SALT CITY VERSE – Page 11 – Mostly Poetry for Children

Quilting, Poetry, and Plums

Welcome to Poetry Friday, today hosted by Tabatha Yeatts HERE. Thank you, Tabatha for hosting. It’s a cool sunny beautiful day in Upstate New York. I have been thinking, as are many, about the storm in Florida and hope that people who need it find food and shelter and stay safe.

This week I quilted a small table runner for my sister who just moved to San Antonio, Texas. I made it by piecing different prints of fabric in stripes until I liked the way it looked. It was not difficult, but it was fun to arrange the patterns next to one another.

It was like moving words and lines around in a poem. I am currently reading HOW POEMS GET MADE, by James Longenbach, who teaches in Rochester, NY, published in 2018. ( Bear with me. Sometimes I write a blog post so I understand something better. It just might be the case here.)

Trust me, it a lot more challenging reading this heady book than making my little table runner, placing fabric pieces where I want them. But in this book the author showed me, in a concrete example, how the placement of a word in the right place can make a difference in the tone in a poem. I already knew that, but I felt it more clearly after reading his chapter on “tone.”

Longenbach gives us an example to think about, of a simple sentence written three ways. The bold-printed word in each version is to be accentuated.

You said that?
You said that?
You said that?

We see the same sentence, but the tone of each line is different depending on which word gets the accent. It’s fun to perform these three versions like an actor: horrified, or curious, or in an angry tone.

Now, given that accents can change tone, a poet in the process of writing a poem must decided where to place a word that she wants accentuated. Longenbach gives us the example of a poem by William Carlos Williams to help us think about it. Here are the first two stanzas:

To A Poor Old Woman by William Carlos Williams

munching a plum on
the street a paperbag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her. 

The rest of the poem can be read Here.

The first line of the second stanza feels satisfying. “They taste good to her.” But the next three lines, through enjambment of the line, we hear the same sentence five syllables differently. In line two, we read the word “good”as accentuated because it’s at the end of the line. In line three the word “taste” is accentuated because of where it appears at the end of the line. In general, a word at the end of a line gets noticed, and I can see it here. It alters the tone of what is being communicated.

I cannot describe it as well as professor Longenbach does, and I’ve greatly simplified the point, I am sure. But I understand perhaps better why enjambment and line endings are such important tools in any poets toolbox.

Just as I could have placed the fabric in my quilt a number of different ways to achieve a certain results. There are different ways to arrange words in a poem to achieve the accent and tone that you seek. I recommend this book if you want more than just the nuts and bolts of writing poetry.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!

Made of Stars

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Rose HERE at her blog, Imagine the Possibilities. Thank you for hosting, Rose.

Take the blinders from your vision, 

take the padding from your ears, 

and confess you've heard me crying, 

and admit you've seen my tears.
       MAYA ANGELOU, Excerpt from her poem, "Equality."

After posting a villanelle last week I wrote a few more. I became familiar with the form, and found it useful to try again. But there were none that I liked enough to share this week. Que lastima!

I know I’m not the only Poetry Friday blogger who watched the Ken Burns documentary on America and the Holocaust. It’s well worth the time and I hope everyone sees it, especially kids old enough to understand. Watch it Here on PBS. I know more about America’s response to Nazi Germany.

First of all, Hitler used our Jim Crow South and the treatment of Native Americans as guidance on what to do about the Jews. Though the killing of thousands appeared in newspapers, readers thought it was a lie. And that was a convenient belief for the many just didn’t want to help Jews.

What comes to mind when we think about the Holocaust? Most Americans think of death in gas chambers. However, that was just one creative and efficient method used. There were endless methods used to murder thousands and thousands of Jewish men, women and little children. Guns, being thrown from heights, starvation, exhaustion, exposure. One writer said Nazi methods and depravity was “bottomless.”

Ken Burns shows us the details of how Nazi thinking evolved and the genocide was organized. Many Americans eventually, over several years, came to believe the murdering was really happening, but by 1944, it was too late for the four million had already been killed.

