Month: April 2011

Another day of celebrations, at least, in this neck of the woods. It’s a national holiday today, as it’s Royal Wedding Friday. Perhaps this will kick off a fashion of having weddings on weekdays? But it’s enough for our purposes that the British Royal Family has helpfully highlighted Friday as an official Day of Awesome. It’s Poetry Friday, wot, wot? Cause for celebration every single week.

This week is the last Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month, and we have one last poem from the Oakwood Poetry Project on MARE’S WAR. This week’s poet is Sophie, who shares with us via collage a number of images of working women from WWII. While we have Lady Victory, clad in the flag, we have, too, Riveter Rosie and her cohorts, hair covered, overalls on, and ready to work for the good of the nation. The focus here is strong women, capable women, soulful sisters who sang and played and made their way through what was mostly seen as a man’s world. I love the movies and musical photographs chosen as well.

Today’s poem is entitled, “Everything She Wasn’t.” As before, the poem is copyrighted to the poets, — please respect the integrity of the poet, and do not reprint without their permission. Thanks.

Motherhood was considered the highest work of an American woman during the time of the War, and Sophie’s poem focuses on both Mare, and her mother, Edna Mae, and their work as mothers. “Edna Mae Boylen was not good at it/ She was not fit,” Sophie states. And indeed, this is supported by her unpacking the first few lines of the novel, which are used in the beginning of the poem:

Click to enlarge and read.

“Watch yourself”/ Is what she always said/When I got myself into trouble/

Was it really a/ Show of affection/ Or just her way of lettin’ me know/ I was on my own (emphasis mine).

Whoa.

Did you ever read that phrase that way? In Sophie’s keen ear, “Watch yourself” changes from being a parental warning not to cross a line, or a caution, to “watch yourself, ’cause I’m not watching you.” What an isolating, lonely-making statement. What could have been a statement of parental care becomes the ultimate declaration of “fend for yourself, kid.”

And yet, while identifying that Mare had a sucky mother, and her mothering skills were shaky at best, the poem goes on to celebrate Mare’s relationship to her grandchildren. “In my world/I’m nothing like her/And I know it/ Talitha and Octavia know it/ I want/ A better life for/ My granddaughters.” Because of Mare’s determination and foresight, not only do her granddaughters have better, she finally knows the truth about herself: she is everything, everything her mother was not.

On that satisfying note, we end our visit with the Oakwood School — thank you so much, Diana and Michelle, for sharing your students work, and thank you, poets, for being willing to be shared on my blog! Poetry Friday is brought to you by the number 6, and is hosted today at Tabatha Yeatt’s blog.

Oakwood School is where my inner child would attend, if I lived in Southern California and could shed a few (::cough:: Okay, more than “a few”) years. It’s an independent K-12 school in Hollywood, and is, by all descriptions, just. fabulous. They certainly have creative, incredibly gifted teachers; it’s been my privilege to work with Diana and Michelle and their 6th grade language arts classes for the second year in a row now as they read MARE’S WAR, and respond to it, and then interview me. The questions are always thought-provoking and well-presented, and I feel the love when I do my virtual visits to their classroom. The warmth of their response to the book, and to me personally, is really, really heartening.

The combined language arts group have shared a couple of their poems with me – and I’m going to put them in a special permanent collection on my site – but first, I’d like to share them with you. Since I have more poems than Fridays in April, I’m going to share a couple today. The poems are copyrighted to the individual poets, which is why they are only being shared as-is on their collage sheets — please respect the integrity of the poets, and do not reprint these ANYWHERE without their permission.

(As always, click to enlarge. You can then read the whole poem.)

The assignment was a collage plus a poem – and if you look at the photograph, there’s a “push me” at the bottom of the poem, where you can hear the poet read their own work. Ethan’s poem is a well constructed call-and-response structure, on the topic of expectations – his take on what Mare felt about her life.

