If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. ~ Charlie Parker
Posts tagged Poetry
Cell Phone Novelist
Dec 19th
This week, I was skimming through my New Yorker magazine and came across an intriguing article about the rise of cell phone novelists in Japan. Mostly composed by young women who are writing for publication for the first time in their lives, this phenomenon has not yet crossed the world but is gaining some traction outside of Japan. The novels are written line by line on cell phones, in episodes, then put up on websites, and then some (the irony here) are published into best-selling books.
The article by Dana Goodyear (read an excerpt of it here) gets at both the views of the writers but also the criticism the cell phone novels are getting from literary circles. People argue against calling these pieces “novels” and scoff at their importance, while others see the popularity as a signal that literacy, even in the wired world, is not quite yet dead, even if the depth of the stories remains fairly simplistic. Perhaps this is just the start of something bigger?
Anyway, the article got me thinking and inspired this poem, about a cell phone novelist who feels under the cultural gun for publishing stories in this new-fangled way.
The Plight of the Pajama Novelist
(listen to the podcast of the poem)I stand accused of being nothing more than
a pajama novelist
padding about in bare feet
with fingers twitching on my cell phone
as I unleash yet another sentence, word by word by word,
into this text-ural world.My accusers use their diplomas for prosecution
as if a piece of paper
might yield some artifact from the past
to determine the present state of affairs
when words are so cheap that anyone is a poet;
anyone, a novelist;
anyone, a composer.Locked into the ribbon of their old punch-key typewriters,
they don’t imagine that writing can ever be different than it was,
that it might change with the pulse of the times
and become stories scribbled out on the thumbpads
during the afternoon commute back home.Odysseus remains lost in the mire
but Genji is alive and well,
immersed in the politics of the palace
of internal intrigue which we — the denizens of Keitai Shosetsu –
pick and choose from of the remains of the skeletons
of the past.Yet who am I to defend myself as I sit in anonymity,
disguised as a woman of heartache
whose lover is in chains;
whose past remains broken;
whose heart is in flames;
with passions, spoken: all for public consumption
as I sip my beer and imagine the possibilities.A million hits can’t be wrong — a million eyes on the screen –
as they wait with eagerness
while my accusers stew in their discordant certitude
that this signal the End of the Novel.
So yes, I plead guilty to charges
and wait for the jury of my peers — one million strong –
to come to my defense so we can write this new tale of ours:
together.
Peace (in new forms),
Kevin
Love Hate That Cat
Dec 12th
Jack is back, and so is Miss Stretchberry, but this time it is a cat at the center of the story, and not a dog. You may remember how much I loved the book, Love That Dog by Sharon Creech. I use Love That Dog in my poetry unit, reading it aloud to my students and using the poems and sense of exploration of poetic styles as a way to reach my young writers.
Well, Creech has done it again, but this time, the book is Hate That Cat, and just like its predecessor, the book is infused with poems from the canon (Edgar Allen Poe, William Carlos Williams, Valerie Word, Lord Tennyson, etc.) as Jack tries to come to grips with two things: how to find love for cats and how to explain his love for his mother, who is deaf. The book is written in the form of a poetic journal between Jack and his teacher, who remains a silent yet supportive and loving presence just off the pages of the book. Everyone should have a teacher like Miss Stretchberry in their life.
The cat element revolves around a black cat that scratched him and hurt him when he went out of his way to save it — thus the refrain: I hate that cat. But then, even as he continues to cherish the memories of his dog, Sky, that formed the center of Love That Dog, he gets a kitten and his heart melts. The black cat that he hates so much later redeems itself with Jack.
The mother element is more delicate and unfolds slowly, as Jack begins to tell what it is like to have a mother who is deaf and signs with her hands for language. He wonders early in the book, before we even know about his mother: how does someone who can’t hear sound experience a poem with sound words within it? He finds a way, and the book ends with a poetry reading, with his mother in the audience, as Jack signs his poems from the front of the room.
