Day #28: The Connoisseur

 Have you heard of a connoisseur? Here is a definition from Merriam-Webster:

What are you an expert in? Begin today by brainstorming the little things you do well. Do you make the perfect grilled-cheese sandwich? Can you fold a fitted-sheet with dexterity?

Spend two minutes thinking of things you are adept at. Here is my list:

• #IowaSky (I try to notice the subtle differences each time I look up; I often post photos to twitter with this hashtag)
• Gravel runs (I've spent hundreds of hours running the same gravel roads)
• lines of memorized poems run in my head (they pop in unexpectedly)
• Macaroni salad (my signature dish)
• finding 4-leaf clovers (I'm really good at this!)

After you brainstorm, select one to explore in a poem. Remember how images and metaphors help readers experience your poem richly.

Here is mine:

My mind works like a
a top-loading Maytag
thoughts sudsing
in the wash cycle:
a tune from the radio
and pick up the rug at Servicemaster
rubbing up against
where did I put the chapstick
and Colin’s birthday is Wednesday.

Like so many beige towels and
gray t-shirts
impressions
churn to the top
then work their way
under again
with flashes of poems
–a red sock!–
startling my day.

Day #27: Who Do You Want to Become?

Yesterday's prompt asked you to write in a sequence: yesterday, today, tomorrow.

Today's prompt is another way to look at the future.

Who is the YOU you want to become?

What are they like? Can you reach for metaphors that can capture the self you want to be in your future? Is it a rocketship? a smooth pond? Mardi Gras beads?

I suggest making a list of aspects of yourself you'd like to foster. Can you come up with 10? Then create a metaphor for each (or as many as you can).

From there, select one metaphor for a deep dive, or a few to link together. 

------------------------

At 61, I think for the most part I have "become" the me I wanted to become. As I considered this prompt, I thought about how I'd like people to remember me after I die. This is the poem I wrote:

You know when
you’re digging through a drawer
looking for a AA battery
or a birthday candle
or a safety pin?

and your fingers
rub across
a salmoned tenpenny coin
from a trip to Ireland years ago?

In that moment
you see
the hedged roads
sheep grazing
hear the lilt
of memory
tinkling?

I don’t know what I can still become.

Perhaps my dear ones,
as their
fingers of thought
touch the
heft of battery
brief candle
pinprick
or smooth coin,
will think on me.

I will have become a memory;
may it be an Irish road.

Day #26: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

The challenge for this poem is to write in the past, present and future.

Think of "who you were" in the past.

Who are you now?

Who do you see yourself to be in the future?

Or focus on a specific aspect of yourself: how you used to play piano; how you play now; how you visualize your playing in the future.

I wrote my poem on Sunday and used yesterday/today/tomorrow literally as I wrote about April 24, 25, and 26th.

Yesterday
the washer quit
my brow was knit

the supper burned
my joke was spurned

my notes were flat
I smelled a rat

Today
I ran the trail
and answered mail

the sun was out
ate brussels sprout

I called my dad
felt not half bad

Tomorrow
I’ll greet each kid
ask what they did

read Shakespeare puns
and call my sons

before bedtime
I’ll write a rhyme

-----------------------

You may choose to write in rhyme, haiku, free verse, skinny poem, nonet, or any form that appeals to you!

Day #25: Snapshot Poem

Today's prompt is a photo. What photo? That's up to you!

You might choose an image off your phone, or one in a photo album. 

Maybe you'd like to browse through photos of icebergs or scuba diving and find one that captures your interest.

Then choose one of the two following approaches:

1) Try to describe as vividly as you can the image you see. Remember, as a poet you can use comparisons and metaphors as well as sensory detail to give your reader a strong experience while reading.

2) Write a poem that tells the story BEHIND the photo. What happened before the image was clicked? or what happened after? In telling a story, you are writing what is called a narrative poem.

I'm not sure if you will have success uploading your image in the comments. If it doesn't work, send me the image in an email and I can post it as the owner of the site.

Here is my poem:

Are the
bubbles
her family’s
blessings
descending

or
her
limpid
laughter
rising

My daughter Eloise and her husband John
April 19, 2019

Day #24: A Poem For...

Today you will write a poem about a person in your life.

The mentor text is titled "Abuelito Who."

Abuelito means grandpa. Notice how the poet uses anaphora by repeating

Abuelito who...

who...

who...

who...

with each "who" followed by a vivid description of the grandpa.

After you read Sandra Cisneros' poem, read mine. I wrote about a friend who died about six years ago.

As you write your own poem, think of vivid ways you can SHOW who your person is. Show your readers images of the person's actions or surroundings to help us see/smell/experience the person you are writing about.

