J is for JAMAICA

JAMAICA

Photo by Amy LV

 

Students - I have never been to Jamaica, so I had to do a bit of research for this poem. I knew that Jamaica was in the Caribbean Sea, but I did not know that the Greater Antilles include Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and Puerto Rico. I also did not know that this chain of islands was formed by volcanoes. You can see many maps of the Greater Antilles here. Don't you think we should take a trip to do a bit more research?

Thinking about how these islands formed many many years apart as the earth's plates moved over a hotspot, I began to see them as four brothers with the same hotspot/volcano mother.  I imagined birds flying back and forth, sharing news of each brother with the others. I imagined them missing each other, longing to hug.  And that's how this poem was born.  Personification for sure!  If you would like to see good diagrams of how Hawaii (another island chain) was formed by volcanoes, check here.

You may have noticed that this poem is woven between my thoughts and the names of the islands. This is a fun thing to do - weave a poem. Think of two strands - your words and something else such as a song, recipe, thoughts of another person, anything. Now alternate between the two, weaving them together. You can read a good explanation of this in Gretchen Bernabei's great book REVIVING THE ESSAY: HOW TO TEACH STRUCTURE WITHOUT FORMULA. It may take a little practice to read your poem in a way you like, but you will often end up with something quite pleasing.  Please let me know if you try it.

I hope to have a recording of this poem up by day's end - SoundCloud was experiencing some difficulties when I first tried.

Linda Kulp, of Write Time, is the winner of Friday's giveaway of the beautiful BOOKSPEAK! by Laura Purdie Salas. If you'd like to read more about Laura, you can read an interview and see a video of Laura reading one of her BOOKSPEAK! poems this week at No Water River with Renee LaTulippe. Linda - please send me an e-mail to amy at amylv dot com so that I know where to send your book. Congratulations!

In case you are new here - this month, I am walking, letter-by-letter, through the dictionary, (closed-eyed) pointing to a letter each day, and writing from it. You can read poems A-H by checking the sidebar, and you can read Lisa's accompanying haiku at her blog, Lisa's Poem of the Week.

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A Shrike Strikes & Stabs in Poem #308

The natural world is not always a kind place, and shrikes are brutal birds.  Yesterday, Mark and the children were sitting on the couch discussing the Great Backyard Bird Count and they began talking about shrikes.  I was trying to write in another room, but really I was eavesdropping.  Mark had taught me about shrikes before, but they're so incredible that I had to listen in.  Because their talons are not very sharp, shrikes must skewer their meals onto sticks, hawthorn spikes, or barbed wire in order to eat.

If you would like to see a shrike eating a chickadee, you can do so here.  If you would like to see a shrike eating a junco, visit here.

Last weekend, Georgia awoke early and sat at the front window by our feeder, making extensive notes about each bird's eating habits.  I wondered if some of her thinking came from our recent reading of THE ROBIN MAKES A LAUGHING SOUND by Sallie Wolf and Michael Borstein, a charming poetry book filled with sketches, watercolors, and little listy notes.

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Our family has never participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count before, but we plan to do so this year.  Running the week of February 18-21, this event is meant for children and gives a snapshot of which birds are where during these four days.  Last year, 11,233,609 birds were counted.  I wonder how many were counted more than once!

Take a look here at GBBC website to learn more about how to participate and how to learn more about the birds that live in and travel through our own skies.  I once read that most third grade American children know more rainforest animals than they know backyard birds.  Here's a way to change that.

Teachers - here is another way to deepen and widen students' understandings about the birds in our neighborhoods.  SIGNIFICANT STUDIES FOR SECOND GRADE, by Karen Ruzzo and Mary Anne Sacco, includes a wonderful nonfiction bird study in which students each research a bird and write about it.  Glorious!  If I were a second or third grade teacher, I would teach this unit every year.

