Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.
Another unifying topic in Malvina Reynolds' songs is the environment. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today.
wild is worth saving --
find your own Skagit Valley --
fight for our future --
Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.
Another unifying topic in Malvina Reynolds' songs is the environment. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today. Today's poem is a Golden Shovel. The last word in each of my lines reads down, like an acrostic, and is a line from today's song by Malvina Reynolds, "Let it Be." Last month, I buried the story of the loss of two beautiful and magical places inside a book review, and when I set out to write today's poem, it became a lament of the most recent replacement of magic with convenience. Clearly, I'm not over that yet.
Regrets
You do the best you can until you
can do no more. You think
about the choices that
you made and you
wonder if your love
could ever have been enough for her
survival. You planted and
weeded and you
hoped someone else would want
to become caretaker to
this magical place where kids could discover
the workings of nature -- how
intricately she's
designed -- made
with milkweed, for example, expressly so
there can be monarchs. Because you
loved that plot, you take
it personally that they leveled her
and undid all your work; took apart
a piece of what made this world good and
right, wild and free. Your regrets threaten to break
Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.
One of the strongest unifying topics in Malvina Reynolds' songs is politics and protest. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today.
Ticky Tacky
(to the tune of "Little Boxes")
It’s the sameness, lack-of-change-ness
It’s the absence of diversity
Economic inequality
Absolute conformity
It’s a boilermaker
Never varying
So redundant
Truly tedious
It’s the absence of diversity
And it all looks just the same.
For the second half of National Poetry Month 2017,
Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.
One of the strongest unifying topics in Malvina Reynolds' songs is politics and protest. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today.
Grass Is
People want to tame me or Eradicate me. They underestimate my Root Structure and my Indomitable Spirit. I am Tenacious. I Exist Not to please, but to break concrete and spread Truth.
For the second half of National Poetry Month 2017,
Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.
One of the strongest unifying topics in Malvina Reynolds' songs is politics and protest. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today.
We Won’t Be Nice
Cause a disruption
Form an obstruction
March and rally and chant.
Shake up the status quo
Make a line and block the flow
March and rally and chant.
Rebel with civility
Abstain from docility
March and rally and chant.
For the second half of National Poetry Month 2017,
Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.
One of the strongest unifying topics in Malvina Reynolds' songs is politics and protest. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today.
Let Them Eat Cake was recorded live in concert, November 1972.
They Can Have Their Cake, and Eat it, Too
They sugar coat the truth for us,
fake the daily news,
make us look the other way.
What could they possibly lose?
They divert to keep the facts at bay,
disguise false validations,
sweeten fibs with taradiddles,
no need for vindication.
“What could we possibly lose?” they ask,
on the brink of a nuclear war.
They’re blind to even the simplest truths,
and deaf to our uproar.
For the second half of National Poetry Month 2017,
Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.
One of the strongest unifying topics in Malvina Reynolds' songs is politics and protest. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today.
The World in Their Pocket was recorded live in concert by KQED in 1967.
Holes
They say the world is richer,
With jobs and giant bankrolls.
But their logic’s got a hole.
They say we’ll build the pipeline,
Bother with leaks and spills later.
But their logic’s got a crater.
They say the world is safe,
In their constant Twitter spasms.
But their logic’s got a chasm.
When crater, hole and chasm
Become a vast abyss,
They’ll say, “Oops, we were remiss…”
"My mother came from a long line of women who worked outside the home. Her grandmother ran a deli while her husband read Torah. Her own mother and father ran a naval tailor shop. When I was in the fifth grade, my mother’s father died, and she and my father and grandmother ran the shop together."
Language alert: if watching the video with children, be prepared to hit the mute button at :33-:38 and 4:15-4:20. Also, apologies (and gratitude) to William Carlos Williams.
This is Just to Say
I have failed
the test
that measures
my worth
and which
you were probably
planning to use
to pigeonhole me
Forgive me
I refuse your labels
I am deliciously
worthy and capable
Isn’t it funny
(not a joke
no humor
no puns)
Isn’t it funny
how war creates a necessity
that strips away all the labels
previously preventing a person’s
life work?
Isn’t it funny
(not a joke
no humor
no puns)
Isn’t it funny
how the devastation of war
creates industries
and builds an economy out of
destruction?
“My mother was writing her dissertation when I was little and got her Ph.D. in 1939. But it was the middle of the Depression; she was Jewish, a socialist, and a woman; and she couldn’t get a job teaching. But when the Second World War broke out, she got a job on an assembly line in a bomb factory, and Bud went to work as a carpenter in a shipyard.”
Disclaimer: All blog posts, opinions, grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes are our own.
Franki and Mary Lee are both teachers, and have been for more than 20 years.
Franki is a fifth grade teacher. She is the author of Beyond Leveled Books (Stenhouse), Still Learning to Read (Stenhouse), and Day-to-Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop (Scholastic).
Mary Lee is a fifth grade teacher. She is the author of Reconsidering Read-Aloud (Stenhouse) and has poems in the Poetry Friday Anthology, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Science, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations (Pomelo Books), Dear Tomato: An International Crop of Food and Agriculture Poems, National Geographic Books of Nature Poems, The Best of Today's Little Ditty (2014-15 and 2016), Amy Ludwig VanDerwater's Poems are Teachers, National Geographic's The Poetry of US, and IMPERFECT: Poems About Mistakes.
