April Showers bring… POETRY!
April is National Poetry Month! Celebrate with:
- Videos featuring the Children’s Poet Laureate, Mary Ann Hoberman, from The Poetry Foundation
- The International Reading Association, lesson plans on “Composing and Performing Found Poetry“
- Activites from The Academy of American Poets
- Activities and more from Reading Rockets
- Interviews with 36 poets from The Miss Rumphius Effect
- 30 Poets/30 Days, new poetry on Gotta Book
March 29th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
I pinch myself! To my surprise
My poetry has won a prize.
I’d hoped that glory for the text
Of books or features would be next:
That I’d be hailed a jounalist
Or children’s author, but a twist!
Author, journalist? Oh no! It
Seems they think that I’m a poet.
and the winner is:
NUMBER TREE
In a corner of my garden,
I have a number tree.
A tree that blossoms in base ten
And mesmerizes me.
In the very early springtime
When days begin to warm,
The branches sprout with little buds
As tiny zeros form.
The buds burst into flowers
Beneath a climbing sun.
And every slender flower
Is shaped just like a one.
The petals fall in drifts of white
As tiny twos unfold.
The twos develop into threes
Which soon increase fourfold.
The fruit begins to ripen
In balmy summer air.
One day I come to see the fours
And fives hang everywhere.
Each lovely five expands in size
Then grows into a six.
The sixes swell to sevens
And eights enter the mix.
The eights are round and golden,
But I’m afraid to prune them.
I don’t let others see the tree;
They’d shake a branch and ruin them.
So it happens every autumn
Though nobody believes:
In a corner of my garden
Nines are falling with the leaves.
March 30th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Congratulations, Marianne!
March 30th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Congratulations, Marianne! Which prize is it?
March 31st, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Connecticut Press Club. The national press club wrote to ask if I’d like to have my 2009 first place poem ‘Number Tree’ submitted to the 2009 national awards — so they know I’ve gotten a first. (And, of course, I submitted it!)
But the Press Club awards are in May — and they have yet to notify me.
Gosh, I was hoping my feature article might win. Ed says I’m greedy!!!
April 1st, 2010 at 9:02 am
Last evening I began wondering at the lovely gift of an award for Number Tree, analyzing the meaning of my response. There’s the rub. I never truly analyze anything.
I’ve had the great good fortune to know exemplar poets: Vivian Shipley; Eileen Spinelli; Lee Bennett Hopkins. They do analyze. They delve into the depths of their sorrow, soar to the heights of their ideals, and take us with them on their journey. Me, I’m a surface person. Give me a sturdy stone wall or an elegant equation to explore.
Vivian, bless her, has exposed me to the graduate class she teaches, most likely hoping to knock some sensibility into me; Eileen, kindly, has tutored me through sessions in children’s verse. I’ll never reach those heights. I’m a rhymer with, perhaps, an ear for meter, a gift for cadence. When I’m able, I use this talent to make math fun, and I love the work. But it lacks the metaphysical.
So, the lovely gift? I didn’t mean to open the horse’s mouth to check its teeth, but I feel uncomfortable riding it. I don’t believe it’s quite greed, wanting to have won an award in ‘my own skin’, but instead, that other five letter g word. Guilt.