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Students - once again, today's poem came from careful listening.  Yesterday's poem came from listening to what everyone was talking about (a snow day.)  Today's poem came from listening to one distinct and interesting conversation.  Did you notice that it is written, while not in five lines, in a limerick rhyme and meter?

For anyone who is wondering, yes.  We do have a snow day today.

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Poetry Friday & #227 - A Dictionary Poem

Dictionary Forest Hike

by Amy LV

This is poem #24 in a Friday series of poems about poems.

Students - it is an interesting exercise to try to write many poems about one topic, and I have done this for the past 24 Fridays - poems about poems.  If you don't want to repeat yourself over and over again (poetry is great, poetry is great, poetry is great), you must discover new ways to hold an idea up to the light.  This poem is about a half-real/half-imaginary place.  For some time I have been longing to write a poem about the dictionary as a place to hang out, and this poem grew from that long-time-longing.  Here is where a writer's notebook comes in handy; each little scribbling waits patiently, hoping to be snapped up by a project.

Another funny thing about this poem is that I really wanted to include all eight parts of speech.  I learned from Donna Hooker-Topping and Sandra Josephs Hoffman's GETTING GRAMMAR that you can easily remember the parts of speech if you can recall the name IVAN CAPP (interjection, verb, adverb, noun, conjunction, adjective, pronoun, preposition).  This book has is stuffed-full with fun and easy-to-play grammar games and tips for remembering grammar rules.  Writing this poem, I actually jotted the names IVAN CAPP on my paper to be sure that I included all eight parts of speech!

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Next week, I look forward to spending Poetry Friday at NCTE in Orlando, Florida.  Most exciting will be the Friday session about poetry and blogging featuring poetry bloggers Sylvia Vardell of Poetry for Children, Tricia Stohr-Hunt of The Miss Rumphius Effect, and Elaine Magliaro of Wild Rose Reader.  Sylvia, Tricia, and Elaine have been featuring Lee Bennett Hopkins, Marilyn Singer, Pat Mora, and Jame Richards, poet members of the panel, for the past week and will continue to do so.  If you are attending NCTE, you can find details about this session here.

Two Fridays from now (the Friday after Thanksgiving), we welcome literacy specialist Amy Zimmer Merrill from Calvin Coolidge Elementary in Binghamton, NY for another Poetry Peek!  If you are a teacher or librarian or homeschooling parent willing to share a bit of how you enjoy poetry with children, please drop me a note.  I'd love to feature you on such a Peek too!  See the right hand sidebar for previous Peeks, full of favorite ways to dish up bowls of poems.

Teachers and Parents - the holidays are sneaking up, and I must refer you to MotherReader's list of 105 Ways to Give a Book.  It is a fabulous list, and after today, I will leave the link in my right hand column list of parenting links.  Thank you, Pam!

You can find today's Poetry Friday roundup with Terry over at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub.  Mosey on over there to see what's happening poetry-wise in the blogosphere, and know that you are all welcome to participate in Poetry Friday at any time.  You can find a link with all of the details here and also in the right hand column.

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Everynight Everywhere - MyPoWriYe #203

Thank you to Tricia over at The Miss Rumphius Effect for another Monday Poetry Stretch, this week about the moon.  This is poem #4 of Free Verse Week II, continuing through Friday.

Where do poems come from?  I don't know.  Each one waits around, I think, like a bit of beach glass, hoping that someone will grab it.  Sometimes a poem is not ready yet, and we throw it back to the sea until it is smoother, ready to be written down.  

But if we throw a poem back, it is possible that someone else may find it and write it one day.  This is much like a purchase we do not make but someone else does.  When we return, we may be surprised - see my friend Emily's poem for one such book-story-poem at Tea and Krempets.

Students - today's poem idea is one that I've picked up on the beach over and over again.   For years, looking up at the moon's full face, I have thought, "Wow.  That looks like a pocket watch."  Finally, today, this image found its poem.   Keep this in mind as you live...any passing thought or line might be a part of your writing someday.

