michaeljarmer

#297: Front Yard Haibun

Mid April, that Japanese maple explodes first with leaves and the giant oak trees follow its little footsteps a few weeks later. It all happens at once. Most years no one sees it. One day there are no leaves. Next day a million leaves. The grass greens. There’s a hammock sometimes to nap in andContinue reading “#297: Front Yard Haibun”

#296: The 11th Poem of April

was difficult to write. I didn’t like today’s suggestion. I thought about witch hunts, fist fights between teenagers, and spring time rain. I thought about my dogs and how angry I was at the one for waking me up at 2 in the morning and at the other because she took a dump on myContinue reading “#296: The 11th Poem of April”

#295: Simultaneously

251 babies are born every minute and 105 people die. That’s not sustainable, just saying. 18 million people just got into a motor vehicle, not the same vehicle, obviously. There are 1500 active volcanos and earthquakes are always happening. 75 people just bought a burger at McDonald’s. 75 people just bought a burger at McDonald’s.Continue reading “#295: Simultaneously”

#294: How Woke?

Substitute plans laid out in plain sight and handouts ready that should keep my sophomores honest and hard at work, I head off this morning to a professional workshop in a district populated by mostly white kids and staffed by mostly white adults to have brave conversations about race. Even while the graduation rate forContinue reading “#294: How Woke?”

#293: In Which Mysterious and Magical Things Occur

The napowrimo website today provides a link to Percy Shelley’s “A Defense of Poetry,” where he says most famously that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. His belief is that poetry is magic and that poets are kind of like wizards. I’ll buy that. I mean, I don’t consider myself a wizard byContinue reading “#293: In Which Mysterious and Magical Things Occur”

#292: Two Sides (a Dialogue with Self)

Recently, I was thinking about self talk, or, literally, the act of talking out loud to oneself, and decided finally, even though I suspected it all along, that it is a necessary and healthful behavior. I mean, what’s the signature feature of Shakespeare’s soliloquies? To me, the key feature of a Shakespeare soliloquy, beyond theContinue reading “#292: Two Sides (a Dialogue with Self)”

#291: Time’s Wild Variations

The challenge from napowrimo today is to write a poem that busts you out of your comfort level with line breaks. As my poetry goes, I typically lean toward the long and skinny, the mid-length blocky-thing, or the prose poem. I am uncomfortable with wild variations. So let’s do that then, shall we? Time’s WildContinue reading “#291: Time’s Wild Variations”

#290: Coda (Zebra Boat)

Today, the napowrimo website challenges us to write a poem that reacts both to photography and to words in a language not our own. We are to begin with a photograph. Then we are to find a poem in a language we do not know. Ignoring any accompanying English translation, we are to then translateContinue reading “#290: Coda (Zebra Boat)”

#289: A Poem Composed On the Fly Using Voice-to-Text a Few Miles Above the Old Church in Wilsonville Before a Gig

I am no Wordsworth, but I’m on the way to a gig playing drums with Brian and I was thinking about that poem, you know the one, the one he writes about how lovely everything is around Tintern Abbey while he’s walking and thinking about his sister. It’s a beautiful poem. One of my favorites.Continue reading “#289: A Poem Composed On the Fly Using Voice-to-Text a Few Miles Above the Old Church in Wilsonville Before a Gig”

#288: Classes I Could Teach

I’ve been a school teacher for a very long time but I never did get to teach the classes I think students really need. Here’s a short list of my best work, potentially, as an educator: Be Really Quiet 101 How Not to Be an Ass Favorite Words for Beginners Advanced Favorite Words Poems forContinue reading “#288: Classes I Could Teach”