A Poetry Mixtape: Poems From Outer Space

I just love a poem that gets into my head. Maybe I'm the only one that happens to? I don't know.

What I do know is that lately, when Gotye or Carly Rae Jepsen isn't stuck in my head, it's been this poem:

Mars Poetica
by Wyn Cooper
Imagine you're on Mars, looking at earth, a swirl of colors in the distance. Tell us what you miss most, or least. Let your feelings rise to the surface. Skim that surface with a tiny net. Now you're getting the hang of it. Tell us your story slantwise, streetwise, in the disguise of an astronaut in his suit.

Read the rest of the poem HERE.

I just love the title's play on "Ars Poetica," and other subtleties such as the narration. Who's talking? Aliens? Cylons?

I also like the idea of telling a story "slantwise..." how does one do that exactly?

And the ending...the ending is tremendous: "how words mean things / we didn't know we knew." You're compelled to pause and think about that for a bit, and that's just beautiful. I would definitely enjoy teaching and discussing this poem with students, wouldn't you?

If you're like me when you read this, you get to wondering if there are any other poems out there about outer space. Well, you're in luck! I decided to make a little Poetry Mix Tape for you:

• The Universe: Official Motion Picture Soundtrack by Tracy K. Smith
• Man in Space by Billy Collins
• Skylab by Rolf Jacobson
• Orion by Susan Gevirtz
• Moon Gathering by Eleanor Wilner
• Atmosphere by A.V. Christie
• Ego by Denise Duhamel
• gigantic mountains by Brandon Scott Gorrell
• Halley's Comet by Stanley Kunitz

Ok, so some of those aren't exactly about outer space, especially the last few. But they have a celestial tilt to them, at least.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Please be sure to check out the amazing things happening at the Poetry Friday Roundup, being hosted today HERE.

Poetry Friday: Ending the Hiatus

I've had every intention of posting more often. I apologize, dear readers. Obligations with my teaching job and my side gig as CEO of a small educational consulting start-up have been more demanding than expected.

But I return today with a renewed commitment to at the very least participating in a few Poetry Fridays each month. I've been collecting poems with the plan of blogging about them...so today I want to share a few that stood out.

The first is one that I'm sure I've shared before, by one of my absolute most favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye. It's called "Famous," and I read it at the end-of-year ceremony for my fifth graders, who finished elementary school last month. I think it was fitting for the occasion.

FamousBy Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.  

Read the rest of the poem here at Poetry Out Loud. It's nothing short of brilliant.

To make up for my absence, here are two more poems I discovered. The first would be great for classroom use...the descriptions are incredibly vivid. The second...it's one of those I'm not sure why I like it. But I do. A lot.

To The Field Of Scotch Broom That Will Be Buried By The New Wing Of The Mall
by Lucia Perillo
Half costume jewel, half parasite, you stood swaying to the music of cash registers in the distance while a helicopter chewed the linings of the clouds above the clear-cuts. And I forgave the pollen count while cabbage moths teased up my hair before your flowers fell apart when they turned into seeds. How resigned you were to your oblivion, unlistening to the cumuli as they swept past. And soon those gusts will mill you, when the backhoe comes to dredge your roots, but that is not what most impends, as the chopper descends to the hospital roof so that somebody's heart can be massaged back into its old habits.

Read the rest here at Poets.org.

Saw You There
by Ander Monson
"Carrie says I should make my connections into a poem." —Dennis Etzel Jr. Sawed you there, through you there, girl whom I name Carrie, shine of sun on bonnet-handle at that Walgreens on 28th. A Friday night. It looked like you came straight from fighting something that looked like lightning. You were all scorched up. Tired look but with a residue of glow, not in the family way, as they used to say, and as I still do, since I venerate the old, but filled to the heart with stars. Looking light years away, the way you operated that Redbox: how can a girl seem so far from Earth while at a Redbox?

Read the rest here at Poets.org.

I hope you enjoyed these three gems. I hope to be back next Friday with more. 

Be sure to check out the other Poetry Friday posts at today's host, Jone at Check it Out.