The rest of today's poem comes from several places.  Many children speak the word "moon" as a very first word.  I remember this from my own children, nieces and nephews, and our friends' children.  Children all over the world speak this first word as they point up at their skies.  "Moon."

I have been thinking about children from different places in the world because we have a beautiful niece from Thailand and an adorable nephew coming soon from Ethiopia.  These children are in our families and still somehow always linked to their birthlands.

Soon our family will be learning from a few other families in our area who have been working to support an orphanage in Kenya, the Crossroads Springs Institute.   Each of us is connected to so many across the world in ways we do not yet know.  Who might you meet one day?  Who have you already met who will touch your life a bit further down the path?

Several years ago, I read a poem by Margaret Tsuda in LASTING IMPRESSIONS, a classic and wonderful professional book by Shelley Harwayne.  This poem,  "Commitment in a City", speaks to our connectedness with others, whether we know them our not.

 Heinemann

We will have a full moon here this Poetry Friday! 

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Poetry Friday, Peek, & #199

My Favorite Restaurant

by Amy LV

This is poem #20 in my Friday series of poems about poems!

For our sixth Poetry Peek, we welcome two classes of Cloverbank Elementary's fourth grade students with their community poems.  As you read these two autumn poems and the third about a beloved teacher, notice the layering of words, the layering of sounds that comes from so many voices working together.   These student poets hail from Mrs. Lynda Sentz's and Kristen Snajczuk's fourth grade classrooms in Blasdell, New York.  

Here are the words from their writing teacher and author of the new professional book, WRITE WITH ME, Lynda Sentz...

We have been trying to make our writing more descriptive.  Autumn is a season that truly tickles and delights the senses.  We began our effort by brainstorming as many fall sensations as we could come up with.  What do we hear in fall?  See?  Smell?  Taste?  Touch?  Our lists were gigantic.  Every student then gathered bits and pieces from their notebooks and wrote at least one line for our class poem.  We didn't spend much time on this, but the resulting poems were something they were very proud to see hanging in the hall.  Each wrote out a line on a sentence strip, and I affixed the strips to a large, long sheet of paper.  Students illustrated and decorated the edge of the paper near their line of poetry.  The result is quite lovely.

Fun in the Fall

by Room 211

I close my eyes for a moment and slowly open to see

pumpkins, pies, apple cider, leaves slowly falling to the ground.

I see the leaves changing color.

The colorful leaves on the tree dance as I watch

slowly and carefully.

Red, brown, yellow, green - all the colors of some cool surprise -

crunchy or soft, also colorful or dull.

When I walk out the door, all I can smell 

is Mother Nature's leaves falling down from those wooden trees.

The maple tree in my backyard was my territory.

I would sit back there all day.

I would draw what I saw.

The maple tree in our backyard is so peaceful -

drawing the leaves changing color

hearing the birds chirping

watching the squirrels play tag

with the breeze tapping on your shoulder

asking you to play.

My feet, stepping one-by-one while running,

I can hear those leaves and my heart beating.

Running, jumping, crackling.

I love the thick pumpkins, mushy and soggy

and even the soft seeds.

I love feeling the mushy stuff inside of the pumpkins

The sweet smell of hot warm pumpkin seeds 

in the oven crackling - crack, crack, crack.

While I am smelling the dampness in the air 

on a wonderful sunny day in fall, my mom calls out, 

"Your pumpkin pie is ready!"

Kids jumping proudly into a screaming pile of flowing leaves -

my brother and I play in the leaves

and we play in the colorful leaves.

When I jump in the leaf piles

all of the leaves brush up against my clothes.

I feel the crunchy leaves 

when I jump into a huge pile of leaves.

The apples are so good in the fall

and weather sounds - I can hear the wind blow.

When I see all of the candy wrappers on the floor

my stomach starts to hurt.

I hear the sweet howl of wind blowing against my skin.

