a blog about teaching, learning, reading, writing

  • Palinode 30/30 #npm23

    Palinode 30/30 #npm23

    For today’s poem, the last of the month, I decided to play along with NaPoWriMo’s challenge to write a palinode, which I’d never heard of before. A palinode is a poem that essentially “retracts” a position you’ve held in a previous poem. The draft of this was much longer, but I found that I didn’t…

  • Haiku 29/30 #npm23

    Haiku 29/30 #npm23

    The 3-5-3 haiku is surprisingly challenging to write. That’s just not many syllables! A couple of mornings ago, I was sitting in my classroom preparing for the day and realized I could hear foghorns from the river. morning mistblankets the cityfoghorn blares

  • Ode 28/30 #npm23

    Ode 28/30 #npm23

    Since the Poetry Sisters are celebrating poetry this month by writing “In the Style of Neruda,” I thought I’d play along with a quick ode. Ode to a Coffee Shop First, thesmellfruity, smoky, sweet Then, thetablethat one in the corner Then, thepeopletalking loud enough to overhear Finally, thenotebookopen to catch it all.

  • Book Spine 27/30 #npm23

    Book Spine 27/30 #npm23

    Today I decided to create a book spine poem. Once I chose the topic–from a book called The Reading Mind–I added the extra constraint that I couldn’t use any of the books on my teaching shelves, since there are so many good reading-related titles there. I wondered what would emerge if I scanned shelves that…

  • Haiku 26/30 #npm30

    Haiku 26/30 #npm30

    It’s only been in the past few years that I discovered haiku don’t always follow the 5-7-5 syllable count I was taught. In fact, according to Akita International Haiku Network, the most common haiku form currently is a 3-5-3 format, Today’s haiku borrows a topic and words from Laura Purdie Salas’s Digging for Poetry National…

  • Free Verse 25/30 #npm30 #sol23

    Free Verse 25/30 #npm30 #sol23

    Only a few days left of April’s National Poetry Writing Month, and while I have really enjoyed writing a poem a day, I will also be very grateful for the arrival of May 1! I had no ideas in my head at all today plus limited time, and I toyed with the idea of calling…

  • Cinquain 24/30 #npm23

    Cinquain 24/30 #npm23

    One of my favorite book organizational innovations is a shelf of favorite rereads, collected in one place for convenience: Jane Austen, Barbara Pym, Nick Hornby’s book essays for The Believer, I Capture the Castle, The Brontes Went to Woolworths, May Sarton’s Journals, Laurie Colwin’s food writing. But lately, as I’ve been exploring Detroit’s used bookstores,…

  • List 23/30 #npm23

    List 23/30 #npm23

    Today I’m playing along with a prompt from Ethical ELA to write about your dedicated “space to look and think,” a phrase borrowed from Sandra Cisneros’s introduction to House on Mango Street. This Space to Look and Think Curiosities: antlers, driftwood, stoneA wooden bowl, a hand-woven basketA cat or sixBeds, blankets, toys, trees of the…

  • Golden Shovel 22/30 #npm23

    Golden Shovel 22/30 #npm23

    I thought I’d have to give the golden shovel on Margaret and Molly’s poetry calendar a pass because I’ve never managed to write one, but then I saw Sonia using news headlines to write golden shovels for her poetry month project and I thought that might work better. I wrote down a headline that Cathy…

  • Tanka 21/30 #npm23

    Tanka 21/30 #npm23

    Today I’m playing along with Laura Purdie Salas’s Digging for Poetry National Poetry Month project. This is a fun challenge each day, as Laura draws a game board card with five words that could be possible topics and then shares a handful of magnetic poetry words. Using her Day 19 topics and words, I decided…

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