Memory Throws a Last-Minute Curveball

Memory Throws a Last-Minute Curveball

your name, the punchline,
why I'm standing in this room --
all veer out of reach

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Haikubes with Hem (and Rhino)

Rhino wanted in on the act this time. But just like the last times, the minute I dumped the Haikubes on the carpet, Hem came at a gallop.

He and Rhino worked amiably to help me pick out my cubes.

Almost ready!

I found a poem that's a wish for sleep tonight. I made the mistake of drinking a cup of hot tea after school yesterday, and I woke up with a busy brain at 2:00 AM. I read for an hour, then only dozed until the alarm went off just before 5:00. Please come, honest sleep. Bring me grace!

This first week back after spring break was ridiculously hard. I just couldn't get caught up enough with school work and writing my own poems to get out and visit much. Finally, on Wednesday, I got our Poetry in the Halls posters put up. It's so fun to have many of my Poetry Friday peeps on the walls in our building's hallways!

Karen has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Karen Edmisten: The Blog with the Shockingly Clever Title.

Up

UP

The optimism of cream --
rising.

The power of frog legs --
leaping.

The cheer of sunny sides --
inspiring.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Time

Time

Is time an organized file
brimming with figures and facts?

Or is time a play in the theater
with lines and scenes and acts?

Is time a glorified drum
beating the rhythm of life?

Or is time a well-honed blade
cutting through age like a scythe?


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Idiom-osophy

I have lots of magnetics to choose from for my Magnetic Poetry play day. I got a little crazy and chose one word from every bag. I'm not going to do that again!

people, teacher, ball, stare, yesterday, everlasting, catches the worm

Idiom-osophy

History catches the worm
in an everlasting dance with destiny
while Future's teacher gets the ball rolling
past crowds of people
who simply stand
and
stare.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Peace

Hemingway helped me launch Playing With Poetry by reminding me to PLAY with the Haikubes. He LOVES the sound they make. When I dumped them on the carpet, he came running. At first he supervised while I made my choices.

But pretty soon, he wanted to click the cubes himself, then carry one away to hide under the couch.

Here's my haiku for April 1:

we, you, us...all wrong:

fortune will flock to places

parallel with peace

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Poetry Friday -- Surprises

Surprises

The first surprise--
on the logjam that crosses the river,
a mink.

Not a muskrat.

A mink.

In Ohio.

The best surprise--
turned to look upstream, checking the footing for my next step,
my eyes off the line and
a tug
a yank
a fight
a trout.

Not a bass.
A rainbow trout.
In Ohio.

The last surprise--
I've forgotten
the achingly numb feet
from a day spent standing in
fast flowing
forty degree water with a
fly rod.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019



Yes,  while others escaped to warm ocean beaches, I spent a day colder than I've ever been in my entire life and it was all worth it. (The Laphroaig may or may not have helped with that...)

Poetry Month is just around the corner. My NPM19 Poem A Day project is Playing With Poetry. I'm going to spend the month playing with Haikubes, Magnetic Poetry, Metaphor Dice, and Paint Chip Poetry. Join in if you'd like! We can use the Twitter hashtag #playwithpoetryNPM to find and support each other.


Speaking of find and support, Carol has this week's Poetry Friday roundup and her favorite daffodil poem at Carol's Corner.

2019 Poetry Month--Playing With Poetry

#playwithpoetryNPM

Nothing Gold -- After Robert Frost

Nothing Gold
after Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold
or, in the case of that bush
with its six inches of new growth,
red.

Or, in the case of that forsythia
on the south-facing side of the house,
an unbelievable shade of bright
yellow.

Or, in the case of those new shoots
knifing up from exposed iris bulbs,
a simultaneously fragile but violent
green.

All these early hues
in leaf, in flower
hard to hold as the earth moves
along its path
hour by hour
by day by day
by season by season,

not so much subsiding
as being subsumed
in the golden Eden
of Life.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019


The first draft of this poem happened in one of our five-minute quick-writes in writing workshop this week. Another reminder that these small rituals are powerful not just for our student writers, but for our own writing lives.

I have a love-hate relationship with Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost. I landed in the honors program at the University of Denver based on good grades in a sub-standard rural high school. I was over my head in so many ways. There was so much I didn't even know I didn't know. A professor attempted to teach me how to craft a critical essay by humiliating me -- by showing me the work of a classmate who was already clearly on the path to his fame as a writer. Then he asked me if this poem by Robert Frost was hopeful or hopeless. My humiliation had turned to stubborn anger, and I argued that the poem was hopeful. And then I figured out on my own how to be the kind of writer I wanted to be.

It was that experience more than any other that taught me how to teach the writer, not the writing. Every writer can move to the next level, but you can only begin from where they are the moment they show you their own work.


Rebecca has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Sloth Reads, and how perfect is that? Tomorrow is National Goof Off Day, when our spring break begins!

Poetry Friday -- Climate Change Edition

For today's Climate Change Edition of Poetry Friday, I'm reposting a poem I wrote for my 2017 Poetry Month project featuring Malvina Reynolds.

“...it was while doing graduate work in English there (University of California Berkeley) that she did some student teaching. She used pop songs to teach her high school students about rhyme scheme and meter, as they were not poetry readers."

http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/malvina-reynolds/

Malvina Reynolds would have been at Berkeley in the 1920's, and "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" was a popular song then. Perhaps it was one she used to teach about rhyme scheme and meter.

I used this song as my mentor text for a poem about Mother Nature.

Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue
Words: Sam M. Lewis and Joseph Widow Young; Music: Ray Henderson (1925)

Five foot two, eyes of blue,
but oh, what those five foot could do:
has anybody seen my gal?

Turned-up nose, turned-down hose
Flapper? Yes sir, one of those
Has anybody seen my gal?

Now, if you run into
a five-foot-two
covered with fur,
Diamond rings,
and all those things,
Bet your life it isn't her

But could she love, could she woo!
Could she, could she, could she coo!
Has anybody seen my gal?


My Gal, Mother Nature

Birds and bees, rocks and trees
Oh the breeze and green green leaves
Has anybody seen my gal?

Skies of blue, rivers too
Nature? Yes we need her hues
Has anybody seen my gal?

Now if the skies are hazed
Parks are paved
Trash everywhere,
Species dead
Sewage spread
Bet your life there’s no clean air

The temps are high, could she die?
Could she, could she, could she die?
Has anybody seen my gal?


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017


Heidi has today's Poetry Friday Roundup at my juicy little universe. Head over and get inspired!