Tag: poetry

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November 3

After a long weekend working in the yard taking advantage of the gorgeous middle Georgia weather, the best remedy for the sore muscles was a Sunday evening glass of wine in my favorite glass. It’s a ruby chalice that belonged to my parents, and I found it as we were cleaning out the house on the heels of Dad’s death back in June. Red was my mother’s favorite color, and so I brought this cup home with me for those wine nights when I need to unwind and relax. I like that there’s not another one quite like it that I’ve seen anywhere – – and that I can remember Mom as I kick back and take it easy at the end of a productive weekend.

Peaceful, Easy Feeling

I have half-filled my ruby chalice

with Sam’s Club Old Vine Zinfandel

the best affordable wine

here in front of the fire

Eagles music plays

my sore muscles

feeling peace

with each

sip

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November Shadorma

November Shadorma

go ahead

eat the pumpkin pie

before the

turkey comes

out of the oven all browned

is there a main course?

……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.

For me, it’s the pie.

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Book Club Pick: Regretting You

first we read the book~

then, our club met for dinner

before the movie

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.

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October Candy Sweetsaholic Shadorma

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.

Sweetsaholic Shadorma

confession:

sweets are my struggle

today I

ate three rolls

of Smarties (the giant kind)

and have no regrets

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October 28 – X Marks the Spot Poems

X Marks the Spot Poem

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.             

  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

       Belonging

we gathered in the kitchen

with the children

laughed in unison

at the stories

as we ate together

at a table that seated

everyone – past, present, and future

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October 27 – Golden Shovel Poems

I worked with two Humanities teachers in our school district 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.

Golden Shovel Poems

A Golden Shovel poem takes a sentence or phrase from prose (or another poem) and writes it vertically, placing those words at the beginning or end of each line.  Ask me about double, triple, quadruple and quintuple shovels…..

Singing Off-Key

We spent the week together having fun and

Can’t wait to 

Leave on our next family trip, singing

Jesus, Take the Wheel with Carrie

In off-key high notes through the back roads of

Tennessee, Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain

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October 26 – Found Poetry

I worked with two Humanities teachers in my school district to design a writing workshop for students in our 9th Grade Academy with ways that they can create poetry from prose. Here is one form of writing we used in two variations: found poetry and blackout poetry. I was using my blog post from Tuesday to model how to let prose inspire poetry.

Found Poetry

Found poetry is poetry that is found in the words of existing poems or prose and created as a new original work.  Some poets use pages of discarded books or those from Little Free Libraries as a supply of pages. Blackout poetry is a form of found poetry.  In found poetry, you use any existing writing and swipe those words to go in your own poem.  In blackout poetry, you draw black lines through the words you did not select for your poem.  

A Silly Selfie

I thought it

   was a

          silly 

                selfie

                            this gift ~ 

                                                     one of the grandchildren 

            posing

                          playing

                                            the look on his face

                                                                      priceless

Here is what my blackout poem looked like in print form:

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October 25: Zip Odes

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

Zip Ode to Sevierville, Tennessee

3 Jesus came along

7 with us on our family vacation in

7 October, keeping children and adults in check

6 Hiding Him, Finding Him, Remembering Him

4 in thoughts and actions