As with Love That Dog, I found myself getting very emotional at certain points in Hate That Cat and if you are not moved by Jack and his poems, then … I don’t know. Creech uses a sense of humor to set up the deeper emotional experiences from Jack’s world.
Along the way, Jack learns about poetic techniques such as alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, dissonance, and more. And Creech tosses a little literary fire into the mix by having Jack’s uncle, a college professor of English, argue with Jack about what makes a poem a poem (his uncle believes that poems must have grand themes, using intricate rhyming patterns and assures Jack that what he is writing in class are not poems at all, but just scribbles of words).
The book puts me into a bit of a conundrum: do I drop Love That Dog for Hate That Cat? Or do I find a way to use both?
Peace (in the wonder of books),
Kevin
Ants: An Angry Poem
Jul 3rd
Darn those pesky little ants. They’ve found our home. My only response was to write a poem about them.
Ants — A Tirade
(listen to the poem)
The ants invade
these days
in waves
and my brain is just crazed
with ways to contain them –
stop them
although, I’m afraid,
that that can of Raid is no longer part of
our chemical brigade
and while finger-crunching-kids may play
the role of the Giant,
it remains a fact that more and more ants
are coming in out of the shade
to stay
and our only hope
is to sweep the crumbs from the counter tops
away.
Be gone, ants,
or
I’ll make you pay with another of my
terrible, awful, insubstantial
tirades.
Peace (in little things),
Kevin
My SMS Poem in Edutopia
Jun 11th
My poem that uses SMS/Text Messaging shortcuts made a recent Edutopia Magazine article on the use of text messaging in the classroom and its push into the lexicon of young people.
Peace (in poems),
Kevin
Self-Publishing Student Poetry
Jun 5th
This year, as we ended our unit on poetry, I decided that I wanted to try something a little different with my students’ poems. In the past, I have collected voluntary submissions of some poems, gathered them into a Microsoft Publisher document to make it look pretty, hit the photocopy machine and cranked out a bunch of stapled booklets. It worked just fine for what it was.
But I want my students to see themselves as published writers as much as possible. So, this year, I decided to be bold and use Lulu, the self-publishing site, to create a real book of student poems. I had tinkered in the year with using Lulu for some of my own work, and I was inspired once again when I saw that the collaborative @manyvoices project that had students using Twitter to write a story across the world published a final version through Lulu (I bought myself a copy). My students were excited about it, too.
And, so, after all of us doing proofreading and choosing some basic designs from Lulu, our book of poetry, entitled Exploration, is now for sale via Lulu. The cost is about $5 per book, which isn’t too bad, but shipping costs another $5. If I had another month in the school year, I would just use order forms for parents and buy a bunch in bulk. But time is running out (two weeks left) and so I have been directing students and families to the Lulu site, in hopes they will order a copy. (I have also set it up so the download of a PDF version is free, although one student asked why you would want that when you can have a book that you can hold in your hands — nice insight in the digital age).
This is what the cover of the book looks like:
I think I will do more with publishing next year, knowing how easy it really is with web-based platforms. My hope had also been to do a fundraiser in which we publish short stories and sell the book collection for a little bit more, and use the proceeds to benefit an organization in Darfur, which my students learned about and became advocates for earlier this year. But, again, time ran out on us.
Peace (in publishing),
Kevin
poemtextmessage: a poem in SMS
Apr 24th
This morning, I had an inspiration to write a poem using the shortened SMS language of the cell phone and chat room (and twitter, too, I suppose).
So, here goes:
poemtextmessage
(listen to the poem, translated)iirc
u thnk txt &wrds r doa
but omg rotfl bout that @shmh
‘cos ov cors, imo, 2moro will ch8g 4 us &4u
QFT: ppl r str8ng & lng str8ngr
th4, i activ8 ur txt 4u
w/lnks & soh fwiw &hope u
h/o 2 w/e u can
& now pls gt bc 2 yr hw
yer PAW
Pce \\//
Kvn
Poem a Day, Saturday
Apr 19th
(An April challenge to write and post a poem a day for a week, as hosted by Two Writing Teachers)
I began this Week in Poetry Challenge with a hyperlinked poem and so I guess I should end it on the same note. I took a short poem cycle that I wrote for my students and went into the site called Hypertextopia to investigate its possibilities for hyperlinked composition.
