Irene Latham's Blog, page 20

Homeschool Poetry Party! Spring Poems

 Welcome to a GREEN edition of the Homeschool Poetry Party, featuring 5 spring poems and some writing tips. 💜

Joy Serenades the Stars (poem)

Flowers brightening
my bathroom window
on a sunny morning.Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit happy Kat at Kathryn Apel for Roundup.

I'm away from my desk this week, at Monroeville Literary Festival in Monroeville, Alabama (home of Harper Lee!) with my mom (!) and Charles Waters. Here's some scenes from traveling some of the same roads a decade ago!

Back in 2020, Monroeville Literary Festival was my last public event before covid shuttered the world...I'm glad to be making new memories.

Today's ArtSpeak: Animals poem features a coyote! 

I don't have a lot of experience with coyotes, though a highlight of our Yellowstone adventure a few years back was watching a coyote amble across a gas station parking lot. Cars were EVERYWHERE -- people, too -- and this critter wasn't bothered in the least. It wasn't the "in the wild" experience we were after, but it taught us something true about humans and wildlife interaction, something both sad and hopeful. But my poem is not about that, not really. :) Thanks so much for reading!

Joy Serenades the Stars

must stop

must lift voice

must tell the sky
the planets
the galaxies

I am here

night so brisk
so infinite

I am alive

- Irene Latham

Hope Has Long Legs (poem)

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure and visit Tricia at Miss Rumphius Effect for Roundup.

Well, it's been a rough week in these parts. I've been sick! But I'm improving now, thank goodness! Just in time for my birthday. :)  HAPPY! HAPPY! to all the others in our community who have birthday around this time.

I do have an ArtSpeak: Animals poem for you. This time, a stork! 

My favorite storks from childhood:

The stork that brings baby Dumbo in the Disney movie.

THE WHEEL ON THE SCHOOL by Meindert DeJong.

These days we spend a lot of time watching stork-like blue herons at the shore of our lake. They definitely do a lot of watching and waiting...

thank you so much for reading!

Hope Has Long Legs

It wades all day
in the shallows

waits
watches

time nothing more
than a ripple
of minnows, mice
flies

each moment
a feast
of sunlight
and possibility
- Irene Latham

Pride Has 12 Points (poem)

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Laura at Small Reads for Brighter Days for Roundup.
Goodness, what a week!Charles Waters and I traveled to Africatown to share our book as part of The Spirits of Our Ancestors festival. It was A-MAZ-ING!

I was a visitor on Reading With Your Kids podcast about SNAIL'S ARK in such a lovely, rich discussion... Link coming soon!
I joined Charles, our editor Stacey Barney, and other verse novelists Ellen Hagen and Colby Cedar Smith in a beautiful evening of poetry and history and books. View the recording here.
I launched my first-ever digital course for writers by presenting 2 FREE Masterclasses... THANK YOU for joining me!!

In case you missed it, enrollment is now open for Wild & Precious Writer: How to Optimize Your Creativity for More Joy, Confidence, and Your Best Writing Yet! (enrollment will close next Thursday, Feb. 24)
Find out ALL the details here.
And... I'm not done yet! (Though I am feeling a bit under the weather...) The final free Masterclass will be next Wednesday, Feb. 23, 4 pm cst. Register here.
Meanwhile, here's the latest poem in ArtSpeak: Animals. Poets, please note: this poem shifted to first person (all the others in this series are third person)... I mean, "pride!" It HAS to be in first person, yes? Thank you for reading!



Pride Has 12 Points
I hold my head high,

I look the world
in the eye.

Whatever winds blow,

whatever the day's
weight

I climb.

This mountaintop?

mine

- Irene Latham

Forgiveness is a Small Bird (poem)

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit lovely Linda at TeacherDance for Roundup.

I am away from my desk today, visiting Africatown with Charles Waters!

But I do have some news for you, and a poem.

News

I'm offering a FREE Masterclass for writers entitled Optimal Creativity Has Nothing to Do With Discipline: 3 Myths That Can Wreck our Writing (and What to Do Instead). 

I'm super-excited to share this content with all of you! The things I'll be sharing have been game-changers in my writing life, and I know they can make a difference in your writing life as well. I'll also be sharing how you can work with me. :)

Pick your time (3 options!), and I'll see you there! Click here for the registration page.