If you’re not familiar with it, call-and-response is a well-known structure of the music of West Africa. It has filtered into African American music, and is used in jazz, blues, and gospel music. It is used in Christian churches as well, to elicit democratic communication. Imagine the speaker at church saying something, and all the people agreeing with an “Amen,” or a cantor singing a prayer, and the parishioners responding with a murmured, “Lord, hear our prayer.” Call-and-response is about leading your listener, a step at a time, toward a conclusion. It’s about participation, and I imagine this poem read out, as a paean to corporate grief, the sadness of a people. With lines like, “It hurts me that I am not treated the same way men are treated,” the female soldier rails against how unfair “this MAN’S Army” comes across to her. But the real kicker is the repeated response, “It hurts me that I expected any different.” Ouch. Lord, have mercy.

While Ethan explores Mare’s grief, Alex examines the literal and external command from Mare’s mother to “watch herself.” Alex watches Mare, through her daily chores and the grimness of her life. He writes imaginatively of Mare watching herself, commenting, “I’m not what I look like.” Mare, Alex wisely reminds us, is not just “helpless, bored, and poor;” there is more to her, and there is more to every single person we come across in this life.

My favorite lines echo an older, wiser Mare, perhaps speaking to Octavia and Talitha: “You never know what you’re up against/ So you might as well just watch yourself.”

I am, again, deeply privileged to have met these gentlemen poets, and I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Oakwood Poetry selection! Until next week…

The Poetry Friday round-up is today hosted at Madigan Reads, and from the look of her site, she reads a lot! Drop by to discover more poets during this special National Poetry Month.

EVERY YEAR, I think, “Oh, I have too much work to do to participate in this!” And yet, EVERY YEAR, here I am – clicking through blogs, reading, commenting, sighing deliciously. The excitement for National Poetry Month is contagious. Poetry Geeking is infectious. I can’t help but take part!

The Princesses are all participating in various ways – Liz and Andi did haiku last year, and both Liz and Andi will reprise that, as they are pretty much the Haiku Queens of our group. Kelly is combining yoga, tai chi and poetry in innovative ways, and Sara is poetry-ing away with Laura, who continues her consistent poetry exercises of “15 Words or Less” poems, based on a picture, and her newest venture, “Writing After Reading, which is a thought-provoking series of discussions and prompts. Instead of interviews this time around, Tricia is hitting the teaching angle, and highlighting a poem, a theme, a book, or a poet every day and suggesting ways to make poetry a regular part of life in the classroom.

Other poetry peeps involved are the great Gregory K., who is also fundraising for a poetry crusade called Poetry: Spread the Word!, which would make the poetry celebration last for much longer than a month! I’m excited to go over and contribute and cheer him on! Reprising the Alphabet Soup Poetry Potluck is the very dear Jama K. Rattigan. My cousin, Mary Lee Hahn, is going to write a poem a day in honor of National Poetry Month. She’s also playing a QR Code poetry game, which is utterly leaving my iPhone-less self in the dust. (Oh, well. It’s good to have cousins who are smarter than me.) David Elzey is doing Burma Shave poetry/twitku – you’ll have to read to find out exactly what that means!

What’s MY contribution going to be? Well, it will probably be limited to Fridays, but I have a few poems to share — poems which were written as part of a Language Arts project for Oakwood School in Hollywood, in response to MARE’S WAR. I’ll share a few lines from a few poems — and talk about how I feel they fit with what MARE’S WAR is all about.

Meanwhile, here’s my little Poetry Friday contribution for today. It matches my mood pretty well – I’m grateful for the twelve pages I wrote yesterday, the late afternoon sun that, after a morning of rain actually gave Tech Boy a mild sunburn on the way home (hah! You know we haven’t seen the sun in awhile for THAT to happen – he’s paper-white, poor boy), the earworm from the Rossini piece we just sang (Qui Tollis, if you want to know), the wind gusts that rattled the windows and provided an interesting sideways flight effect for the pigeons and gulls, the rain across the panes — just small things which keep me going. Te Deum.

Te Deum

by Charles Reznikoff

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day’s work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

The Latin words, “Tē Deum” translate literally as “You, God,” and is generally the form for a praise poem. This one is less religious and more spiritual than some, if that makes sense, and I hope it prompts you into your own simple statements of gratitude.

For those following, the Poetry Friday round-up is today hosted by Amy @ The Poem Farm, where second-grade haiku (Petetry!) is on tap today, and where there will be poetry all month long.