I see baby blue birds

a family of brown deer

and I see brown and orange leaves.

It is the most beautiful season.

Awe in Autumn

by Room 202

Wind blowing in my ear 

branches falling and the sky is calling me to play.

I can feel the cold mist almost touching my skin.

In fall, I feel the wind.

I feel a cold breeze of cold wind.

I can see the leaves in many beautiful colors.

I can feel leaves and I also feel heat.

I can hear the little kids screaming 

"Apple cider!  Apple cider!"

And when I scream I feel like there is apple cider.

I can see pumpkins putting on their orange jackets

as fall gets colder.

I can see the orange jack o'lanterns and their scary faces.

Spending money, some are funny, make-up runny - costumes!

I smell the fresh pumpkin pies

and hear the scary noises all night.

Apple pie, apple cider - tastes so good in the fall.

I can smell the hot pumpkin pie.

I see the squirrels getting food for the winter

Birds chirping and singing in a perfect harmony to me

Bugs, gourds, pumpkin seeds - 

Why are they all so nice to me?

The first time I did this communal sort of writing lesson, my students and I were saying goodbye to a dear teacher who passed away very suddenly.  The students did not have an opportunity to prepare for the loss or say "Goodbye".  Together, we came to grips with our grief and sadness by writing together.  Each student contributed a line.  Some were funny, while others were moving.  Ten-year-olds have emotions that run deep.

I put the lines together in stanzas and printed a copy for each student.  We stood in a circle on a sunny May afternoon and read our poem - each student reading his or her line.  It was a lovely, quiet goodbye for our cherished reading teacher, Mrs. Koss.  I only wish she could have heard her students reading their poetry lines with such confidence and pride.  Perhaps she did...

Ruminations about Mrs. Koss

by Room 211

Mrs. Koss started us learning.

Mrs. Koss is a busy bee!

Kind, compassionate and always giving a helping hand

Mrs. Koss makes people smile really, really, really big.

Mrs. Koss is fun and quirky like beef jerky!

Mrs. Koss is a great reading teacher!

Mrs Koss is pretty, Mrs. Koss is fun, and Mrs. Koss is smart.

She's respectful to us and everyone else around the world

Friendly when she teaches.

Always inspiring us to work harder, reach higher

She is a leader.

Generous, kind, helping, and giving

Nice and caring person, Mrs. Koss.

Mrs. Koss is as gentle as a fly.

Mrs. Koss is caring, nice, sweet, loving - 

Always helping people.

As pretty as a flower

Mrs. Koss is as bright as the sun.

Always on time and is genteel

Mrs. Koss is as bright as a star.

Lois was all that and much, much more....

Poetry can be deeply personal, deeply cathartic even when you are writing it with twenty of your closest friends.  Early in the year, we can build bridges between friendships.  Later in the year, we can enjoy the journey of the writing.  And yes, when we suffer a great loss, we can mend a piece of a broken heart.

A great thank you to teacher Lynda Sentz and her student writers for sharing their community poems with us.  If your class tries writing such a community poem, please write in a comment and share.  I'd love to spotlight any more community poems in a future post.  This post will be cataloged along the right hand sidebar with all other Poetry Peeks into classrooms.

Please check out Lynda Sentz's brand new book, WRITE WITH ME: PARTNERING WITH PARENTS IN WRITING INSTRUCTION, published by Eye on Education.  Please click on the title above to read about the book or here to read sample pages.

Next week is KitLitCon 2010 and our Poetry Friday Panel!  If you have anything to share regarding how Poetry Friday or The Poem Farm have influenced your teaching and students' writing, please leave a message in the comments, and I will be sure to share it with the group.

This week's Poetry Friday is over at Liz in Ink.  Please mosey on over and cozy up to a family of new poems and poetry posts.  

Tomorrow marks 200 days of nonstop poems at The Poem Farm!

