Poetry Friday - About Listening

          Visit Michelle H. Barnes at Today's Little Ditty for the Poetry Friday party today! Her focus this time is using poetry in the classroom with many people you will recognize contributing their own favorite tips. Thanks, Michelle!  
        My older granddaughter's teacher last year in second grade used Sharon Creech's Love That Dog to begin their poetry study. It was the class read aloud and an immersion in all the poets and poetry Creech put into the book. I know it started Ingrid into her own writing, but also a new idea, different poets wrote in different ways, so she could, too! 

          Last week, Michelle interviewed Nikki Grimes, sharing two poems, from Nikki's book, Bronx Masquerade, and another from her newest book, Between The Lines. These were poems Michelle also had shared in her recent teaching experience of students from Sequel Residential, a juvenile facility. And a poem from one of the students there was shared, from one who goes by the pen name, Lil Fujjii. That poem, "blurred lines" touched me. The TLD challenge for the month from Nikki is to write a Golden Shovel poem, but restrict it to lines from the three poems only. Nikki's book One Last Word fascinated me. I think I read it several times by the time I had made it to the end, re-reading, trying to see how she wove her own words while giving beautiful homage to the other poets' words, too.
        Though I haven't shared many, I did share one on the TLD Padlet this week, and now I've written another. The Parkland tragedy continues to be heavy on my mind. I know grief in a number of ways, know that everyone handles it in very personal ways, and all deserve respect for that. Within a family, expectations of what is "right" can loom large, and I hold great sympathy for the families in Florida who have lost beloved family members.   


from Lil Fujjii's poem, "blurred lines".

Listen

Evening fatigue, voices rise. I listen

but look out at the sky to

find a way to quiet the sound my

breaking breath makes of their story.

He loses all patience when and if

she cannot comply, says, “You

grieve in all the ways I can’t”.

I scream inside but here I just

choose quiet, quiet, knowing no one will listen

when I bravely go to bed to

face the dreams--not my

dreams, after all--no longer idyllic rhymes.

Linda Baie © All Rights Reserved

Poetry Friday - One More

          Thanks to Carol, at Carol's Corner, for hosting Poetry Friday and sharing a wonderful new book about a special man and his special library. 
           I hope everyone had a good day of Thanksgiving!

          You may like to read this article about the origin of the poem form, The Golden Shovel. Or you might want to read the whole book by Nikki Grimes, out early this year,  One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance, "all" written in this unique form. 

          Instead of 'one last word', I have one last poem about autumn, using one line from Loss by Carl Adamschick.

The first line must mention the wind,
in November, master of the lifting
of the trees, naked without their leaves,
stretching out as they turn from
summer, intermingling branches.
Linda Baie © All Rights Reserved