Monthly Archives: March 2011

Poetry Madness Updates

Posted by Jackie in poetry, teaching, writing and tagged with , , , , ,
William Blake's "The Tyger," publish...

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As my brackets progress, things are getting more interesting.

In my original pairings, I tried to connect the poems I was matching up against each other, either thematically, by author, or even by a repeated element. So two Neruda odes went up against each other, Ode to Tomatoes and Ode to My Socks, and “Tomatoes” won all three times. But also, Wild Geese went up against The Tyger, as two poems about animals, though in very different ways (“Wild Geese” was the winner two out of three times). But now that we are moving from the first matches into the second round, there are some interesting pairings emerging, and I’m excited to see how they go. For example, in one class, Introduction to Poetry will have to go against Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, and in another class, the same bracket resulted in a match between Eating Poetry and Let Evening Come.

So far, some of the poems I guessed would be most popular have indeed been winners. Still I Rise has won in each class’s first round, and if I were betting, I’d bet it will go pretty far. A Red, Red Rose also won in the first round for all three classes, and I would bet it will advance at least once more too. But otherwise, so far I have been pleasantly surprised at what poems have been garnering votes. Love Sonnet XVII won in two out of three matches so far, for example, and Dover Beach has also won, both poems that I was concerned might be too “hard” for the students to really respond to, just from hearing it once. I even paired each with what I thought were more accessible poems, and still, they won.They seem to like rhyming poems, which I expected, but some strong free verse contenders are doing well, and they are choosing a mix of modern and more traditional as well.

As far as structuring the tournament itself, we’ve had to double up and do two matches each day. Spring Break happening in mid-March didn’t help, nor does our block schedule, and so our tournament will definitely stretch into April. I think the tournament would definitely have more momentum in a class that meets every day, and could more easily be accomplished in March. A teacher I know is doing a similar tournament, but with a theme, and using entire class periods to get the tournament accomplished in a few days. I think I will keep my current poem choices, but the idea of doing the tournament in consecutive classes might be a fun experiment for next year. As April is National Poetry Month, I feel good about stretching the tournament into April, and I’ll be repeating my extra credit offering from last year to have my students create public poetry during the month of April also. 

Having those two experiences together for my students is just so exciting; I have a strong belief in the value of appreciating poetry and making it more part of our daily lives, and this pair of projects does that so well. There’s also something really lovely about getting to hear some beautiful poems read aloud every day, and I hope my students feel the same way.

 

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The Week Ahead

Posted by Jackie in all about me
Jury duty - first time ever called

Image by JasonUnbound via Flickr

  • I spent all day Sunday grading, and still have a fairly sizable pile to do.
  • I have to be at school Monday morning at 7:00 AM to get ready for an early meeting.
  • I have to be at school till around 8:00 PM on Wednesday.
  • I am waiting to hear back about my three menupoems and two separate NEH workshops to which I’ve applied, all of which I should hear from by Friday.
  • Our third quarter ends on Friday.
  • I have jury duty on Friday.

April Fool’s?  Sigh.

I Contain Multitudes

Posted by Jackie in writing

As my spring break winds down for good, I find myself contemplating a few contradictions. How should I spend this last day? How do I feel, now that I’m about to go back?

I want to bake something healthy, and eat junk food.

I want to take a long walk, and take a long nap.

I want to plant pansies, and I want to watch junk TV.

I want to clean my house, and I want to lie on the couch.

I feel overwhelmingly tired but also more rested than I have in weeks.

I wish I had gotten more done, and I’m glad about everything I did get done.

I am overwhelmed with clutter, and I have a few things I really must buy.

I want to go shopping, and I want to stay home.

I’m glad to be going back to a job I love, and I so wish I had a few more weeks (months?) at home.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Balance?: Spring Break Edition

Posted by Jackie in all about me, family life and tagged with

How many times have I thought or blogged about balance in the past few years? Too many to count, and yet it’s nagging at me still.

This time, it comes cloaked in the guise of my spring break, which I’m in the middle of now and have looked forward to for weeks. My own kids aren’t on break till April, so this is usually a week I spend trying to catch up and move forward in all areas of my life. In past years, I’ve gotten a big house project done, like painting the upstairs bathrooms or the downstairs hallway or just sorting out clothes and getting them ready to donate.

But this year? This year I tried something different, and did not assign myself a major house project. This year, I wanted to spend time doing fun things for myself (yes, that’s a whiny tone there), as well as spending some time with family and friends I don’t otherwise see often enough.

