing that it would be too wide at the top, where Record would be, I abandoned this idea.

What you cannot see is how many times I read this poem aloud to myself while working.  Whenever I do not know what to write as a next line (this happens about every single line), I reread from the top aloud to myself, sometimes whispering, sometimes speaking, sometimes tapping my fingers, to see what naturally comes out next.  

I have been wanting to use the word 'darkening' in a poem for quite a while...

Record - Draft Page Spread #1

Photo by Amy LV

Here you can see some more of the music container family, just getting smaller and thinner as the years go by.  As for the mp3, it's invisible.

8-Track Tapes

Photo by Amy LV

Cassette Tapes

Photo by Amy LV

Compact Discs

Photo by Amy LV

(I did write this poem on Thursday the 20th, a couple of days early, as my sister and her family are in town, and I want to simply visit.)

May your today be full of music!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Hosting Poetry Friday & A Singing Lady

Welcome to today's Poetry Friday buffet...here! I hope you're hungry, as there will be many links to munch on throughout the day.

Plane Tickets

Students - today's poem comes from something that just happened to me...almost. This week, I had the chance to work with some fantastic and warm teachers in Ohio's West Carrollton Schools. Ohio is several hours from home, so this work required some air travel.


On Wednesday evening I flew home through Newark, and while in the airport restroom, I heard a woman singing a lovely and mysterious Spanish song. It was mysterious to me because I do not speak Spanish and because I have never sung in a public restroom. I just stood there, washing my hands, savoring water and words both.


Were there others there? No, we were alone. Was it in a store? No, it was in an airport. So no, the facts of this poem are not exactly accurate. That's why I say that this "almost" happened to me.


The facts are not exact, but the spirit and soul of this moment could not be more true. I was touched by the openness of song in a restroom, of joy in the most mundane moment of daily life. My evening was made more beautiful by this chance encounter, and I know that I will think about this lady again and again.


Remember this - you do not need a perfect memory or the exact facts of an event to recapture the mood and dust left upon your heart.


To leave your link for today, please click on "Mister Linky" below and add a direct link to your Poetry Friday post. Along with your link, please include your name or blog's name followed by the topic of your post in parentheses.


For example: The Poem Farm (Original poem "I Heard a Lady Singing")


I will add posts throughout the day, though I will be out for much of the morning. Please click below to see what's here, and I'll round everything up as soon as I get back home.

Today's Dishes at the Poetry Friday Buffet
Steven Witherow at Crackles of Speech offers up an original poem about Facebook titled "Friendism."


Charles Ghigna at Father Goose leads us into autumn with his original poem "Autumn's Way."


Myra Garces-Bascal at Gathering Books features poet Professor Gemimo Abad.


Julie Larios at The Drift Record, in love with New York City, shares Allen Ginsberg's poem "My Sad Self."


Mary Lee at A Year of Reading brings us David Budbill's "What We Need" and some donuts.


Mandy brings Target's "Haiku-pons" over at Enjoy and Embrace Learning.


Maria Horvath's Daily Poems shares a poem about the ambivalence of love, "I Can't Hold You and I Can't Leave You" by Juana Inez De La Cruz.


Debbie Diller at A Journey in Learning shares Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School."


The Stenhouse Blog spotlights a poem by California English Teacher Gayle Hobbs, "Thinking Survived."


Laura Purdie Salas at Writing the World for Kids offers Alice Schertle's "Spider" from Alice's book KEEPERS.


Laura also invites us to join her 15 Words or Less Poems with a "Barred" photograph.


At Random Noodling, Diane Mayr brings "That's the Sum of It" by David Ignatow along with a video of Ignatow reading "I Killed a Fly."


Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference shares "Poor Angus" by Shel Silverstein.


At Kids of the Homefront Army, Diane Mayr has an original poem titled "Mail Call."


Diane also has cat poetry at Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet, including "Pussycat Sits on a Chair" by Edward Newman Horn.


At Kurious K's Kwotes, Diane offers a quote from Picasso about art.


Robin Hood Black shares Rose Fyleman's poem, "The Best Game that Fairies Play."


Over at Author Amok, Laura has a tribute to neglected master, Samuel Menashe.


Dori ushers in fall with Jeanie Tomasko's poem, "Edge of September."


At Jama's Alphabet Soup, Jama feeds us Mary Oliver's "The Poet is Told to Fill Up More Pages."


Sally, at Paper Tigers, shares the book UNDERWATER FARMYARD by Carol Ann Duffy.


At Across the Page, Janet offers James Taylor's song, OUR TOWN along with thoughts about the recent flooding in Owego, NY.


JoAnn Early Macken has an original poem about revision, titled "Revising a Poem" at Teaching Authors.


Greg Pincus shares his original poem, "The Writer's Chant (Butt in Chair)" over at GottaBook.


At Picture Book of the Day, Anastasia Suen brings the book Cats, Cats by author-illustrator Michelle Nelson-Schmidt.


David Elzey offers some minimally invasive poems at Fomograms.


Over at The Small Nouns, Ben shares Walt Whitman's poem, "Miracles."


Elaine Magliaro continues taking us through the year with poetry books over at Wild Rose Reader.


To read Elaine's first post about poetry books through the year, visit Wild Rose Reader here.


At All About the Books, Janet Squires brings AMAZING FACES, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins.


Pentimento offers us Jane Hirschfield's poem, "French Horn."


At Check it Out, Jone MacCulloch shares "The Words Under the Words" by Naomi Shihab Nye.


TeacherDance jumps into sharing on Poetry Friday for the first time with a poem for the beginning of school, James W. Hall's "Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too."


Over at Musings, Joyce Ray has an original 9/11 poem titled "Golden Seams."


Jennie, at Biblio File, offers up a Shel Silverstein poem from WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS.


At Twinkling Along, Carlie shares her original poem, "Lost Phone."


At There is No Such Thing as a God-Forsaken Town, Ruth shares "Hurry" by Marie Howe.


Please come back later for dessert!


I would like to invite you over to my new blog, Sharing Our Notebooks. In this space, you can expect regular sneak-peeks into the notebooks of others. (Maybe yours?) Today you can see the scrawls-before-books of Anne Mazer.


Thank you to my daughter Georgia for today's calligraphy!

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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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