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My Poem Writing Year #168 - My Other Life

A Reading Life

Photo by Mark LV

Many children dream of pets but are not able to have them because of allergies, living situations, or parent concerns and fears.  But through books we can all have pets, befriend wild animals, and learn to understand animal languages.  How lucky we are that these small lines and loops of language give us what we cannot have in our lives.

If you are a child who is serious about wanting a pet for yourself, this article at wikiHow may give you some good tips about persuading your parents that this is a good idea.

And teachers, if you're looking for an excellent book about teaching persuasive writing, a genre required by the new Common Core State Standards and life in general, I cannot recommend WRITING TO PERSUADE, by Karen Caine, highly enough.  It's full of mini lessons, model texts, and all kinds of advice about the genre of power.

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Last night I wrote a different poem, and then I realized that it was not an animal poem!  Back-to-the-poem-board I went, and honestly I'm grateful it happened.  If it hadn't, this poem would still be floating around for someone else to find...

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My Poem Writing Year #147 - Ready

First Day 2007

Photo by Amy LV

This week's Monday Poetry Stretch over at Tricia's The Miss Rumphius Effect challenges us to write about returning to school.  You can read the poems as they roll in at her post here.

Today's poem, Ready, is a companion to the poem I wrote for the last day of school in June, Last Day of School.  You can read and remember that "beginning of summer feeling" here. 

One of the most interesting things about keeping up with a daily poem is finding out which topics surface and resurface.  So far I've noticed my own interest in: fireflies, punctuation, school, nature, and the inner feelings of inanimate objects.

After mentioning that I might write a collection of punctuation poems about different characters, I found a book series online that makes punctuation marks into characters.  The series is called MEET THE PUNCS, and I have yet to read one.  Does anyone out there know these books?  I would love to hear what you think of them before I order one.

I did reformat yesterday's poem, on wind, and now it is a concrete poem.  You can click on the title above and check it out if you're interested in seeing its new look.  Throughout the week, I hope to reformat poems that were originally typed into my tiny phone!

As this school year begins, I highly recommend reading a poem each day.  Here are two sources to get you started.  J. Patrick Lewis has a new collection of original poems titled COUNTDOWN TO SUMMER for elementary students.  For middle school students, I recommend NAMING THE WORLD collected and with lessons by Nancie Atwell.

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Here in New York State, we do not begin school until after Labor Day, but some schools are already back or just returning.  To all teachers and students:  many good wishes and blessings for a beautiful year!  Today my own children received letters from their teachers, and they look forward to a whole new year of adventure.

Do not miss Elaine Magliaro's 2010 list of Back to School books and resources.  You can find this wonderful resource here at her blog, Wild Rose Reader.  Thank you, Elaine!

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Drawing - MyPoWriYe #119

Oak Leaf

by Amy LV

The more I write and teach writing, the more I come to believe in the power of all arts to help us see and become.  Yesterday, working with kindergarten teachers in the Iroquois Central School District, teachers shared ways they have taught children about drawing and expressing themselves through pictures.  If you teach primary grades, these two books will help you with this tremendously.

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 Katie Wood Ray's newest book, IN PICTURES AND IN WORDS, teaches us and our students how to explore illustrations to better understand writing craft.  Through a study of picture books, we learn how artists and writers use different points of view, pull in closely, create scenes, and much more.  Katie walks us through several possible picture-lessons and includes much student work and many literature recommendations.

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This book, TALKING, DRAWING, WRITING, by Martha Horn and Mary Ellen Giacobbe teaches us how we can work with our students to create a community around storytelling, drawing, and writing.  Based on a study of kindergarteners and how they learn to write through talking, drawing, and then writing, Martha and Mary Ellen share stories, lessons, and specific suggestions for working with young writers.

Students - Drawing is so much like writing.  When you sit with a pad and pencil and study your cat...just trying to get that fur on the page, as fluffy as it is in real life, you are observing like a writer.  When you cock your head to get a good angle on the plant you are sketching, you are watching like a writer.  When you write a poem about your cat, you are an artist.  Artists are writers of images, and writers are artists in words.