And I have, and it’s been great. I’ve taken some long and lovely walks, I spent some time in my daughter’s classroom today, I made some delicious baked ziti and chewy chocolate-chip cookie bars, I had lunch with my mother and sister at one of my favorite restaurants. Today the girls are leaving school early so we can hit the zoo with an old friend and her younger kids, and Friday, I have a mani/pedi and massage booked for myself. I’m going to try at least one other new recipe and I’ve read some wonderful books, as well as done some good writing. It’s been truly a beautiful way to spend a few days, and I’ve got a few more to go.

Sounds delightful, right? But now it’s late Wednesday night, and I’m panicking about the truly frightening and enormous stack of papers I have to grade before Tuesday, and I’m averting my eyes from the enormous stack of laundry that has been sitting in my bedroom for way too long (clean, just not put away!), and my whole house could use a good thorough decluttering and serious cleansing, and don’t get me started on the bathroom…. When this break is over, will I be ready to go back? What will I have accomplished, and what will still be lingering (torturously) behind? I’m also having an attack of those old summertime blues which I thought I had overcome, and assorted other anxieties are pinging around my brain….

At least insomnia inspired me to write this post? Spring Break: You’re doing it wrong. Sigh.

Menupoems: Done!

Posted by Jackie in calls for submissions, personal goals, poetry, writing and tagged with , ,

Yes, you read that right: I completed my self-imposed menupoem challenge, because I really did mean it this time!

So how did I do it? Well, one poem was drawn from the depths of my notebooks, that existed in several drafts there but had never really come together. I tinkered with it some, threw out a clumsy metaphor, subbed in a distinct voice (I hope) and gave it a new life. The second poem is entirely new, inspired by all the thinking about alliteration and sound devices I’ve been doing while preparing to teach a poetry unit with my ninth graders. I’ve been working on those two poems, including a tricky punctuation question with the second, for the past few weeks. Finally, the third poem hit me this morning after paging through my copy of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach, looking for some last-minute inspiration, though I was fully prepared to just send out the two. Something in the “transformation” exercise by Christopher Gilbert struck me in just the right way, and by the third draft, I knew I was sold.

There are piles of laundry in my bedroom and electronic stacks of essays to grade and dirty dishes in the sink; I didn’t sleep well last night because my husband snores when he’s getting sick, but man-o-man, it felt good to hit “send” on that particular email, regardless of the outcome.

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Poetry Update

Posted by Jackie in personal goals, poetry, teaching and tagged with ,
Cover of "And Still I Rise"

Cover of And Still I Rise

On the teaching front:

  • Only once has a class voted differently than the other two, which is a little surprising. They have enjoyed the love poems the most, which the early brackets are heavy on, but I’m curious to see how they’ll do with the non-love poems.
  • I think I’ve chosen poems well, and I’m excited about some of the match-ups to come. The scheduling is tough, though–since we have a block schedule, I’m going to have to double up sooner than I thought to get it all done in April in time to have our public finale. I think we lose some momentum by not being able to keep it going every day too, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

On the personal front, I’m making solid headway on my self-imposed menupoems challenge. I did indeed dig back through my notebooks and find a poem from a waitress’s point of view, and I have polished it up enough that I think it’s ready to go. I also started a new one that I’m pretty happy with; once I make some crucial punctuation decisions, that one will be ready to go as well. I’m hoping to start and “finish” a third as well; both I have so far are written from restaurant worker point of views, so I’d like to challenge myself to write from a diner’s perspective.  Since you are only allowed to send three, writing a third would really mean I was finished, but if I don’t, I have these two, ready to leave the nest. I’m feeling really good about it too, not only because I’m finally accomplishing a long-held goal, but because I think it’s a healthy step towards letting go of my fear of rejection, which will help move me forward as a writer.

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Menupoems: I Mean It This Time

Posted by Jackie in personal goals, poetry and tagged with , ,

So last year around this time, I wrote this post about menupoems, my affection for them and my determination to finally submit some of my own, including all my best-laid plans about how to make sure I did so.

Well, I didn’t.

But this year! This year is my year, I can feel it. My new resolution? To send off three poems even if I don’t think they are that good. In other words, I’m trying not to let perfect be the enemy of the good. For example, I know I have at least one, possibly two, draft poems in my notebook about waiting tables from the server’s perspective. Now, they might not be perfect yet, but I have been tweaking and revising them for at least a year, and I think they need to be set free. One of my bad habits as a writer is hanging onto these works-in-progress for too long, reluctant to send them out into the world and invite rejection (three poems rejected last week, for example). This is a baby step towards breaking that habit (I hope).

The deadline is March 15, if you’d like to play along and submit some of your own. Here’s the other info: Send up to the three poems, 12 line limit to menupoems@alimentumjournal.com. Paste poems in the body of the email — no attachments please. If you’d like to see some previous selections, click here for selections from past years and here for a PDF of last year’s choices.

I’ll post another update on March 15, letting you all know if I succeeded in submitting this year or not. If I fail, feel free to publicly shame me.