Poetry Friday: Looking to the Past

I tend to turn towards modern poetry a lot in my teaching and reading. I thoroughly enjoy contemporary poetry  and all that it has to offer. Collins, Merwin, Shihab Nye, and so many other of my favorites write such beautiful and inspiring poems...there is never a shortage to choose from, both as a teacher and reader. I have to stop myself sometimes and remember to look to the past.

Poets.org provides me with a poem each day, delivered straight to my inbox (you should sign up, too), and while a lot of the poems they choose seem to be intended to provide exposure to late 20th and 21st century poems, every so often, they mix in poems from older greats such as Whitman, Dickinson, Donne, and Shelley.

A couple of weeks ago, they delivered a poem from the 19th century by someone I don't think I realized wrote poetry, Ralph Waldo Emerson. I really got into the transcendentalists as a high school student and read a lot of Whitman and Thoreau and Emerson...but none of his poems, I guess. Here's one I really enjoy:

Water
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.


Short and simple. I like it a lot. Poetry Friday is being hosted by Laura Salas at Writing the World For Kids. Please be sure to check it out.

Poetry Friday: The Joys of Poetry 180

Are you familiar with Poetry 180? It's a program designed to help integrate poetry into the daily lives of high school students. Founded by poet Billy Collins during his tenure as poet laureate, it offers up an incredibly enjoyable poem every day for all 180 days of the school year.

If you explore the Poetry 180 site, you're bound to find a gem that you haven't read before. Better yet, you can subscribe and have each day's poem delivered directly to you. A collection of the 180 poems has been published as a book and it was so successful they published a second collection, too.

Poetry 180 is one of my favorite sources for discovering new poems. Once you start exploring it, you'll have trouble stopping. Check out Poem #36, which was delivered to me earlier this week:

The Printer's Error

Aaron Fogel

Fellow compositors
and pressworkers!

I, Chief Printer
Frank Steinman,
having worked fifty-
seven years at my trade,
and served five years
as president
of the Holliston
Printer's Council,
being of sound mind
though near death,
leave this testimonial
concerning the nature
of printers' errors.

First: I hold that all books
and all printed
matter have
errors, obvious or no,
and that these are their
most significant moments,
not to be tampered with
by the vanity and folly
of ignorant, academic
textual editors.
Second: I hold that there are
three types of errors, in ascending
order of importance:
One: chance errors
of the printer's trembling hand
not to be corrected incautiously
by foolish professors
and other such rabble
because trembling is part
of divine creation itself.

Read the rest of the poem here. I think it's a brilliant piece, don't you? There's a lot there for students to sink their teeth into. I hope you find some time to explore Poetry 180. Let me know what you think.

Poetry Friday, my favorite day of the week, features a round-up of bloggers which this week is hosted by the awesome Diane at Random Noodling. If you liked this post, you'll love the collection of posts featured there. You'll also want to be sure to subscribe to this blog via email in the handy sidebar widget or via RSS.

Poetry Friday: Poetry Mix Tape for Autumn 2

It has been quite some time since I put together a Poetry Mix Tape. Since autumn is in full swing here in Michigan, I thought it would make for the perfect topic. I mixed some poems on autumn for you last year, but I think I like these even more. I hope you like them, too:

Theme in Yellow by Carl Sandburg
Aftermath by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
October by Bobbi Katz
Fall, Leaves, Fall by Emily Bronte
After Apple Picking by Robert Frost
Late Autumn Wasp by James Hoch

And perhaps my new favorite poem about Autumn by Juhan Liiv...

"Leaves Fell"


A gust roused the waves,
leaves blew into the water,
the waves were ash-gray,
the sky tin-gray,
ash-gray the autumn.


It was good for my heart,
there my feelings were ash-gray,
the sky tin-gray,
ash-gray the autumn.

You can read the rest of the poem here. The ending is good. Really good. And while the mood of the poem is kind of down, I like it for the complexity that's hidden there. The repetition and the imagery. I like it a lot.

If you like it, too, let me know. And if you like poetry, you'll love Poetry Friday, which today is being hosted at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Jama's also sharing some autumn poetry today (and one delicious-looking photo of a doughnut). So be sure to check it out!