Because of the racism of members in Congress and the State Department, America didn’t help Jews for a long time, though, near the end, heroic individuals supported by our government stepped up to smuggle thousands of Jews out of Europe. Of course, we owe a debt to the soldiers who fought in the war.

I learned Charles Lindbergh, once an American hero to many, who in the 1940’s was eventually recognized as a Nazi sympathizer, created a slogan, “America First.”

Years later, in 2016, many probably might have thought that slogan was new, not a recycled, stale, failed boxcar to a dark chapter of our past.

I offer this poem today.

A HUMAN GALAXY

Our bodies, made of cells
are like 
constellations

like the one who wears 
a belt,
another dipping water,
and others
all conjured from stars.

While we, 
swirl together
sharing our humanity
in our smaller 
and fragile universe. 

© Janice Scully 2022

Our children need to understand about white supremacy, Hitler and how all groups that are labeled “others” are treated. If they don’t, a Holocaust could happen again.

I am so grateful for our democracy and the efforts made by our President and others to keep it.

Thank you for reading! I am looking forward to a good weekend and hope you will have one too.

Thank you, Rose, for hosting Poetry Friday!

What is Poetry Friday? Look Here.

A Villenelle

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by the talented poet and children’s author Kat Apel, who hails from Australia, HERE. Thank you for hosting! I look forward to seeing what’s new down under.

I got lost in enjoying the summer here in Central New York. So I allowed myself enjoy being outside and contemplate my writing ambitions. But in September, feeling a bit out of it, I was glad to attend a small Zoom meeting with Jone McCullough and a few other poetry friends.

It was awesome seeing everyone! We talked about the market and, yes, the difficulties therein, but also just enjoyed chatting and laughing. I need to get on-line more regularly because I miss seeing friends, hearing of submission opportunities, getting book recommendations and especially showing support for the kid-lit community.

So now I’m renewing my engagement in poetry. I discovered this 2021 craft book, HOW TO WRITE A FORM POEM, by Tania Runyan. There are many placed to learn about forms, but this is an excellent book, covering the nuts and bolts and a form might be useful.

So, I chose to write a Villanelle this week. Runyan suggested that waiting for something, anything, might bring to mind a villanelle. So I wrote about waiting to say goodbye to a loved one who lives far away.

BACK TO THE WEST COAST


Phil is going to leave today,
Sometime, perhaps around two,
Exactly when, he didn’t say.

Grown-up offspring cannot stay—
of course, that’s nothing new.
Philip’s going to leave today,

return to California, far away,
with all its stunning views.
When he’ll return he doesn’t say.

Outside the sky is gray,
though our family seems renewed—
yes, he’s going to leave today.

I hide twinges of dismay,
hug him as we always do.
When he’ll return he couldn't say.

Someone is waiting; he can’t delay
whatever he must do.
He said he’s going to leave today.
When he’ll return he didn’t say. 


© Janice Scully 2022

Beets Anyone?

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone, HERE. Thank you, Molly, for hosting.

It’s August and I’m inundated on some days with vegetables from my generous neighbor, Mike’s, garden. When he knocks at my door, I know I better clear the afternoon of all planned activities. This week he brought beets, lettuce and squash, just picked. It’s an amazing gift.

I love the beet greens and the roots themselves, but I wonder what kids must think of them. Though pickled beets were served once upon a time in my family restaurant, I was loathe to touch them and didn’t. But, after growing up and trying fresh beets from a garden, well, I changed my tune.

I easily found a kid’s poem written about beets. Here’s the first stanza of a poem by Jack Prelutsky from NEW KID ON THE BLOCK. The full poem is HERE.

I'd Never Eat a Beet
by Jack Prelutsky (stanza 1) 

I'd never eat a beet, because
I could not stand the taste,
I'd rather nibble drinking straws,
or fountain pens, or paste,
I'd eat a window curtain
and perhaps a roller skate,
but a beet, you may be certain
would be wasted on my plate.

