One of the books I reread almost every year in August to get myself jived up again for the new school year is Educating Esme by Esme Raji Codell.
Here is one of her poems from the book:
HOW TO TEACH LEARNING
Sing it
Seal it in an envelope
Twist it under a bottle cap
"You are a winner!"
Tie it to the leg of a carrier pigeon
and let it soar
Hoard it greedily, with your back turned
Then share it with magnanimous grin
and glittering eyes
Make it a surprise
shining like a quarter
under a pillow
Whisper it
like the tow of summer's breath
through the willow
Or
Hide it
just between the tart skin and sweet flesh
of an apple
Make it forbidden
Make it delicious
Then
let the children
bite
Used with the blessing of Esme Raji Codell.
Used with apologies for Blogger's erasure of line indents. (Has anyone figured out how to get around this?)
Big A, little a has the roundup this week.
Hi Mary Lee,
ReplyDeleteYou can put spaces in! Once you have typed the poem, go into the tab for edit HTML and find the places where you need to change the spacing.
Insert this code for every character space you need:
It's that simple!
Let me know how this works.
Regards,
Tricia
Rats! The code won't show up. I'll e-mail you!
ReplyDeleteTricia
And for the html challenged, insert underscores (or any other character, really) at the beginning of the lines you want indented, then change the underscore font colour to white to match your background. Voila...underscores disappear, indents appear, and no gettin' down and dirty with h-h-h-html code. :^) (Oh, this works for adding an empty line, too.)
ReplyDeleteThis is still my all-time favorite book! I love all things Esme!
ReplyDeleteYou folks with your html/Blogger advice are THE BEST! I'm kicking myself for not asking for help with little stuff sooner! I hope that one of our sessions in Chicago is Q/A tips on how to make things work. The "turn an underscore white" solution is so elegant and easy! Tricia, you have taught me TWO great lessons on html now! I'm lovin' it!
ReplyDeleteI adore Esme too. Sing a Song of Tuna is my favorite but this poem is right up there!
ReplyDeleteI treasure this book.
ReplyDeleteHere's another good one:
I AM A PENCIL by Sam Swope.
Give it a whirl...
Educating Esme is ready for me to pick up at my local library branch. I read it about three years ago, and remember liking it a lot---but I am not really a rereading kinda gal. I'm gonna give it a go, though.
ReplyDelete