Poetry Friday: Poet Laureate Philip Levine

Time is a tricky thing. It seems like W.S. Merwin was just named U.S. poet laureate a few days ago. But apparently his term in that position is nearly over. While The Small Nouns was on hiatus this summer, Philip Levine was named to the post. In typical fashion, Mr. Levine's response to his appointment included this nugget: "If you take it too seriously, you're an idiot."


His career is quite accomplished. He has published over 20 books and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. I'm particularly fond of his poems because of Mr. Levine's roots--he was born and raised in Detroit, the city I grew up not far from and in which I currently work. He has written about Detroit often and, in my opinion, some of his poems reflect an urban "grittiness," that definitely resonates with Detroiters.


So while I'm a few months late to the party, I want to showcase a few of Philip Levine's poems here for my weekly Poetry Friday post. I start with one about a Detroit landmark:


Belle Isle, 1949
By Philip Levine

We stripped in the first warm spring night

and ran down into the Detroit River

to baptize ourselves in the brine

of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles,

melted snow. I remember going under

hand in hand with a Polish highschool girl

I'd never seen before, and the cries

our breath made caught at the same time

on the cold, and rising through the layers

of darkness into the final moonless atmosphere

that was this world, the girl breaking

the surface after me and swimming out

on the starless waters towards the lights

of Jefferson Ave. and the stacks

of the old stove factory unwinking.

Read the rest of this poem here. It's worth it. I just love the imagery. Here's another, the title poem of his Pulitzer Prize winning book:

The Simple Truth
by Philip Levine




I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields 
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
into the dusty light. The woman who sold me 
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste 
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way, 
she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
"Even if you don't I'll say you did."
Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering 
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.


Read the ending of this poem here. His poems, in my opinion, have a similar voice, but each stands out on its own as unique somehow. Also, they all seem to have really good endings. The last few lines of "The Simple Truth" contains this amazing line: "Can you taste what I'm saying?"


Here's the ending of "He Would Never Use One Word When None Would Do:" 


Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.


I love that. The rest of the poem can be read here. 


I hope Philip Levine's poetry appeals to you as much as it does to me. I can see how it might not, but if it doesn't, give it another chance. You might change your mind!


Poetry Friday is hosted at fomagrams today. Please get over there and check it out!

Poetry Friday: Fill in the Blanks

I recently attended the TEDxDetroit conference and got filled up with a day's worth of motivation and great advice. I think the event was aimed mainly at entrepreneurs, but there was a good deal of stuff that had implications in education.

One of the tidbits was provided by improv comedienne and self proclaimed "Idea Goddess," Hailey Zureich. She proposed that in order to be successful, you must "articulate your reality." In other words, say it out loud...this will help make it so. She offered this as an explanation: "Every day, when you wake up, you make the decision of whether you're going to have an 'oh sh** day' or a 'hot sh** day.'" Making that decision, articulating your reality, saying it out loud...this goes a long way towards making it happen.

I found this to be fairly insightful. And it somehow brought to mind a poem by Lou Lipsitz that I came across a while back:

"Have a _____ Day"
by Lou Lipsitz

Have a nice day. Have a memorable day.
Have (however unlikely) a life-changing day.
Have a day of soaking rain and lightning.
Have a confused day thinking about fate.

Have a day of wholes.
Have a day of poorly marked,
unrecognizable wholes you
cannot fathom.
Have a ferocious day, a bleak
unbearable day. Have a
riotously unproductive day;
a grim jaw-clenched, Clint Eastwood vengeful
law enforcement day.
Have a day of raging, hair-yanking
jealousy and meanness. Have a day
of almost grasping
how whole you are; a finely tuned,
empty day.

Have a nice day of walking and circling;
a day of stalking and hunting,
of planting strange seeds and wandering in the woods.
Have a day of endearing nonsense,
of hopelessly combing your hair,
a day of yielding, of swallowing
hard, breathing more deeply,
a day of fondness for beetles
and macabre spectacles, or irreverence
about anything you want, of just
sitting and wondering.

You can read the rest of "Have a ___ Day" here. (Try reading it out loud, it makes this one even better.) I hope you're able to fill in your own blanks today. I hope today is the kind of day you want it to be. I hope you say it and make it so.

I also hope you check out the Poetry Friday round up at Great Kid Books. There's SO much great poetry to read about today. Enjoy!