Vegetables do lend themselves to humor. Did you ever wonder why? If you have a theory why, share it in the comments. Goofy shapes? The Colors? The fact that parents are always trying to get kids to eat them?

The words to the poem below came to mind after roasting some beets today.

BEETS

Today my mother peeled some,
her hands turned fiery red.
I asked, "What are they made of?

Mother never said.

And every August here they are!
Rolling on my plate
in a pool of vinegar.

Taste them? No, I’ll wait. 

© Janice Scully 2022

Enjoy the summer, and all sorts of fresh fruit and veggies that grow from the ground and nourish us.

Linda Mitchell’s Clunkers

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Marcie, HERE. Thank you for hosting. It’s been a pleasant summer this year and I want to be outside as much as possible to attend concerts, visit a local Fingerlakes winery or two, visit state parks and read on my porch. Summer in New York is too short!!

My heart goes out to those impacted by flooding and fires across the country, driving more and more discussion and action on climate change.

I spent some time this week thinking about Linda Mitchell’s clunkers. She provided quite a list, some more impossible than others.

I decided to simply have fun with one of them, one that made me think about how each word in a sentence changes it, sometimes dramatically.

THE LAST WORD 

We don’t
(Don’t what?)
 
We don’t want
(Want what?)

We don’t want you
(Oh . . .  I see)

We don’t want you to worry.
(Oooh. That will teach me to jump to conclusions)

©Janice Scully 2022

The clunker was: “We don’t want you to worry,”if you haven’t guessed. And it seems relevant as there is a lot of worry in our lives. So, how lovely to imagine a sincere “We don’t want you to worry,” rather than other imagined possible sentence endings.

Though I don’t do much gardening, I do have coneflowers and daisies coming up along the side of my house. They are beautiful this year. I also saw a monarch butterfly fluttering around the flowers, though it didn’t make it into the photo.

Thank you, Marcie, for hosting.

Water and Heat

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Mary Lee HERE. She has turned one of Lindas “clunkers” into delightful verse about green beans. Thank you, Mary Lee, for hosting!

Today I sat on my porch with a glass of iced coffee, water dripping from the glass, thinking about summer and the 92 degree heat, listening to the sounds of insects, imagining the heat rippling upward from my suburban street.

The heavy air bore down and the loud chirp of the crickets or cicadas in the trees did too, in peaked crescendoes.

I documented the day in haiku:

HEAT

rippling off asphalt
practically invisible—
searching for water

WATER

In all things alive.
Clear, cool, modest miracle
quietly cycles. 


SUMMER SOUNDS

Sweltering back porch.
Leaves wave as cricket sounds flow
like ocean waters.

I wanted to celebrate the living things around me and the interdependence in nature that supports us.

Everything everyone does, day to day, involves water. Water is part of all that is alive and beautiful in the world. I am grateful for heat, too, appreciating as the temps rise how it is moderated so it doesn’t hurt us, balanced by water in lakes, rivers and oceans.

Below is Skaneateles Lake in the Fingerlakes, where I can practically see the water cycling and cooling the air. I recently read how, in the 1800’s, as America grew westward, acres of swamps and wetlands, considered useless and even dangerous, were destroyed to create farmland. White settlers moving out west didn’t appreciate the role wetlands play as thermostat. We know more now about the need for wetlands.

Skaneateles Lake in the Fingerlakes of New York State

On my road trip to California earlier this year, I passed through South Dakota, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and saw many hot places with few trees, endless rocks, and little water, like the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, or parts of the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

The Badlands

The Petrified Forest National Park

So I’m celebrating water and I know I’m not the only one feeling the urgency to protect our environment.

Thank you Mary Lee for hosting!

COVID? It’s nothing personal.

Welcome to Poetry Friday! We are well into July and today hosted by Jan at Birdseed Studio. Thank you, Jan, for hosting! Stop by and see what she has to offer us this week.