---------------------------

Mentor Text: “Abuelito Who” by Sandra Cisneros

Abuelito who throws coins like rain
and asks who loves him
who is dough and feathers
who is a watch and glass of water
whose hair is made of fur
is too sad to come downstairs today
who tells me in Spanish you are my diamond
who tells me in English you are my sky
whose little eyes are string
can’t come out to play
sleeps in his little room all night and day
who used to laugh like the letter k
is sick
is a doorknob tied to a sour stick
is tired shut the door
doesn’t live here anymore
is hiding underneath the bed
who talks to me inside my head
is blankets and spoons and big brown shoes
who snores up and down up and down up and down again
is the rain on the room that falls like coins
asking who loves him
who loves him who?

-------------------------------

Judy Who

Judy who cackled like firecrackers
in the halls during class,
drawing wrath from teachers
demanding silence bell to bell:
no laughter
should compete
with lectures drear.

Judy who counseled
our most fragile and volatile
students toward
something resembling
warmth,
resembling survival.

Judy who after her divorce
built a country home with
a long driveway
and a 10-foot chicken sculpture
in the yard.
In the house, a suit of armor
and a porcelain phrenology head
she brought home from New Orleans
as her Delta carry-on.

Judy whose coral nails
and heavy Danish silver
defined her style:
sparkling eyes
great hair
faint breath of whiskey
under quality perfume.

Judy who tagged me
as a friend,
hosted raucous parties
culminating in hysterics
as we took turns shooting pumpkins
in her garden
with her varmint .22

Judy, Judy
who late on that blizardly February night
too drunk to be driving
made it home
but missed the driveway.
Stuck in a drift
she hoofed the hundred yards
toward her steel chicken
and what the previous fall had been
the pumpkin patch.

Judy who
did not survive
the trek
to warmth of hearth
whose body was was found
next morning
by her brother who
lived a mile across the section
and raised chickens for Campbell’s Soup.

Judy who
radiated warmth
died in
alcohol’s frozen embrace.

Day #23: Shakespeare's Birthday!

Good morning!

As you know, Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter. 

The iamb is the heartbeat rhythm: 

du-DAH, du-DAH, du-DAH, du-DAH, du-DAH

Because the iamb has two syllables and is repeated five times (PENTAmeter), it calls for 10 syllables in each line.

On the Bard's special day, let's try to use an aspect of a sonnet in our writing. Choose from ONE of the following:

1. Write a poem with 14 lines.
2. Write a poem with 10 syllables in each line.
3. Write in iambic rhythm.
4. Write in iambic pentameter.
5. Write with A-B-A-B rhyme.
6. Write a poem about love

Here is a Shakespearean sonnet to use as a mentor text.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Here is a sonnet I wrote about teaching creative writing:

Sonnet 1, for my Creative Writing Students

By Allison Berryhill

 

I wanted for them each to find a muse

And push like Sisyphus against a thought--

To hear an inner voice and set it loose

And touch the place where soul with sound is wrought.

To give them tools to carve onto the page

The exquisite release of hidden self,

To gift them ways to transform joy and rage

To poem, essay, book upon a shelf.

But hour six too often slid away

With chattered scattered shot and little more

And what I’d hoped for them to learn each day?

Abandoned, crumpled drafts upon the floor.

Ah, did they learn the lesson of the pen?

Revise, revise, and let me try again.

Your turn!

Remember, you don't need to write an entire sonnet. Just choose one aspect to mirror.

Happy writing,

AB

Day #22: Flashbulb Memory

On Tuesday when the George Floyd murder conviction was announced, I was sitting in the nail salon. I glanced on my phone to see post after post from all the news feeds I follow, announcing the verdict. 

The verdict is being framed as an important step forward in addressing systemic racism in our country. Many people were waiting with high anxiety to see the jury's decision. When, where, and what they were doing may become a "flashbulb memory" for them. 

from Wikipedia



I have "flashbulb memories" from several occurrences:


1) My dad's hand on the doorknob of a closet that held my birthday present: a red wagon with a white bow.

2) Teaching in a classroom in Exira when a boy ran in to say the space shuttle Challenger had exploded.

3) Standing in the kitchen, holding the phone, when my sister told me her 4-year-old son had cancer.

4) Teaching journalism (as a sub) for Mrs. Mckay, who was out for maternity leave. The art teacher ran in and said, "Turn on your TV! A second plane just ran into the Twin Towers!"

----------------------------

A few days ago, Mr. Hallgren asked me what was my earliest "historical event" memory. I remembered it immediately. I was seven years old. (I'll let you "solve" my poem for yourself to determine the historical event.)

Childhood Memory

I saw Katy’s dad
crying. It was April 4
1968.

-------------------------------

Your poem challenge today is to think of a flashbulb memory YOU have. It may be related to an event in the news, or it may be a personal event that carried shock or surprise in a way it has set down roots in your visual/sensory memory. 

I like haiku form for this small, intense memory. It forces you to look at what aspect of the memory can capture the intensity. In my case, I'd never see a friend's FATHER cry. I knew something major had happened. 

If you need to write a series of haiku, or use another form, you certainly may! If you don't feel you have a flashbulb memory to write about, choose another strong childhood image/memory.

Happy writing!

AB

Thanks to Ethical ELA for many of the prompts I'm adapting for my students this month.