One last poem for April: The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins

I was reading Emily Dickinson today and I really want to post "My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun" but  this one is kinder and gentler and thematically appropriate.

The Trouble with Poetry
Billy Collins

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night--
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky--

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies in the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills  me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti--
to be perfectly honest for a moment--

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.



National Poetry Month is almost over, and I'm a little sad. I'm feeling sorry for the poems that I haven't shared with my (admittedly very small) public. I think I'll keep tossing them up here every once in a while, just to keep myself reading.

Poem #13: the lesson of the moth

the lesson of the moth
don marquis

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

This poem is from a series of poems (newspaper columns by Don Marquis, actually) written by Archy, a cockroach who was a free verse poet in a previous life. He is speaking to Mehitabel, an alley cat who was Cleopatra in a previous life. Archy types his poems on a typerwriter, jumping from key to key (hence no caps). I don't remember how or when I came across this poem, but isn't it great? 

For more about Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel, look here.

Poem #12: Not So. Not So.

Not So. Not So.
Anne Sexton

I cannot walk an inch
without trying to walk to God.
I cannot move a finger
without trying to touch God.
Perhaps it is this way:
He is in the graves of the horses.
He is in the swarm, the frenzy of the bees.
He is in the tailor mending my pantsuit.
He is in Boston, raised up by skyscrapers.
He is in the bird, that shameless flyer.
He is in the potter who makes clay into a kiss.

Heaven replies:
Not so! Not so!

I say thus and thus
and heaven smashes my words.

Is not God in the hiss of the river?

Not so! Not so!

Is not God in the ant heap,
stepping, clutching, dying, being born?

Not so! Not so!

Where then?
I cannot move an inch.

Look to your heart
that flutters in and out like a moth.
God is not indifferent to your need.
You have a thousand prayers
but God has one.

Poem #12: Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Enough with the feel-good stuff. Here's an ass-kicker:

Dulce et Decorum est
Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime. -
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est 
Pro patria mori.

It's horrible and heart-wrenching. The last bit in Latin means "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country," a quote from the Roman poet Horace. I haven't read the Wiki on Horace, so I don't know if he ever fought in an actual battle and witnessed firsthand what he wrote about. The line is inscribed in front of the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery. God knows that soldiers who fight and die for a great good cause deserve to be honored; but I wonder, along with Owen, about just how sweet and fitting their deaths really are.

Seven Nonfiction Journal Prompts That Work

So I tried one of the "one morning I woke up" jumpstart prompts with Tai last week and it kind of bombed. The "design  your own school" prompt worked well in September, but "I woke up as small as a mouse"--not so much. "Um," he said tentatively, "Can I just write about what I did on clonewarsadventures.com?"

Well, okay.

I'm not giving up on the mouse prompt. But if you have a kid who does not particularly like to make up fanciful stories, here are some non-fiction options. Tai used to rely on option 5 last year, and now he loves options number 1 and 2.

1. Write about your latest exploits in the game you played today. What are your hopes/plans/goals for the next time you play?
2. What did you build in Minecraft today? How did you do it? What are you planning next?
3. Pick a few useful/important/cool game items and explain why they are important/useful/cool.
4. Pick a few interesting/important/cool objects from a favorite game, movie, story, etc. and describe them as if for a DK Encyclopedia. (one sentence per item is fine, if there are four or five items. One item with four or five sentences is even better!) Drawing them is okay, but it extends the writing time.]
5. Draw a spaceship (or car, or bike, or whatever) with special features and capabilities. Label and explain their uses.
6. Draw a castle, (palace, fort, fairy dwelling, space station, house) with whatever special features you like. Label and explain.
7. Draw a map of the room you would love to have, including colors, magic portals, hidden weapons caches, and explain what you've drawn. Label and explain.

One variation--which Tai came up with, bless his heart--would be to respond to prompt #1 in the voice of your child's online avatar. Or the avatar's arch-enemy! Great practice with voice and point of view.

Quote of the Week

I am not saying students should write sloppily or they should write ungrammatically, but you don't hear Oprah gushing, "We chose this book because of its neat margins." Or "This is a fine novel, with not one misspelled word."

--Barry Lane

Poem #11: The Gift

The Gift
Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.

I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy's palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife's right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.