During Covid, I’ve pretty much done what I could to avoid getting sick. I have been vaccinated and boosted and avoided crowds. I traveled cross country in April without a problem. So when our oldest son from California asked us to meet him for three days in New York, we drove there.

But, I immediately had a feeling, immersed in the crowded sidewalks and restaurants, that things might be different here. I could imagine the virus everywhere.

And we came home with Covid. Our son, who recently had it, didn’t get reinfected.

Poor me! But though I regret being a link in the viral chain of transmission, for three days we had a happy visit. Vaccines and boosted, we weighed the pros and cons and took our chances. Four days after testing positive, we are feeling a lot better. We got away without serious consequences so far.

I was inspired to write this poem by my experience this week.

A WEEKEND AWAY IN THE TIME OF COVID 7/22

The virus won't care
if you are bedridden;
it found a new home
convenient, unbidden.

Soon aching and shivering,
fatigued and hacking
plans for next weekend?
I wouldn't start packing.

It's just how it is,
took a chance, got sick,
like others do too,
not hard to predict.

I suppose it's too early
to forget, to pretend
the pandemic is over.
Nothing personal,Friend. 

©Janice Scully 2022 (Draft)

I often think how different the last two years would have been if the sick were not disappearing into ICU’s and if Covid had been a different disease.

What would have happened if it were the bubonic plague, which inspired poet John Davies in the early 1600’s to write stanzas like this, stanzas that conjured visions of “carcase-carriers,” and citizens flooding streets in fear, guards on the roads:

TRIUMPH OF DEATH
by John Davies

LONDON now smokes with vapors that arise	
  From his foule sweat, himselfe he so bestirres:	
“Cast out your dead!” the carcase-carrier cries,	
  Which he by heapes in groundlesse graves interres.—	

Now like to bees in summer’s heate from hives,	        5
  Out flie the citizens, some here, some there;	
Some all alone, and others with their wives:	
  With wives and children some flie, all for feare!	
 
Here stands a watch, with guard of partizans,	
  To stoppe their passages, or to or fro,	        10
As if they were not men, nor Christians,	
  But fiends or monsters, murdering as they go.

Excerpt from "Triumph of Death" HERE

Well, we don’t have Bubonic plague and though we might have Covid still, there are reasonable remedies and more to come. Even having Covid, it feels less threatening at this moment to me than the threat to Democracy.

Now I’m telling myself, “Lighten up!” Really, I’m trying.

I hope everyone is healthy and all the teachers and librarians on Poetry Friday are enjoying what has been for some, at least here in Syracuse, a lovely summer.

Janice

Supernovae or What is beyond My Yard?

Welcome to Poetry Friday. I’m the host this first Friday in July. I hope all of you are well and enjoying summer, in spite of all that’s going on. We must make sure to VOTE this November.

For some reason, my computer won’t allow me to comment on some posts. I will continue to try, but if you don’t see a comment from me, it doesn’t mean I’m not reading and learning from Poetry Friday posts.

I recently bought the book: BILL BRYSON: *A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, published in 2003.

Reading science never fails to inspire a poem, and this book did. I read in the first few pages about supernovae and learned in laywoman’s terms what they are. Here’s a definition from Bryson’s book:

“Subernovae occur when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time brighter than all the stars in its galaxy.” Star gazer and minister Robert Evans from Australia, who carefully searched for and discovered newly exploding supernovae from his back yard, stated that a supernova is “like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once.”

Of course, supernovoe are tremendously far away, so we see only specks of light.

How did he know he had found a newly exploded star? It seems so simple:

Unlike the light from older stars, light from a newly exploded star or supernova “occupies a point of space that wasn’t filled before.”

That’s it. New light in a space that wasn’t filled before. That’s the evidence he looked for. And he apparently was good at finding supernovae with his backyard telescope.

This YouTube video tells about Reverend Robert Evans, amateur astronomer:

So this week, as I sat on my porch behind the wall of leaves that surrounds it, this poem came to me.

