Poem: Write

Tags

never, poem, Poetry, same, say, short, simple, write

 

Write, write, write,

You’ll find something to say.

Write, write, write,

You’ll never be the same. 

Poem: Teaching

Tags

clasr, classroom, education, high school, poem.poetry, soul, teaching

 

Classroom full of souls

Distinguishes from all.

Teaching is a sacred endeavor.

One’s soul must be,

In all its glory.

Lightened from the Burden,

My soul gives itself away

And grows.

Poem: Looking For Poems

Tags

easy, fun, new, poem, Poetry, reading aloud, rhyme, search, short, simple, walk, walking, writing

I’m on a poem walk,

Searching all about.

I look for poems,

Every time I go out.

 

Some heavy, some hollow

Some squishy or flat

Some tend to follow

And some fly like a bat

 

Hanging in the air

Or sprouting from the ground

I pick them all up,

Make them fit and sound.

 

I brush off some commas,

Straighten out some ink

What rhymes? – llamas?

I’ll find some link!

 

Graft in,

pull out

Verbs, adjectives, adverbs,

Become paramount!

 

Poems all around!

They’re everywhere, you see.

They wait without a sound

For themselves to come to be.

 

Twisted in the leaves,

Draped over a sign,

They wait for the words

That will give them design.

 

Beneath a tree

Or reflected in a puddle

They’re waiting for someone

Them to un-muddle

 

People ignore,

Pass right on by

But they’re there all the same

For you to espy.

 

I’m on a poem walk,

Searching all about.

I’m looking for poems,

Every time I go out. 

A Departure from the Usual – 5 E Lesson Plan

Tags

education, eric carle, five e, foreign, high school, la oruga muy hambrienta, language, lesson, lesson plan, PACE, reading aloud, school, spanish, spanish I, spanish II, story, story-based, the very hungry caterpillar

Ok, I know that this is a departure from my usual posts, but I’d like y’all’s input. (Yes, I’m from Texas. Yes, I say y’all. Yes, I know it’s not academic.) Those of you who are teachers, students, or really just anyone with a good head on his shoulders, is this a feasible lesson plan for a class period? What do you think?

Objective:

• Age: high school.
• Level : Late Spanish I, early Spanish II.
• Know: Basic vocabulary, including food and numbers. This will be a good review too.
• Want to know: Identify the preterit (past indicative) tense.
• Learn: by reading Eric Carle’s La Oruga Muy Hambrienta. Found here: http://arapahoe.littletonpublicschools.net/Portals/7/World%20Languages/Greenless4/TheHungryCatepiller.pdf. This is a PACE lesson.

Engage (Presentation):

            I read La Oruga Muy Hambrienta (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) by Eric Carle to the students. The book itself will capture their attention: everyone, including high schoolers, loves to be read to; the book has bright colors and might hold fond memories; and they will be thrilled to already know most of the vocabulary. It will be a good review for them too, if they have forgotten. This lesson, therefore, can focus more on verbs. It will be an introductory lesson, not an in-depth one.

Explore & Explain (Attention &Co-construction):

            Use questions – Socratic Method – to co-construct what is different about the verbs, such as, “What’s going on in this story?” “What words were you unfamiliar with?” “Where are the verbs here?” “How do you know they’re verbs?” “Ok, they’re verbs, but what’s different about them than we’ve studied so far this semester?” “Who’s doing the action? (What is the subject?)” “So what’s this saying?” “So if I want to say ‘….’, how would I do that?” Etc.

Explain & Elaborate:

            Explain the endings for –er verbs and have them copy the verb endings chart for “-er” verbs, since “comer” (“to eat”) is the main verb in the story.

http://www.colby.edu/~bknelson/SLC/pret_repaso.php

Elaborate & Evaluate (Extension):

            Play Pictionary: I have a list of the current unit’s vocabulary words, and an infinitive from their vocabulary is on the power point. Two students from each team come up. I point out a vocabulary word (a noun). They draw the word. The first person to make a sentence with the noun and the correct form of the infinitive on the power point gets a point for their team. If they get the vocabulary and not the verb, they get one point.

I apologize for not posting consistently; the above is what my life currently consists of, although I am researching heroism in the Harry Potter series for a term paper, which is exciting.

Thanks for reading and for your input!

Cara

Poem: Devouring

Tags

agape, blood, C.S. Lewis, chomp, devouring, eros, Lewis, lips, love, myth, obsession, Orual, philio, poem, Poetry, Psyche, storge, The four loves, till we have faces, types of love

“They say the loving and the devouring are the same.” – C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

I’ve licked my bloody lips

With my big bloody tongue.

Chomped him all to bits.