The result is something I am calling Writing is a Voyage, which is a collection of poems about the act of writing and teaching writing to my students.
In the interest of sharing, I am including the full opening poem here, too.
Writing is a Voyage
(dedicated to my students)I stand in front of the classroom
pen in hand
and think out loud in concrete thoughts
as my mind wanders
in couplets and rhyme
and dangles downward
in acrostic fashion.
Sometimes, I strap them into the seat
with the 5-7-5 seatbelts of a haiku
and other times, I present them with the rare diamond
of the cinquain.
They are richer than their dreams
although few may realize it
until years later
when I am an old man with a cane
and a mouth full of knowledge.
I know my students often think me full of nonsense
but I can’t help myself:
I am someone who writes
and I want them to compose their lives, too,
so I urge them on
and find new paths to explore,
new doors to open,
and then give them a gentle push
into unknown terrain of their mind.
The ideas will be their fortification
on this personal journey.
May they go with the grace of words.
Here is a screenshot of my poem in Hypertextopia (and you can click on the image to bring you to the actual poem, too)
Peace (in poetry),
Kevin
Poem a Day, Friday
Apr 18th
(An April challenge to write and post a poem a day for a week, as hosted by Two Writing Teachers)
In the Middle
Our friend tells him he is the peanut butter and jelly
between the bread,
and that spot has always made him at odds with himself.
The older and the younger — simultaneous positions — and wondering
where he truly fits in.
He is the first to love, the first to shout,
the first to reach out to those in pain,
the first to stake out his ground,
the first in affection for affection’s sake,
the first to slam the door.
Yet something is happening to him even as we speak,
something transforming him from unsettled force in the world
into this steady and stalwart child.
Perhaps he is coming into his own and no longer needs
the bread on either side to hold him
together in place.
– Listen to the poem as a podcast
Peace (in poetry),
Kevin
Calling for Days in a Poem
Apr 16th
In honor of National Poetry Month, this week’s Day in a Sentence is hereby converted into Day in a Poem. You are invited to boil down your day or your week into a poem of any choosing, including freestyle (so, technically, a sentence might still work, particularly if you were creative with your formatting).
I invite anyone and everyone to participate, including my friends from the One Week Poetry Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. I would love to see some of those folks join our Day in a Sentence community, too.
Please use the comment feature on this post to submit your words. I will collect and protect them all until Sunday, when I shall release them to the world.
I decided to write my poem as a Haiku, inspired by a complete lack of sleep last night due to cries from inside the house (bad dreams) and outside the house (a fischer cat attack, I think), plus our happy cat who purred most of the night (prob glad he was not outside when the attack took place). Meanwhile, this is an incredibly busy day — we have our Quidditch Championship all day today, the kids have baseball practice until nightfall, and then I agreed to go on Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast tonight to talk about hyperlinked composition and student publications.
A night of no sleep
does not bode well for a day
of Quidditch frenzy
Peace (in reflective poetry),
Kevin
PS — In looking at Two Writing Teachers today, they define a form of poetry called a senryu as sort of like a Haiku, but about human nature. Perhaps I wrote a senryu today and not a Haiku, as it is not about nature.
PSS — Next week, Ben B. will take the helm of Day in … something.
Poem a Day, Tuesday
Apr 15th
(An April challenge to write and post a poem a day for a week, as hosted by Two Writing Teachers)
Not Quite Ready
I’m not quite ready to let go
of all of this
but the release is inevitable.
I took him in my arms the other day
and hugged him,
kissed his head,
and he blushed — his friends were watching –
but I could tell it was still OK.
The path forward inches as fast as the growth upward
and still we see the shimmer of the baby in his eyes –
the first born –
although soon, we won’t be looking down — we’ll be looking up.
And I’m not quite ready to let go.
– Listen to the poem as a podcast
Peace (in poetry),
Kevin
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