Tag: goblin

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Open Write Day 3 of 3 September 2025

Today’s host for the last day of September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. Barb and I have collaborated on several writing projects together over the past decade, most recently our book entitled Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas: Humanizing Formative Assessment, published Taylor & Francis, a division of Routledge Press, released earlier this month. We write together the first Monday of each month in a small Zoom group and share what is happening in our lives. She’s the friend who shared with me the cards I’ve been using from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. You can read her full prompt here today, as she inspires us to choose any text or piece of art and write about it. She models an extended Fibonacci Sequence poem form using syllable counts 1,1,2,3,5,8 forward and reverse and I’m doing the same today with the same poem I used yesterday to inspire my writing ~ Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro. Hop on over to the prompt link later in the day to read the poems others have written!

What Marsh Nymphs Know

marsh

nymph’s

green glass

beads stolen

right out of the moon

attract the filthiest goblin

with more on his mind than those beads

but marsh nymphs know how

to handle

goblins ~

aim,

kick

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Day 1 of July Open Write with Denise Krebs of California

Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com for the July 2024 Open Write, Day 1, is Denise Krebs of California. She inspires us to write septercet poems on any topic we choose. Also called a blackjack poem for the 21 syllables in each stanza, the poem features stanzas of three lines with 7 syllables on each line. You can read Denise’s full prompt here. I’ll be presenting with Denise at this year’s NCTE Convention in Boston in November, and I’m proud to call her a friend!

Goddess of No

Harold Monro held me charmed

Overheard on a Salt Marsh

Gold-leaf’d Childcraft Volume 1

Over and over again

In my closet (with flashlight)

I read those words on repeat

Utterly spellbound, transfixed

Give them me. No. Give them me.

Grew up wearing green glass beads.

The nymph to the goblin: No!

He’ll lie in the mud and howl

for beads on her silver ring

She stole them out of the moon.

He’ll howl in a deep lagoon

(like so many creeps out there).

In the best illustration

the goblin’s fingers spark truth:

it’s sexual harassment.

this primer poem for girls

who could read between the lines

Give them me. No. Give them me.

better than a fair daughter

better than the voices of winds

better than stars or water

Harold Monro held me charmed

Give them me. No. Give them me.

I am a Goddess of No.

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Slice of Life Challenge – March 17 – Green Glass Beads on St. Patrick’s Day

Water nymph

Throughout my childhood, I was obsessed with one particular book. I spent hours on end reading it – – even took the flashlight into my closet so I could read it in there too and not be bothered while I was mesmerized. I not only fell in love with the words in the book, but also with the pictures – they were enchanting. I studied every detail of the pages in Childcraft Volume 1 – Poems and Rhymes – with the pink band on the gold-numbered spine.

One poem in particular was my favorite among favorites.

Overheard on a Saltmarsh by Harold Monro (14 March 1879 – 16 March 1932).

I lived near salt marshes in those days, on a coastal island in Georgia. I’d never seen any nymphs and goblins in the marshes, but I wondered – – could they really be there? How had I missed them?

Overheard on a Saltmarsh by Harold Monro

I fixated on the goblin and the nymph in the illustration. That’s a water nymph – – they often have plants growing from their heads, I learned. She’s not afraid of that ghastly looking goblin, either. She is confident in herself there in the moonlight, wearing her green gown and green glass beads.

That’s what I’d wanted to be when I grew up – a beautiful nymph with a shapely figure, wearing a flowy gown and green beads, telling my goblins NO.

And so to celebrate this St. Patrick’s Day, I will not sport a shamrock. I won’t wear a green flowy gown or drink a green beer or flash a Kiss Me, I’m Irish t-shirt or paint my face green. Or get a tattoo.

Instead, I have framed my favorite childhood poem and will nymphatically wear these green jasper beads.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

A framed childhood favorite poem, with green beads
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers!

Please join us at http://www.ethicalela.com Saturday through Wednesday for the March Open Write. We’ll be writing poetry for the next 5 days. Come write with us!