Bones are all that’s left.

Why?

He was a good man.

_______________________________________________________________________

“Devouring” emerged from a novel I read by C.S. Lewis called Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. The novel explores among its many themes the concept of love; Lewis’s companion book to the one I read is The Four Loves , in which he enumerates on four types of love – storge (affection), philio (affection), eros (romance), and agape (unconditional) – and also human love versus divine love. Googling Till We Have Faces and reading summaries will not in any way come near to the depth and richness of it. The mean idea as pertaining to my poem is summed up in what Lewis said when asked for his thoughts on “what the book ‘means’”:

“Orual is (not a symbol) but an instance, a ‘case’ of human affection in its natural condition, true, tender, suffering, but in the long run tyrannically possessive and ready to turn to hatred when the beloved ceases to be its possession. What such love particularly cannot stand is to see the beloved passing into a sphere where it cannot follow.” (http://www.montreat.edu/dking/lewis/TILWEHAV.htm)

Again, “They say the loving and the devouring are the same.”

Thank you for reading, and I encourage you to read Lewis’s aforementioned books.

- Caroline.

I’m Published Again!

Tags

arts, arts magazine, Bradburn, Caroline, cemetery, contemplation, Era Miller, graveyard, names, poem, poemcrazy, Poetry, publication, Susan Goldsmith Woolridge, the beacon, winner, writing contest

I recently took a creative writing course at the university I attend, and at the end of it I submitted a few poems to a campus-wide writing contest called the Era Miller. One class period for this course, we went on what Poemcrazy‘s author Susan Goldsmith Woolridge calls a
“poem walk.” That is, we went walking to look for poems. Particularly, we went walking in the cemetery adjacent to campus. This poem is the result, and it won first place in the poetry category of the contest!

To Share A Name With The Dead

I went today to a cemetery grey
And upon a tombstone saw
My own name.

She was a Scotswoman
Had surname of Bradburn
But our “Caroline” was there
To stand beneath the lichen.

The ghost of Novembers-yet-to-come
Whirled me upon its wings
I stood wild-eyed and dumb
And lay beneath the grave.

I saw through the earth
Like a brown transparency
Saw my family gathered
Together, but changed.

My beloved mother to my right
Reposed, and there my father tarried
Shrunken and white and wise
After straining against his age.

I cried when I saw my husband come
His face looked twice his age
He laid a wreath of white upon my head
And tears of brine came from his eyes.

Then with a gasp my breath returned
And I in the cemetery stood.
The wind caressed, the clouds conversed
And my heart within me burned.

Since that day the years-yet-to-be
Have followed me apace
I have learned to love more deeply
To care profoundly and not erase.

I do not wish to live with unseeing view
Of eternity and those around me, the all and the few.
I remove self, put love in its stead
For I share a name with the dead.

I am enthused to have won; it was a pleasant surprise. I had no intention of gaining anything from it but the satisfaction of poetry upon the soul. As it is, it will soon be published in the area arts magazine, The Beacon. You can view my other entry in The Beacon here: http://morethanadalliance.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/the-pursuit-of-beauty/

Thanks for reading, everyone!

- Caroline

Poems: Acrostic Fun (I & II)

Tags

acrostic, college, high school, name, Oxford, poem, Poetry, pride, reflection, writing

Hey, everyone!
     I hope everyone is doing well and has had a wonderful Christmas season. I’ve been mostly resting, catching up with friends, spending a ridiculous amount of money on textbooks, and waiting for the spring semester to begin. It promises to be a very long semester, what with my best friend (http://sparrowsmusings.wordpress.com/) gone to study abroad at Oxford. However, I am grateful beyond grateful for my education and the many wonderful friends I have, both within the English department and outside it! I digress.
     All that said, these next two poems require a bit of explanation. The concept is simple – use the first letters of your name to come up with words that describe you. The first acrostic I wrote at the beginning of my senior year of high school, August 2009, as a get-to-know-you assignment. The second I wrote today, the third of January 2012, just before my fourth semester of college.

(I – 2009)
Consistent and caring
Avid reader
Real and honest
Orchestral music lover and ballroom dancer
Loves making quality friendships
Is a perfectionist
Never wants to be a burden
Excellent hugger

(II – 2012)
Cynic
Afraid not to know
Results in chaos
Over-analyzer
Likes the American dream
Inconsistent
Notions insubstantial
Emotionally motivated

I wonder, even now, what happened between August 2009 and January 2012. For that there’s a one-word answer: college. At the university, new social, spiritual, and academic situations propelled me to a new self-awareness. Now I don’t mean “self-awareness” in a New Age sense; I just mean that normal process of getting to know oneself. Writing does this to a person. I look back on Acrostic I and realize how prideful I was then. Not to say that I’m not now (everyone has struggles, right?), but I have definitely journeyed far as a person since that high-school me. Professors pushed me to excel beyond anything I had hitherto accomplished. Knowing no one allowed me to make my own friends and a new reputation. New-found independence allowed me to explore spirituality authentically. I suppose I have become more aware of who I really am and what makes me tick.