WHAT IS OUT THERE? 

For Robert Evans, amateur astronomer.

From my leafy porch,
dogs bark, children yell,
birds chirp, 
all invisible.

Still, I know they exist 
and I invent a conversation
between unseen sparrows, 
guess the game being played,
from the thud of a ball,
picture the size of a dog 
from a bark,

like Mr. Evans,
in his yard,
in Australia,
imagining a supernova,
from remnants of sudden
distant light, 
that filled a vacuum 
between familiar stars.


© Janice Scully (draft)

A royalty free image of a supernova from Dreamstime.com. I doubt Robert Evans saw anything like this from his back yard telescope.

I’ll be away on Poetry Friday, but will catch up and hopefully comment on all the posts later in the weekend. Thank you all for stopping by. I appreciate every visitor.

Janice

Making Things: A Pinch Pot and a Poem

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Catherine HERE. Be sure to stop by this weekend. Thank you, Catherine, for hosting!

Like many I’ve met on Poetry Friday, I love to write, cook, sew and otherwise make things. I love writing poems, a collection of words that never existed before. Amy Ludwig Vanderwater has written a delightful poetry picture book celebrating the joy in making things. Many I am sure have read it.

My sister, Barbara Rog, likes to make things, too. She is a professional ceramicist and a teacher for many years, currently living in Burbank, California. Recently, she has been making pendants and many other pretty things.

Though she’s retired from teaching, she recently taught a few Girl Scouts how to make pinch pots. If you’d like to see her teaching video for children, the YouTube link is here.

The two girls below are fashioning pinch pots with clay. They glazed them and Barbara fired them in her kiln. In the absence of a kiln, air dry clay can be used.

They made these little pots:

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LITTLE PINCH POT

Warm from the kiln, 
one of a kind,
my fingertips forever
etched in clay.

I bring you home today.

There you will sit, 
sparkling blue,
on a shelf
or windowsill, 

soon to hold 
spices, 
salt,
shells,
or sea glass,

each 
more splendid
because of you. 

© Janice Scully 2022

I hope you all are writing or otherwise creating something that will bring you joy. Thank you Catherine for hosting!

By Best,

Janice

Manners For a Child of 1918

Welcome to Poetry Friday! And a joyful Father’s Day!

This June week we are hosted by the extraordinary artist and poet Michelle Kogan Here. Be sure to stop by and see what she’s sharing this week.

The year is half past and January seems like yesterday! So much going on in the world to pay attention to, but also, I’ve been enjoying the lovely outdoors here in Syracuse.

The sunny warmth has been exhilarating. In an effort to slow down a bit to enjoy it, I’m missed a few posts, but I think I must not the only one enjoying summer. I have continued working on a collection of poems for a picture book, about my family which is slowly taking form. Quite slowly.

I searched for a poem to share this week, about a less-hurried time, a poem that would make me want to slow down as I read it. I found this one by Elizabeth Bishop. It’s written from a child’s perspective.

I didn’t know if it was public domain, so I shared only the beginning here and a website with the entire poem. I hope you like it.

Manners 
For a Child of 1918
by Elizabeth Bishop

My Grandfather said to me
as we sat on the wagon seat,
"Be sure to remember to always
speak to everyone you meet.

We met a stranger on foot.
My grandfather's whip tapped his hat.
"Good day, sir. Good day. A fine day."
And I said it and bowed where I sat.

Then we overtook a boy we knew 
with his big pet crow on his shoulder.
"Always offer everyone a ride;
don't forget that when you get older,"

my grandfather said. So Willy
climbed up with us,'but the crow
gave a "Caw!" and flew off. I was worried.
How would he know where to go?

(Read the rest Here)

Right now, a thunder and lightening storm has just begun with a drenching downpour. A wonderful roar! I hope you all get some rain if you need it.

Thank you Michelle, for hosting.

My best,

Janice