Tag: Nicole Stellon O’Donnell

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VerseLove Day 5: Antonymic Revelations

To bard or not to bard? That is today’s question from Jennifer Jowett of Michigan, our host for Day 5 of VerseLove at ethicalELA.com. Please join us to read poems, or write one of you own to share.

Jennifer encourages us to UNfind lines, making them opposite and see what they bring us in poetry. She says: “We’ve played with found lines. Sorted through them. Rearranged them. Created new poems from them.  But have we ever un-found them? Find a line of poetry that speaks to you. Un-find it by exchanging the main words with their antonyms. You may choose to keep smaller words like helping verbs, prepositions, and articles or use an opposite for those too. Write one line or several and join them together. Or use a line as a starting point for a longer piece.”

I’ve been reading Steam Laundry by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell, a living poet in Alaska, and I’m using lines from her collection today. Here are the original lines from the book:

Not the way I came (At Last an Invitation from Eldorado)

I thought of the egg (In the House of our New Marriage)

So we each took turns in the water (Tom and Elmer Dive for the Gun)

Some towns glitter (The New Camp)

When I lose myself (At Last an Invitation from Eldorado)

But here the sun spins around (Lost Luxury)

Here is my Antonymic Revelation Poem for today, and I’m grateful to Jennifer Jowett for inspiring us to write today.

Go on, Figure it out For Yourself

surely the way you stormed out

you did not consider the chicken

they didn’t brood-bathe in the dust

all farms lack luster

as you’ll discover for yourself ~

over yonder the moon hangs frozen

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Celebrating Living Poets: Nicole Stellon O’Donnell

It’s Day 5 of the Slice of Life Challenge at Twowritingteachers.org, and as I move through the month of March celebrating living poets, I think back to the summer that Penny Kittle invited readers to engage with You are No Longer in Trouble during the Book Love Summer Reading Club. I was mesmerized by the prose poems that Nicole Stellon O’Donnell wrote as she told of her life growing up a Principal’s kid and later becoming a teacher herself. This book is a treasure, and one in which I believe we can all see ourselves at some point of our lives. For me, it’s the poem Marriage, about second graders getting married in “a rash of weddings” at recess with flowers pressed into aluminum foil bouquets. Sheer treasure!

Nicole Stellon O’Donnell of Alaska is a master of prose poems! You can read more about her at this link.

I’ve used this collection to write a Cento by taking lines of her existing poetry and rearranging them into a new poem.

Tips for Not Sagging

Even the waitress at the post-funeral reception noticed

nothing about me sags.

Bag sagging between her hands,

it’s in the steps, in the motion of go, in the bent knees, the swing of an arm.

Never forget that.

Taken from these poems, in this order: Excuses for the Pilgrimage; A Teacher Playing a Movie Star Playing a Teacher; At Least Name What it Is; No One Takes Attendance at Commencement; What Not to Say to Your Students at the Juvenile Detention Center.

This month’s first ten days of Living Poets: A Sneak Peek of what is to come