The Literate Teacher's Manifesto

Well, April draws to a close. After two months of two back-to-back challenges, I am ready to take some time off to think and write in my notebook. I have sadly neglected it in trying to write and rewrite content for this daily challenge. I'm looking forward to writing more about my classroom again and reflecting on how this year has gone (but NOT daily)! But before the month of April officially ends, here's one last poem of the day. Landscape in Neutral You speak of promises of love unfaithful. You speak in syntax of Corso. I see you now in a field of neutral Helter skelter to trees below. Your image floats down crashes up sharp-edged stones submerges under white foam surfaces over a still blackness. I lean over the bridge, feeling like a muse as freezing water laps my boots. I am the vestal lady on Brattle. The grey-edged pond and white sun suck the color from my flowers, leaving a blank canvas. You ask me for this chip on my should...

Waiting for Catharsis Roethke said that in a dark time,  the eye begins to see. There are no stars gleaming under the Milky Way tonight. Two days ago we buried you. Under the roots of a magnolia tree, your still white body takes hold; Plans painstakingly laid for the decline and fall of my southern civilization. I weep for the loss of you. For a  boy who never knew me for a father crumbling away for a grandfather gone. For it all. My demons have come to a head. They are frothing, screaming, Tearing away at the walls I have built to hide them for so long. I am stalled, stalled. These are crises the mind cannot solve, and my heart, torn to pieces, is unreliable. I feel the shadow of Death lie weary over me; a dark arm reaching to sweep all into the forgiving sea Leaving behind only the wasteland the left-behind stasis in the sunlight of reality. This poem is a companion piece to The Gathering. Read it her...

Paw's Garden The tommy-toe vines are taller than me,                 laden with gleaming red gems of bursting light. Their delicate stems brush my cheek                 filling the summer air with the mineral scent of tomatoes in full bloom. Red dirt sticks to my tennis shoes,                 the brown paper lunch sack crinkles in my hand and bulges at the sides as I greedily throw more in. Paw never makes me stop picking.                 If I fill up one sack he'll give me another one, but it hardly seems necessary as I eat                 almost as many as I pick. We move on to the cornfield,                 sweet-smelling, rustle-y, silk fronds wave gently in the afternoon breeze--I don't like the corn. It i...

Memories of Japan Honey pours slow like New Orleans Drips on my leg- a brown memory of tongue in skin and poetry-- The calligrapher bends over my feet inscribing the first book of you. You could fall in love with me of the painted hands and back like a broad scroll. I rise through symphonies of lightning to meet you. I surface near your sun-- Too like Icarus, I fall. Brown feathers dot the sky, Punctuation for unwritten sentences.

I Speak Of The sweetness of raspberries and frogs scattering from my feet are dim reminders of my conversations with God. Sad country songs on the radio,  the grind of machinery, and a Beethoven moonlit sonata have somehow become you. I run through the damp grass, reveling in this rain on my skin and this smile that will not disappear. Stars appear at night unbidden; a supernova in close proximity; an undiscovered radio galaxy. And all the stars that have exploded before could not prepare me  for this celestial happening I cannot comprehend: This quivering of chest Tingle of nerve Eternal buzz of electricity defining this thing I would defy; this star that has come to rest, trembling and tentative, in the palm of my hand. I wrote this poem shortly after I met the man who would become my husband. I was taking astronomy classes at the time, and I was enamored of everything I was learning. The things I love make the...

Exhibitionism Surrounded by souls with blank faces, Watching my life unfold on the stage, an intensity stabs me, rends the scabs from my eyes to see what I've lost. Naked before all the pretty ones who have opened the windows of my ambivalence;  I feel unlocked in a fantasia  of wooden planks and tapestries. My hands shake like yours, Used to raking cleaving words out with  the happy dagger of my immortality as a pancake girl. Sweet, boy, when you tear me out with eyes like a tempest. Drown me into an ageless heroine. Metamorphosed again tonight  by the magic of my false impressionism. You should have been there... You missed quite a show. When I reread poetry from different periods of my life, it takes me no time at all to be able to identify what literature, art, and music were also shaping my identity at the time. This one is from a Shakespeare binge. You will notice several references. I was also listenin...

Back in February, I wrote this post  about a student of mine. It generated a lot of response, in comments and readership, and as I was flipping back through the posts I have written this year, I thought this would be a subject that's worth revisiting. We are in the second week of our last quarter, and David is in the running for most improved student (not just in my classroom). We actually had a conversation about him today at the lunch table. His attitude and general engagement with school is light years away from where he started. But, of course, I can't take credit for any of that, but I can tell you about his reading. David is currently reading his 11th book of the year (which is amazing). When we sat down together in January and set goals, neither of us expected him to make it past 10. Since our conversation in February, the whole tone of our reading conferences has changed. He is more positive about reading, less likely to answer questions with "Idunno," a...