Ode to Pablo Neruda’s Odes The socks, the book, the storm, the fallen chestnut, the watch, the tomato, laziness, Pablo’s odes are tropical fish in a tank, darting back and forth, reaching for sky, coming up for air, going down deep for sunken treasure, the nourishment of the mundane. When the ordinary gets the special treatmentContinue reading “#146: Ode to Pablo Neruda’s Odes”
Category Archives: Poetry
#145: Flying by the Seat of My Pants
Flying by the Seat of My Pants It’s Easter, and I’m flying by the seat of my pants, winging it, making it up as I go along, which is, really, what I’ve been doing all along, each day, each moment: flying by the seat of my pants. Bonus Commentary: I improvised this silly little poemContinue reading “#145: Flying by the Seat of My Pants”
#144: Love Poem
Today from http://www.napowrimo.net: “I challenge you to write a “loveless” love poem. Don’t use the word love! And avoid the flowers and rainbows.” So here’s a love poem about my mother and father for which I tried to avoid cliché and all the other various love poem traps. Love Poem I think of my mother massagingContinue reading “#144: Love Poem”
#143: The Silent Note-Writing Game
The Silent Note-Writing Game I don’t know how we landed on the idea. Perhaps chaos of the 9 year old variety inspired me to propose a game in which we must be silent and can only communicate through written notes to each other back and forth on a shared piece of paper or two. He loved it. And in the lastContinue reading “#143: The Silent Note-Writing Game”
#142: This School Year Has Not Been, Thus Far,
On this second day of National Poetry Writing Month, compliments of the prompt for the first day on the http://www.napowrimo.net website, a poem of negation, a poem that describes a thing in terms of what it is not: This School Year Has Not Been, Thus Far, soft and cuddly, a baby blanket; warm and inviting,Continue reading “#142: This School Year Has Not Been, Thus Far,”
#141 Teaching Without A Voice
I begin the cruelest month of National Poetry Writing hopefully recovering from a bout of laryngitis and ready to go back to the classroom. Thus, the inspiration for my first poem of 30, one for every day of the month of April, comes not from a prompt, but from this: Teaching Without A Voice isContinue reading “#141 Teaching Without A Voice”
Embarking Yet Again on Another Forced Creativity Experiment: Year 3 of NAPOWRIMO
Happy National Poetry Month! Beginning on Wednesday, April 1 (this is no April Fool’s joke), I will attempt for the third year in a row to participate in the NaPoWriMo challenge of writing a poem a day for the entire month and publishing each poem here on the blog site. I promise, once again, not to cheat; IContinue reading “Embarking Yet Again on Another Forced Creativity Experiment: Year 3 of NAPOWRIMO”
#140: I Was Raised By. . .
Another mentor text, this time the one we used with our freshmen, to inspire poetry about who or what we credit for “raising” us. The wonderful thing about using a mentor text, learning explicitly the moves of a writer we admire, is that all the 14 year olds end up writing these lively, effective poems.Continue reading “#140: I Was Raised By. . .”
#139: Another Random Autobiography
We’re kicking off the school year by introducing to students this lovely thing we call a “mentor text.” We look closely at a piece of good writing, observe its various moves and strategies, and then write our own piece of good writing inspired by the mentor text, mimicking as best we can the moves ofContinue reading “#139: Another Random Autobiography”
#139: Writer’s Camp
I’m going to camp. I’ll be alone most of the time but at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and at least once every evening, I will be surrounded by friends, writer friends, people who know me and who share the dream and the drive or the dream of the drive or the drive of the dreamContinue reading “#139: Writer’s Camp”
michael jarmer 