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Howdy, Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday! (the link to this week's PF host is below.)
First: welcome, welcome to our newest TeachingAuthor, Carla! I am in awe of your writer's journey, Carla, because when I learned that we would be discussing non-fiction, my legs trembled and my palms grew cold and damp. Unlike you and Mary Ann, in her wonderful first salvo on this topic, I am not, by nature, a researcher. I am NOT a "Just the facts, M'am."
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| Jack Webb as Joe Friday in Dragnet, from Wikipedia |
But... is this really true?
Well...I DO tell my
students that real details bring fiction to life, and have them listen to the following
short audioclip from StoryCorps. Talk about bringing a subject to life! The details Laura Greenberg shares with her daughter are priceless--not to mention hilarious.
Still, I struggled to write poems for
The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science (
Pomelo Books). By "struggled" I mean I read science articles and wrote tons of stinky poems about rocks, astronauts, materials science, the expiration dates on seed packages,electricity, science experiments...and on and on and on.
But...I
dread gettting facts wrong--my worst nightmare. (Confession:
writing these blog posts scares the bejeebers out of me.)
In fiction, I can fly my fairy-self to Planet Bodiddley and make up all the materials science by myself. But if I have to convey facts? And then somehow bake them into a tasty poetry pie? I get tied up in knots. My writing becomes stiff as a board. I'm afraid of...
But finally I stumbled on this fascinating fact, in a review of
The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman:"The water coming out of your kitchen tap is four billion years old and might well have been sipped by a Tyrannosaurus rex."
Wow. Think of the water you drink. Think of the water you
take a BATH in!!!! Ten versions of "Space Bathtub" later (with considerable coaching from the ever-patient anthologists,
Janet Wong and
Sylvia Vardell) this fact became a poem for kindergartners:
OLD WATER
by April Halprin Wayland
I am having a soak in the tub.
Mom is giving my neck a strong scrub.
Water sloshes against the sides.
H2O's seeping into my eyes.
The wet stuff running down my face?
She says it came from outer space!
The water washing between my toes
was born a billion years ago.
from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science(c) 2014 April Halprin Wayland, all rights reserved
If you're a K-5th grade teacher, this book is so immediately useful, you'll cry with relief when you open it. Trust me. For details, and to watch under-two minute videos of poets (Bobbi Katz, Kristy Dempsey, Mary Lee Hahn, Susan Blackaby, Buffy Silverman, Linda Sue Park and me) reciting our science poems from this anthology, go to Renee LaTulippe's
No Water River. Again, trust me. (A little foreshadowing: Pomelo Books' newest anthology,
Celebrations! comes just in time for Poetry Month this year--stay tuned!)
Here's a terrific vimeo of "Old Water" produced by
Christopher Alello:
posted safely and scientifically by April Halprin Wayland wearing safety goggles
218 poems by 78 poets!
The same wonderful format as the K-5 and 6-8 editions, with a poem a day for each grade level AND a "Take Five" instructional focus with connections to the new
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
PLUS...NEW FOR THIS EDITION...
Illustrated student editions by grade level, without the Take 5 teacher notes, and WITH bonus poems!
Order yours now at
Pomelo Books or on Amazon.
Yes, you can find my poems in this edition...SIX of them this time! 3 in first grade and 3 in third grade!
It's Madness indeed--the
March Madness Poetry Tournament hosted by Ed DeCaria! On Monday evening I received my 10-seeded word--HYPOCRISY-- which in 36 hours I had to develop into a poem worthy of competition. The word gave me pause, certainly; I worried that I would, like many with even more challenging, abstract words, have to spend my eight allowed lines defining it. But my 10-year-old easily demonstrated his understanding of "hypocrite," so I forged ahead....
and wrote a rather serious, instructive piece that just didn't seem to be the right thing for the competition:
A Little Light Lying
Your parents teach you social graces:
“Really—you look good in braces!”
We say what we don’t really mean;
The edge of truth’s a touch too keen.
But falseness leaves an ashy trace
A lasting mask tough to erase
Face the mirror, fail to see—
That’s genuine hypocrisy.
~Heidi Mordhorst 2013
(draft)
So I decided to start completely over, with something involving a hippo. Obvious, right? And naturally comical. And then--now that I review my Tuesday night train of thought, I can barely discern how I got there, but it had to do with reading a lot about hippos and watching a lot of amateur YouTube videos of hippos and crocodiles--a line of poetry came into my head: "How doth the little crocodile..." That was all I had at first.
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
Wikipedia similarly rarely lets me be, so there I discovered something I had forgotten--that Alice's crocodile recitation is her garbled version of a serious, instructive poem of the 18th century poet Isaac Watts. His poem is about a bee and is usually titled
Against Idleness and Mischief
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!
How skilfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labors hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.
In works of labor or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
In books, or work, or healthful play,
Let my first years be passed,
That I may give for every day
Some good account at last.
Et voila! A concept. By only a couple of hours past my bedtime, I had borrowed Isaac's form and diction along with Lews's parodic twist and submitted this to the MMPT competition:
Against Falsity and Pretense
How doth the chubby hippo
Improve his shining hide
And bob the waters of the Nile
On every muddy side!
How lazily he opens wide!
How jolly seems to be!
Then crushes skulls of crocodiles
With sweet hippo-crisy.
Is that cheating? I decided not (and it was, after all, AT LEAST a couple of hours past my bedtime). While not wholly original, I reckoned that I had done enough creative reworking to justify calling it mine, and part of the work was a new appreciation for the historical antecedents of our modern poetry for kids.