Have you ever written an acrostic with your name? Have you ever re-read something you wrote and from it learned something about yourself? Post below!

Poem: Tongue-twister

Tags

New York, peppers, Peter Piper, poem, Poetry, Sally, sea shells, thistle sticks, tongue, tongue-twister, twister, wood chucks

Wood chucks chuck wood
Peter Piper pickles peppers
Sally sells sea shells
You need unique New York
But I feel like a tongue-twister
With six thick thistle sticks.

Short Story: Faces

Tags

air, ballroom, black. kiss, blue, cafe, coffee, dance, electric cowboy, face, faces, grey, jack frost, lonliness, love, red, rock, short story, story, two-step, waves, winter

     I remember you caught me, that one time I slipped on the corté. I fell right into you. But your thick arms immediately encircled my waist, my arm flung naturally around your neck, and we stayed there for the longest second of my life. Fitting, isn’t it, that our love sparked itself amidst the dance of love, the tango? We thought we had both taken the dance class because we needed a physical activity credit to graduate, but God, it seems, had a different idea. Flared by that encounter, our lives grew together over the next few years. We laced our roots together like lovers’ fingers, as slowly as the Old Forest in Middle Earth is said to grow. We have had our moments, of course, when we need Tom Bombadil to soothe us and remind us of all good things. We must remember.
     We were dancing, too, the first time I was mad at you. A man twisting a handlebar mustache watched us as you led me onto the Electric Cowboy’s dance floor. I tried to follow your unfamiliar dance leads, but the toes beneath the straps of my gold metallic sandals steadily turned black and blue as my ego burst into flames. I scowled at you throughout the song and let my restless tongue flame out my mouth like a hideous dragon when we sat down afterward on rickety black stools. Were you trying to make me look like a fool? You know I didn’t learn the two-step with you! Your blue eyes shifted uncertainly between each of my own. Surprise, guilt, and concern gaped down at me, your eyes huge and head down. Your puppy-dog look. I tried not to look into your eyes, both trying to stay angry with you and trying to calm myself. Memory sharpened by emotion, I remember the smell of the beer, the dimness of the room, and which pair of jeans you were wearing. You looked like you’d been whipped by the person you loved most in the world. Now I peer backward in time and appreciate your romantics.
     Now I’m sitting alone in a coffee shop typing away, reminiscing on love. How cliché. It’s near midnight and my fuzzy, red scarf trails into my latte as I reach for my journal. I’m near the end of it now. You’re scrawled on nearly every page, imbedded in the ink. I wish you were here to read it. It’s full of you and me, bound in blue leather.
     You know, I remember our first kiss. The night’s blue sky cloaked the air above the car whose door you opened the door for me. The stars shone with a fresh, clear energy, and Jack Frost began to nip at our noses. The Christmas dance waited for us in the high school gym, but you caught my arm to say thank you for a wonderful night, in advance. You had stepped so close, gazing into my grey eyes with yours like deep blue pools, that I stepped back in surprise. Your warm fingers caught my left arm and brought me back. Just a peck, but my heart danced the jive around my chest like white feathers caught in a firestorm. I can still feel your lips lingering on my cheek, even now as a blast of cold winter air sneaks through the door on the coattails of café customers.
     Faces populate this coffee shop. That’s why I like it best. Gazing out a window, careless above a chair, engrossed in a book, or engaging a dear friend in conversation, the faces of the men and women tell their stories. A person’s face weathers like a rock on the shore. With each wave rolling upon it, a little wears away. Outside, we are cold and smooth. Worn and faceless. But here, we all have faces. Memories of laughter, real friendship, subtle fear, and loneliness echo in its colors and contours. The waves cannot quite reach us here. One easing, for a few allayed minutes, away from the washing waves of winter air. Or maybe it’s just me, forcing features out of a grey rock.

Poem: I wonder…

Tags

Christianity, church, God, Jesus, orphan, rain, religion, seagull, waterfall

Why is it
That I am more familiar
With the sound of a rainstick
Than the rain?

Why is it
That I am more familiar
With the sounds of a water fountain
Than a waterfall?

Why is it
That I am more familiar
With the sound of a seagull’s cry
Than an orphan’s cry?

Why is it
That I am more familiar
With the religion of the church
Than God?