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Teachers and other grown ups - Hannah Hinchman's LIFE IN HAND: CREATING THE ILLUMINATED JOURNAL, is one for you adults who wish to see more, slow down, and perhaps begin drawing in your own notebook.  When I read this book many years ago, I drew the Oak leaf above in its accompanying journal.  It's true what they say, sometimes to really see something...
we need to draw it.

Today I posted a quote on The Poem Farm's facebook page:

"You are kind to painters...
and I tell you the more I think,
the more I feel that there is nothing
more truly artistic than to love people."

- Vincent VanGogh to his brother

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My Poem Writing Year #112 - Jewels

Treasure

Photo by Amy LV 

This is a poem for my friend Rachel in Oregon, the best rock hound and rock teacher ever!  Whenever I find neat rocks outdoors or go to a rock show, I think of her.   Rachel has been sharing a "poem-of-the-letter" with her cousin, including a poem in each letter she sends.  These come from her students, and some are even writing poetry this summer "to share with Miss S's cousin".  The power of publishing is strong indeed!

 Rachel's Rock Coffee Table

Photo by Rachel Sudul

When I was a young girl, I used to think about rocks a lot.  In fact, I wondered what they talked about when I wasn't sitting by the creek's edge, listening.  Rocks are full of stories, some which we can discover through study and some which will always remain mysteries.

Students - This poem is what Georgia Heard (author of AWAKENING THE HEART and many other fabulous books) might call an "observation poem", or poem where the poet looks at something closely and allows a poem to grow from this looking and noticing.  In a way, this is what scientists do too, look and study and wonder and admire.

Here are two rock books to love.  These are not poetry books full of all different poems, but each is a gorgeous poem-turned-book.  If you have a favorite rock book, would you please share its title in the comments?

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Poem #106 - Just an Expression

Thank you again to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect for her weekly poetry stretch.  This week's challenge encourages us to write about sayings.  You can read the poems as they're posted here at her blog.

While we're on the topic of idioms, sayings, and expressions, I am excited to share a new book with you which includes a whole chapter on this very topic.  Ralph Fletcher, writer of picture books, novels, poetry, and writing books for students and teachers, has done it again.  His latest book, PYROTECHNICS ON THE PAGE: PLAYFUL CRAFT THAT SPARKS WRITING, celebrates and encourages joyful romping through and exploration of language.  

Ralph's book (from Stenhouse) includes chapters on word play, craft lessons highlighting specifics of language, and a resource section chock-full * of definitions, book recommendations, useful lists, and texts for teaching.  I recommend it as a great summer read - not only to expand our own understandings of language but also to help us imagine communities of fascination and joy around letters, words, sentences, and the way they mix into meaning.

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Tomorrow is Poetry Friday and the final day of "Free Verse Week" here at The Poem Farm.

* "Originally a person or thing stuffed to the point of choking was choke-full. In modern speech this expression has become chock-full, or in less formal American English, chuck-full."  (from Paul Brians' book, COMMON ERRORS IN ENGLISH USAGE)

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Poem #105 - How To Be My Favorite Book

Hope Reads in a Boat

Photo by Amy LV 

This is the fifth poem in a week-long series of free verse poems, and the idea came from a couple of places.  Our children are voracious readers, and so I always note the types of books they like and recommend to each other, us, and their friends.  I wonder about why my children reread certain books and easily let go of others.

After writing this poem, I realized that another writing influence has been joyfully sitting on my shoulder.  Elaine Magliaro, writer Wild Rose Reader blog, has been sharing poems from her "Things to Do" poems collection.  Last week she shared "Things to Do if You are the Ocean", and I think its loveliness crept into my mind.  Thank you, Elaine!

