On the first Monday evening of each month at 7 p.m., I meet with a small group of Stafford Challenge poets via Zoom. We’re also members of EthicalEla, and we’ve presented together at NCTE. Periodically, we’ll text each other a poem or prompt. Our evening meetings include time for writing and sharing.
Our group consists of Glenda of Idaho, Denise of California, Barb of Iowa, and me. We weren’t sure whether or not Denise was going to make it this week, but she texted us a prompt in case we wanted to try the writing prior to the meeting and have something to share.
This was her prompt:
Screenshot
Steering clear of adverbs was challenging (I think of Stephen King’s words: the road to hell is paved in adverbs). Writing without them is not easy. I noticed the need for doubling down on adjectives to meet the sensory part of the prompt and also accepting that this would be a major run-on sentence. Here is the poem I shared with my small group on Monday night:
we’re listening to Christmas music, joy
filling our hearts and souls ~ chicken pot pie
piping hot and broiler-top crisped and browned
our three schnozzles snoozing by the fireplace
Sam’s Club Members Mark Old Vine Zinfandel
spilling from a ruby red wine chalice
catching each sparkle of shimmering light
Vermont Flannel blankets warming our toes
in forest green and rich brown earth-tone plaid
on this crisp night here in rural Georgia
I’m so thankful for my writing friends who always inspire me to try new forms and challenges. And Denise showed up – – after a long day of travel, in a Chipotle, still not yet having arrived at her destination for the evening. The four of us each shared a poem and caught up on life, and for that time of fellowship, I am grateful.
……and just like that, after Halloween candy and football player costumes and all the fun of fall festivals including a hayride around the campus at work, we are thrust unmercifully into the Christmas season. The candy at Dollar General is half price, and the one seasonal row they’d already dedicated to Christmas has expanded to three. It’s the season of eating, and no one is waiting on anything.
Today’s poem is a shadorma, a form similar to Haiku in syllable pattern. This form has six lines, and the syllable count on each line, in order, is 3,5,3,3,7,5. I’m a fan of eating dessert first, so I’m urging all pie lovers to take full advantage of throwing out the rules and questioning whether there is really a main course.
I never laugh as much as when our book club gets together! The books we read and the times we spend talking about them are a balm for my soul.
People have asked me how we “do” our club, because there are so many ways to structure a book club. First, we decide on a book based on someone’s recommendation. We’ve already picked dates through the end of summer and have marked them on our calendars so we guard our time. We sent out digital invitations so we don’t plan any other meetings by accident. Priorities.
Once we know our book and our next meeting time, we read and try not to talk about it with anyone reading it so we don’t give spoilers. Our regularly scheduled gathering spot is our local coffee shop, where they have all the best coffees, a few food items, and the best downstairs couch circle anywhere in town – the kind of leather couches you slide down deep into and wonder if you’re ever going to be able to get out once you get in. The kind with a big coffee table in the middle so there’s room for mugs and plates and stacks of books. We go there and pull out our general book questions as a discussion guide. Sometimes we use questions designed specifically for a book – – like at our most recent gathering, when I’d forgotten to bring the list of universal book questions. Another group member pulled up a set online that we discussed.
The part so many book clubs don’t “do” that sets our club apart is the action part. Every member of our club has a streak of adventure dwelling in our hearts, so we like to think of something the book inspires us to want to do, and then go do that thing. For example, in The Beautiful and the Wild, one of the characters was always drinking tea. One of our members found a local tea room and went for brunch to try different teas, even trying on all the hats and a pair of gloves, too. In The God of the Woods, the characters ate s’mores, so we met for appetizers at the home of one of our members and made s’mores. Having the adventure part adds to the experience of any book, because we do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do on any normal day of our lives. We stay young.
Our latest book, Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You, was released as a movie this month, so we made it our October selection and met for dinner and a movie. We spent as much time discussing the movie and the differences between the book and screenplay, and we were still talking in the dark theater when the manager came in, turned on the lights, and said he was “surprised” to see us there. He was shutting the place down. We were just glad we didn’t get locked in the movie theater overnight. We imagined the headline with humor and horror: Local School District Employees Earlier Reported Missing Found Locked in Local Theater Overnight.
Our next book is The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. The movie comes out December 19, and of course we all have our Regal apps for movie tickets up and running and have booked the date. We’ve decided to leave after the credits finish rolling – – just in case.
October, the perennial month of Candy, is the kiss of death for a sweetsaholic like me. Things can spiral out of control in a skinny minute in a month like this, and the closer it gets to a day like today, Halloween, the stash set aside for any trick or treaters has dwindled considerably. Today seems a great day for a Shadorma – a poem with six lines in syllables of 3,5,3,3,7,5.
I worked with two Humanities teachers last week on writing poetry from prose, using a blog post I’d written last week. I remembered that Mo Daley, a friend from one of my writing groups, shared this technique after attending a conference where she learned more about how to engage students with writing.
