Poetry Friday: Choose

Sometimes I use my feisty 1/2 Irish heritage as an excuse to choose quick temper over patience. I confess. More and more though, I’ve learned that choosing the high road, the open hand held out, leads to better things, and I think I’m starting to get pretty good at making this better choice. This week I had a few lessons in this. I’ve liked this poem for a long time.

Choose – by Carl Sandburg

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

(Poem from Poetry Foundation. Photo from stock.xchng)

Poetry Friday: Today

I need more time. Badly. Lots more time. For books. For dog-walking. For cooking. For hugging feet with my guy on the couch. Why don’t I seem to have enough time for those things? Here’s a little poem about seizing the moment.

Today – by Thomas Carlyle

So here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think wilt thou let it
Slip useless away.

Out of Eternity
This new Day is born;
Into Eternity,
At night, will return.

Behold it aforetime
No eye ever did:
So soon it forever
From all eyes is hid.

(read the rest here…)

(photo © Darren Hester for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-NonCommercial)

Poetry Friday: Bach in the DC Subway

Bach in the DC Subway – by David Lee Garrison

As an experiment,
The Washington Post
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
Partita No. 2 in D Minor
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live.

A thousand people
streamed by. Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case.
A café hostess who drifted
over to the open door
each time she was free
said later that Bach
gave her peace,
and all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water,
listening until they had to be
rescued by parents
who had somewhere else to go.

(Found at Poetry Foundation. Photo by Dan Dickinson).

Poetry Friday: Early Frost

It’s getting frosty here in Toronto. The windows in my hundred-year old house don’t look quite this dramatic, but we’re headed in that direction. Time to pull out the flannel sheets and start wearing socks to bed. Ah, winter.

Here’s a lovely poem from a poet I’d never read before.

Early Frost – by Scott Cairns

This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.

They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.

The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.

Read the rest here.

(Photo from Muffet’s flickrstream)

Poetry Friday: A Quiet Skin

I’ve been having some trouble sleeping lately – too many thoughts racing around in my head. Why does that happen at 2 am? I chose this poem because of the first line. Funny how thinking is so quiet on the outside and sometimes so frantic inside.

A Quiet Skin – by Laurie Sheck

Thinking has a quiet skin. But I feel the break and fled of things inside it.
Blue hills most gentle in calm light, then stretches of assail.
And ransack. Such tangles of charred wreckage, sharpnel-bits
Singling and singeing where they fall. I feel the stumbling gait of what I am,
The quiet uproar of undone, how to be hidden is a tempting, violent thing—
Each thought breaking always in another.

All the unlawful elsewhere rushing in.

(Poem from Poetry Foundation, photo by Owlpacino)

Poetry Friday: Things

I have sleep on the brain. Three weeks of days filled with 33 nine-year olds has finally caught up with me. I am exhausted already. They’re the cutest kids imaginable, but gosh, they take a lot out of a girl. This weekend will involve an escape to the north and a lot of time spent dozing in a hammock. Here’s a poem that keeps coming back to sleeping.

Things – by William J. Smith

Trains are for going,
Boats are for rowing,
Seeds are for sowing,
Noses for blowing,
And sleeping’s for bed.

Dogs are for pawing,
Logs are for sawing,
Crows are for cawing,
Rivers for thawing,
And sleeping’s for bed.

Flags are for flying,
Stores are for buying,
Glasses for spying,
Babies for crying,
And sleeping’s for bed.

Cows are for mooing,
Chickens for shooing,
Blue is for bluing,
Things are for doing,
And sleeping’s for bed…

Read the rest at Poetry Foundation.

(And no, this poem has nothing to do with adorable kittens. I just needed a picture of one to keep me awake right now. Thanks to Nathonline’s flickr stream for the kitty pic).

Poetry Friday: Who Has Seen the Wind

There have been lovely windy, late-summer days all week long. I can almost see the warmth blowing away a little bit more each day. I’ve always loved this little poem by Christina Rossetti:

Who Has Seen the Wind

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

(Poem from Poetry Foundation. Perfect photo by: eggman)

Poetry Friday: A Little Book

It is a perfect, blue-sky beautiful September day today, and it is my last tiny scrap of summer before school begins on Tuesday. So, the days are neither long nor gray, but I agree completely with the sentiment of this little poem. Today is going to be a reading day.

A Little Book – Ruth Lilly

I like to read a
Little book
When days are
Long and gray.
Just in a cozy
Little nook,
And there I know
I’ll stay!
To read the covers all way through
I like a little book,
Don’t you?

(From The Poetry Foundation. Photo © Adrian van Leen for openphoto.net CC:PublicDomain)

Zorgamazoo

“Here is a story that’s stranger than strange
Before we begin you may want to arrange:
a blanket,
a cushion,
a comfortable seat,
and maybe some cocoa and something to eat.
I’ll warn you, of course, before we commence,
my story is eerie and full of suspense,
brimming with danger and narrow escapes,
and creatures of many remarkable shapes.
Dragons and ogres and gorgons and more,
and creatures you’ve not even heard of before.
And faraway places? There’s plenty of those!
(And menacing villains to tingle your toes.)

So ready your mettle and steady your heart.
It’s time for my story’s mysterious start…”

So begins Robert Paul Weston’s 100% delightful and over-the-top clever novel-in-verse, Zorgamazoo. I don’t see how you couldn’t fall head over heels for this book. It is pure fun. It’s like Roald Dahl with a sprinkle of Philip Reeve and of course, more than a nod to the big rhyme man himself, Dr. Seuss. It’s about Katrina Katrell, a bold little girl who escapes her nasty nanny, Mrs. Krabone (Krabby for short), and signs herself up for a wild adventure in which she helps a strange creature named Morty Yorgle to save the missing Zorgles of Zorgamazoo.

And did I mention, it’s all in verse! Fantastic, I say! I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Mr. Robert Paul Weston probably writes verse that is mostly good, but who could keep up that rhythm for 283 pages?” Answer? Mr. Robert Paul Weston. There’s nothing forced or awkward about these rhymes, quite the opposite. You’ll start reading and you will have to start reading out loud. Have to. It’s that irresistible. This is probably why Zorgamazoo was named an E.B. White Read Aloud Honor book for Older Readers this year. I don’t see how it couldn’t have been. It’s kinda magical. It will remind you of your distant youth. It made me think of one of my absolute favourite books as a child, Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes.

I plan to read Zorgamazoo aloud to approximately 31 nine year olds starting in about a week. I think it will make back-to-school just a little bit nicer for all concerned. All other Grade 4 teachers should consider doing the same.

Now check out these delicious Zorgamazoo goodies:

Zorgamazoo website, packed with great stuff.
Chapters 1 and 2, read aloud just for you
Just One More Book’s Conversation with Robert Paul Weston

Zorgamazoo is a Razorbill book, published by Penguin Young Readers Group.

Poetry Friday: Reverie in Open Air

Something summery.

Reverie in Open Air – by Rita Dove

I acknowledge my status as a stranger:
Inappropriate clothes, odd habits
Out of sync with wasp and wren.
I admit I don’t know how
To sit still or move without purpose.
I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.

But this lawn has been leveled for looking,
So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green…

Find the rest at the Poetry Out Loud site.

(photo © Andrzej G for openphoto.net CC:Attribution).