At this writing the competition is fierce! I'm up against Alvaro Salinas Jr. (aka M.M. Socks) and his funny "LeeAnn's Farm," and after an early lead I find that the the voting is EXACTLY EQUAL! Stay tuned to find out if my hypocritical bee/crocodile/hippo can garner enough votes to get me to Round Two!
And now we must give a bit of Poetry Friday attention to the PF Anthology for Middle Schools, edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong. I'm wondering what would have happened if those clever editors had told us what the weekly themes in the book would be, so that all us poets could have written to assignment, as we're doing in the Tournament or may have done for the poetry tag e-books? Would our pieces have been any better? Worse? More risky and edgy as we ventured outside our own comfort zones, as we're doing with these crazy words Ed has given us? Process is soooooo interesting!
The Poetry Friday round-up is with Jone today at Check It Out! See you there!
The Poetry Friday Anthology:
Poems for the School Year
with Connections to the Common Core
compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong
This supremely practical anthology, which will be available in both soft-cover book and e-book versions, is the latest feat of magic worked by that Daring Duo of Poetry, Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.
It contains 218 new poems by 75 of the best poets now writing for children, but unlike other quality anthologies of literary poetry, this one is organized with the busy classroom teacher in mind (and I should know). In other words, it's the best of educational and literary publishing all rolled into one lively package!
It includes 36 poems for each grade level K-5, which is one for each week of a standard 180-day school year. Even better, the poems have been organized according to broad themes that repeat for each grade level, so that in Week 1, all grade levels enjoy a "School" poem, in Week 18 every kid K-5 gets a "Human Body" poem, and in Week 29 there are poems about...poetry! There are heartfelt and serious poems under themes like "A Kinder Place" and "Families," and hootingly playful poems under "Stuff We Love" and "Nonsense." By the end of the school year, when kids have had lots of poetry experience, the themes are related to poetic devices such as "Metaphor and Simile" and "Personification," addressed at accessible levels.
For the few teachers who are truly poetry-phobic, this anthology is a gift. It says, "Take a few minutes just one day a week to make poetry your focus...we'll help you do it right, do it in community, and enjoy all the rewards!" To support the less confident, each poem comes with 5 quick tips for sharing, teaching, enjoying:
*a hook for introducing the poem,
*a developmentally appropriate way for students to join in reading and speaking the poem,
*ideas for discussion and teachable moments,
*and finally, a connection to another poem in the anthology or another poetry book to explore.
Of course, many more teachers will be doing as I'll do, dipping in here and there to select poems not by week but by theme, and looking beyond my own grade level to find other gems that I'll bring into our curriculum through content connections, writing and performance. I'll be highlighting some of my favorites in coming posts, and you can bet that those of us contributors who also participate in Poetry Friday in the Kidlitosphere will be sharing more tips and tricks and on their blogs, too!
But...but... my daughters really *did* look good in braces.
:)
I posted about my MM daffodil process today, too! So much fun to see how all these poems came to be. I like your first one, but the title of your second is hysterical, as is the poem. But you still changed it a bit, no? The one posted has "from side to muddy side" and simple "hypocrisy" at the end, I think. So methinks you did even MORE tweaking.
Either way, I loved your hippo! It's a nail-biter!
That's a great question about the PFAMS. I would have loved to have an assigned topic rather than shoot in the dark, but then again, I think they might also have let the poems guide the topic breakdowns. Who knows? I personally love writing to a given word or word list, which is what I do in my daily work. It's challenging but freeing at the same time.
Heidi, I absolutely loved your hippo poem (what an astounding way make "hypocrisy" understandable to kids as young as seven years old!) and I voted for it. I know there are only a few minutes left to vote - oh, I can't stand thinking you might not be offering up excellent poems to entertain us all the way through to the March Madness finals! Seeing a favorite go down to defeat is harder than the whole poetry-under-pressure process of coming up with something to submit, in my opinion.
Hi, Heidi. I love all of these writing process posts! You, Renee, Liz and I all shared poems we didn't enter or pieces of poems as they developed.
Your hippo, that hypocrite, is adorable. Just naughty enough to be fun.
I liked the hippo poem you wrote for the competion, but I like the un-entered one even more.
I've also got two un-entered poems on my blog -- and I preferred both of the unentered ones to he one I entered but I picked the most kid-appropriate of the lot.
I love hearing the back story and process that went into the tournament poems. Congrats for your poem entry - I loved it! =)
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the evolution of your hippo. I also watched you-tube videos (of dung beetles, not hippos) and readi up on wikipedia to find juicy tidbits to include. I loved and voted for your chubby hippo....drat, with your herculean effort and stellar result, I wish you were going on to the next round.
Thanks for another (+Renee's) fascinating process post.
I'm pouting a bit that your hippo didn't move you on...
This MMPoetry tournament is so about Poetry Love and the posts I have read with the back stories makes it all the more interesting. I loved your hippo/hypocrisy poem and was pulling for you, Heidi!! I actually like the one here even better. Congratulations to any winners on this page. I don't know yet who won in R1 Fl2, must go and look. Heidi, I send out big hugs to you often. If it wasn't for you, I don't know when I would have found my poetry people in the Kidlitosphere. I'm even writing again. Glad to have you back. Do you have any reciters yet in your Kdg? I would love to visit when I get to my friend's in Baltimore some day!
Janet F.
PS This is in the "oh ye of little faith" category.....at first I thought the words for MMP were too hard and too obscure. Proved wrong, though I think slightly more usable and known words are better for kids. The authletes ROCKED the first round. All poems amazed for different reasons.
It's so fun to see the process. Thanks!