It has been exciting to wake each day for the past 105 days, not knowing what each day's poem will be about, and it is wonderful to finally trust that something (maybe not something excellent, but something) will come.  In his essay, "Listening to Writing", from THE ESSENTIAL DONALD MURRAY, edited by Thomas Newkirk and Lisa C. Miller, Donald Murray writes about the element of surprise in writing.  "We should push ourselves - and our students - to write what they do not expect to say, for the excitement of writing is the surprise of hearing what you did not expect to hear."

I highly recommend this book as well as any others by Donald Murray if you are interested in your own writing and/or teaching writing to others.

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Students - so much of writing is listening to your inner voice (or many voices) whispering what matters to you, what you want to say, the story and mystery you need to tell.  Writing is a journey and discovery-ride inside of ourselves.

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MyPoWriYe #59 - The boy said,

We're new to the world of childhood athletics, so sometimes I ask questions of my friends with older children .  Last weekend, my friend Debbie told me that her son works as an umpire.  He loves the game, enjoys children, works outside, and makes good money in a short time.  The only problem?  Parents.  Some teen umpires end up calling games or even quitting their jobs because of angry and out-of-control parents.

Georgia Heard, in her inspiring book Awakening the Heart, teaches us to write about our concerns. 

If you are a coach, know a coach, or have children playing sports, you might find this article by Bruce Lambin about How to Handle Parents useful.

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Poetry Friday & NaPoWriMo Poem #9

Happy Poetry Friday! If you are new to Poetry Friday, please let me introduce you to this weekly holiday through a helpful article by Susan Thomsen at the Poetry Foundation.  For links to many of the postings and events hosted thus far this month, check out Wild Rose Reader where Elaine has put together a fabulous contents.  Today's Poetry Friday roundup is hosted by Marjorie at Paper Tigers.

Musing on a topic for today's NaPoWrimo poem, one photograph kept sneaking into my mind.  Over the winter, we had some family photos taken by the wise and lovely Elizabeth Pellette, and in addition to human pictures, she took this charmer of our dog Cali and our cat Mini.

photo by Elizabeth Pellette Photography

One of my favorite ways to get writing (and to get students writing) is to list real photographs from our lives or list photographs that should have been taken but were not, an idea I most likely learned at The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.  Then choose a photo from the list, and get writing.  The best part of this exercise is the choice: write a list of photos taken, photos not taken, or write both lists.  Something always grows from such compost, no matter how many times you try it.

I am certainly glad this tender photograph was taken at our little farm.  Something about it feels so curious, so trusting, and it made me think about pet secrets.

Cat-Dog Secret

When humans go out

we wrestle.

We chase.

We nuzzle our noses.

We sniff everyplace.

We sleep on the couch

me on you

you on me.

We share food and water.

We always agree.

When humans come home

we bite

fight

pretend

we can't stand each other.

But you're my best friend.

©Amy LV

Teachers - today I would like to celebrate two professional books that will help all of us teach poetry.  If you are a lover of poetry and seek books to help you spread the love, each of these books is full of rich, meaningful, and very friendly ways to share poems with children - through reading, performance, play, art, and writing.  If poetry scares you a little bit, these books will take you by the hand and welcome you into a world of joy and power.

Georgia Heard's work and this book so inspired me that our second daughter is named after her many Grandpa Georges and Georgia Heard too!

Awakening the Heart
by Georgia Heard

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Poems Please!

by David Booth & Bill Moyer

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This month's issue of Appleseeds magazine (a Cobblestone publication) is all about poetry.  You can read some of Sheri Doyle's poems and see the issue here.  What a treat to have a whole magazine devoted to reading and writing poetry, and you can even purchase one issue at at time.

Here's wishing that you find poems everywhere you look today, even in that clogged sink or those muddy dog prints across your kitchen floor.  As Naomi Shihab Nye says in her well-loved poem 'Valentine for Ernest Mann', 

"...poems hide.  In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping..."

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