To pull poetry from prose, students took their own stream of consciousness writing from the previous week and marked an X on it. They listed the words under the X marks and used those words to create a poem.  To write X Marks the Spot poems, you can add other words and you don’t have to use them all – the idea is to create a word bank from the words you X.  You can use any form of poetry for this – this is merely an idea technique.            Â
My words:
abide daily we Jesus car granddaughter unison play they Silas of patient tempted packaged gathered can to died children how did story because for when boxes the Tennessee toys kitchen remind and of daughter challenging game was since Jesus and together
I created a writing workshop with two of our Humanities teachers to acquaint students in our 9th Grade Academy with way that they can create poetry from prose. Here is one form of writing we used to mark the geography of a place from our writing. I was using my blog post from Tuesday to model how to let prose inspire poetry. Today’s poem is a Zip Ode.
Zip Ode Poetry
A Zip Ode takes a Zip Code of a place, written vertically, and uses that many words on each line.
Example: Sevierville, Tennessee’s Zip Code is 37764
When the high school teacher called asking if I would be willing to come write poetry alongside students, I jumped at the offer. As a District Literacy Specialist mostly wrapped up in the operational world of data and school improvement, I miss the opportunities of the classroom. That’s where we make the biggest difference.
She read to me the AP Standard on taking poetry from prose and wanted to feature blackout poetry. As we chatted, I shared with her my blog post that day and gave her a copy of 90 Ways of Community, a book on poetry written by one of my writing groups. Together, we considered the various poetry forms that we could use if we modeled the process ~ blackout and found poetry were already on the list, but we added Haiku, X Marks the Spot, Acrostic, Golden Shovel, and Zip Odes as a geographic timestamp bonus of sorts. The students have already created their own personal writing, and we’ll show them how I used a blog post to extract poetry and urge them to do the same.
We’ll model the process.
We’ll feature an overview of possibilities – – a menu of choices – – and then watch their creativity flow onto their paper like they’re mining for gems that they pull out to polish and sparkle.
I’ll remind them that poetry is a process – – not a product. In fact, I’ll probably open the class with something like, “poets and artists have a mindset of creating a lot of bad poems and a lot of bad art.” They’ll wonder who the crazy lady is, but I’ll explain what I mean: perfection is not the goal. Writing is the goal. Thinking is the goal. Not every race is a marathon, not every photo wins awards, and not every book gets 5 stars – – it’s finding the pieces of what we do well and building on those parts so that the process becomes somewhat of a habit. I’ll explain to them that I think in metaphors and syllables, and I take a lot of random pictures to come back to little things I see that will work their way into poems.
Take this, for example:
These kids are a big part of my life. Here stand five of my seven grandchildren in the very spot at the top of a mountain in Sevierville where their parents were married in May 2012. Their other grandparents own that land, and at the bottom, there is a fishing pond. Let’s take a deeper look.
Blazing a trail, tackle box and all
I see two boys (yes, they’re boys – they just have lots of hair) exploring the trail that leads to the pond, tacklebox in hand, ready to to cast a line and spend time fishing. I’ll explain to them that already, my thoughts are swirling in metaphors of adventure, seeking, a quest, a tackle box of what it takes to find, a hook for the found thing to be caught, and the patience and grit to stick with it – and the treks through the mud and the weeds to get there.
Because fishing isn’t about the fish. You can go to the grocery store and get fish. You can order fish from a restaurant – or better yet, you can Door Dash fish.
No, fishing is no more about the fish than poetry and art are about perfection. It’s about the adventure and the process, and the wait for just the right inspiration.
Beckham, who never stands still and quiet, is standing still and quiet – fishing!
It’s about engaging in what it takes to do a thing, whether writing a poem or creating art or catching fish. It’s having the stick-to-it-ness to stand still and be quiet for two hours of a morning and be determined when you’d almost always otherwise be doing something else, but you learn to love a thing and know that there is something, something, something that will bite and that you’ll reel it in and be proud of it, whether it’s big or small.
River with his fish
You’ve caught something you’re proud of, and you can’t wait to share it with the world. So you pose for the photo, holding a fish mouth open the way you’ve been taught, holding the fish a little closer to the camera to make it look bigger than it actually is, and you see the great things about your fish.
And then you release it back into the world, knowing that next time you come back, you may catch that same one again – – or something different, like that turtle your sister caught.
Noli’s shoes tell the story: she’s seizing the day!
Either way, the one thing you cannot buy, like that Door Dashed fish, is the mud on your own shoes from the lived experience.
And that is what poetry is – life, experience, thinking, waiting, casting a line and seeing what comes up on the end of the hook.
So while I may say I’m going to school today, what I’m really doing is going fishing
Kindred Spirits From L-R: Jennifer, me, Martina, Joy, Jill, Janette
Last year, we started a Central Office book club in our rural Georgia school district. This was Janette’s idea, but she graciously allowed me to help organize its inception. We asked another local book club if we could read their books they were not using, and we gave each title another round of reading before placing these in Little Free Libraries according to the grant provisions with which they were originally purchased. This club has become a sisterhood, and much like my writing group friends, our interactions go beyond the daily water station office talk into what goes on in our lives and how we feel about issues that arise in the books we read. We connect on a deeper level this way.
We’re a cross-section of society, which lends to richer discussion. I’m the oldest. Martina is the youngest. All of us are mothers and wives. Two of us are real sisters (Jill and Joy). Four of us are grandmothers. Two of us are preachers’ kids. We’ve all been through some tough times and bring differing perspectives to our conversations. But what’s most important is that we are all readers, we understand that every book is not going to get five stars but that there is something to take from each, and we embrace our collective voice on womanhood and readership. We’re the Kindred Spirits – and we are aptly named.
Last April, I shared a poem with our group each day during National Poetry Month, and while most were written by well-known poets, one or two were poems that I wrote. They know that writing poetry is what keeps me balanced at all times, but particularly in tough times – of which there have been many lately in my life. When my father died in June, I was sad that he would not be here to see the book I’d been working on for so long come out on Labor Day weekend.
Imagine my surprise when my Kindred Spirit sisters knew I was feeling down and threw an after-lunch dessert party for me and presented me with a poem that they had all written to cheer me up and celebrate me. I was moved to tears as they explained that they had each written two lines, and that the lines appeared in alphabetical order according to their names: Janette, Jennifer, Jill, Joy, and Martina.
I framed it and keep it among my greatest treasures; it means so much to me that in a time when I was grieving, my reading sisters built me up and reminded me that we are all in this together – – and that the tears along the journey can be turned into laughter and joy. We feel it in our local coffee shop on our small town square each month as we sip our brews and talk about the characters we have come to love (and dislike). We feel it at work as we deal with our day to day duties, and we will feel it in the movie theater later this week as we watch our monthly novel come to the big screen: Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You.
I’m not sure where I’d be without my reading group – and my writing groups. Today is a day to celebrate all of you (if you’re reading this, it includes you, too) who make a difference in my life. My glass is raised to you, dear friends, for all that you mean to me. You inspire me, and I appreciate each and every one of you!
Poem written for me by my Kindred Spirits book club
Front: Jill, Janette, Martina; Back: me, Joy (Jennifer is missing)
Books We’ve Read in our Club So Far:
The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
The Last Flight by Julie Clark
Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
The Wedding People by Allison Espach
One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury
God of the Woods by Liz Moore
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Regretting You by Colleen Hoover
and
Selected Poems-a-Day for National Poetry Month
Book Club Haiku
we’re always on the
lookout for our next great read
….any suggestions?
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for hosting Slice of Life
I’m honored to be the host today for the second day of the October Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can read my full prompt below, but also please visit the website link above later in the day to see the poems that others have written.
I subscribe to Poetry, the periodical published by The Poetry Foundation that features modern-day poets and their poems. I enjoy the inspiration that I find here – seed starters of ideas, borrowed lines, concepts, and forms. Such was the case when I stumbled across Magic 8 Ball by Nicole Gonzalez. You can read her poem below, noting the questions she asks, with those classic 8-ball answers that pop up in a black-liquid window, sharing all the truths and secrets of universe.
Consider the 12 Magic 8 Ball answers below. Use the responses to craft a poem with questions followed by these answers. Your poem can be humorous, serious, or completely random. You may choose to use all of the responses below, some of them or you own responses, or the same response every time (like a broken Magic 8 Ball to incorporate repetition).  You could even make it a fun game by writing your list of questions on one side, writing the answers on strips of paper, and then pulling the answers from a hat to make the poetry writing experience feel extra-magical today.  Also, there is a Magic 8 Ball online that will generate answers (I learned this from Kevin, the first poet to respond to the prompt this morning).
Concentrate and ask again
Outlook not so good
Very doubtful
Without a doubt
Better not tell you now
My sources say no
It is decidedly so
Ask again later
Yes definitely
My reply is no
Cannot predict now
You may rely on it
Here is my poem, taken from the inspiration of Nicole Gonzalez:
Divine Truths in a Magic 8 Ball
Is this the real life?
You may rely on it.
Are we really gonna need a bigger boat?
Cannot predict now.Â
Can you milk a cat, Greg?
My sources say no.
Will Birkenstocks ever be sexy?
Outlook not so good.
Do you believe in magic?
Yes definitely.
Is Pig 3 out there if you only see the ones numbered 1, 2, and 4?
Very doubtful.
If it all fell to pieces tomorrow, would you still be mine?
Ask again later.
Is this love?
Concentrate and ask again.Â
Is she really going out with him?
Without a doubt.
Does the hand that rocks the cradle rule the world?
It is decidedly so.
Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?
My reply is no.Â
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Better not tell you now.Â
I’m passing the pen to you to write your own poem. Please share it on the http://www.ethicalela.com website!