In case you missed it: This month's Homeschool Poetry Party featured LOVE poems, of course! View the video here.

And now for today's poem! If Carel Fabritius's Goldfinch piece wasn't already a favorite, it gained even more fans when Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize winning book THE GOLDFINCH was released (and also adapted for film). 

I puzzled for several days about what metaphor I wanted to lend this piece...and then voila! it came to me, and it feels just-right. (Turns out, during the time this painting was created, people were fond of keeping goldfinches as pets. It's hard to see the chain attached to the bird's leg in the painting, but look closer, it's there.)

Thank you so much for reading!

Forgiveness is a Small Bird

untethered

it will lift 

into the sky

sun kissing

its wings 

-Irene Latham

Homeschool Poetry Party! Love Poems

 Welcome to the February 2022 Homeschool Poetry Party! Enjoy!

Confidence Wears a Prickly Coat (poem)

 

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Elisabeth at Unexpected Intersections for Roundup.

I've got snails on my mind...because SNAIL'S ARK comes out next Tuesday! It features gorgeous illustrations by Mehrdokht Amini—who also did the illustrations for DICTIONARY FOR A BETTER WORLD. (The wooden Noah's Ark is a treasure I found recently at a yard sale!)

...and Kat Apel has a snail book coming, too: WHAT SNAIL KNOWS. It's a middle grade verse novel about a shy kid... I can't wait to read it!!

AND I've got CONFIDENCE on my mind, too. Who better than a (prickly) hedgehog to deliver this message? I'm sure there are many animals that could do it, but I'm particularly attracted to quiet confidence. And so...

Confidence Wears a Prickly Coat

it forages
hedgerows
with soft,
quick feet

when
threatened
it rolls
into a simple
ball

stays round,
steady—

until it's ready
to amble on

- Irene Latham

Thanks so much for reading!

A Little Patience for Poetry Friday Roundup!

 
Hello and welcome to Poetry Friday! Roundup is HERE! Please leave your links below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enterBefore I get to my post, here's an event invitation for you!


And some good news from the ALA Youth Media Awards... D-39:A Robodog's Journey was named to the Sci-Fi Notables List, more officially, The Eleanor Cameron Notable Middle Grade Books List. Hooray for Klynt & D-39! So many thanks to the committee for this recognition. 💜
I've been thinking about patience—and how hard it is! Also about how yes, we need patience... but we also need a bit of impatience to accomplish our dreams. 

Sometimes we need to wait less, think less—and DO more. 

Other times we need to hard-stop DOing and simply rest—BE.

Sorry, I have no answers for when to do which! But doesn't it help to know this is something we ALL struggle with?

Poems help, too. Here's a few patience poems for you.

1. 
Teach me your mood, O patient stars!
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Teach me your mood, O patient stars!
Who climb each night the ancient sky,
Leaving no space no shade, no scars,
No trace of age, no fear to die.


2.
Ode to a Maintenance Man and His Family
by Kay Boyle

Renato O. Jones, you maintain my beliefsAnd service my thoughts when they cease to function.You repair the ailing equipage of the present, transformThe past into flowers around the shuffle-board courtWhere there were none before. You speakThe melodious languages of countries that baskIn the sun, employ vacuum respirator as thoughIt were rod or staff from the garden of Paradise.
You anoint windowpanes with Windex and kneelIn concern for stains on the carpeting,As men knelt in ancient cathedrals where their voicesMurmured in prayer. You restore me with dance-stepsFrom harbors you knew: Shanghai, Marseilles, Trinidad,And how many others. The songs that you sing(As you unclog drains or retrieve lights when bulbsflicker and fail or weave copper patches into the websOf damaged screen doors) are magical with the musicOf names of your family: Carmelita, Christopher, Dissere,Alex and Mark, and Keven and Kenneth and Kerwin.
Each day you say to me - not in words but in the eloquence Of your presence - that infinite patience with mankind is everything.---

I found this poem in my (1996) copy of THE GIFT OF TONGUES, a beautiful anthology from Copper Canyon Press. More about Kay Boyle here.
3. 
"Patience" by Marilyn Singer —posted here at Live Your Poem a few years ago! It expresses so well one of the reasons I love mountain (lake) life!
...and finally, my latest ArtSpeak: ANIMALS poem continues the theme set forth in "Courage Has Four Feet" and "Wisdom Has Wide Eyes."
Today's piece features a turtle dove as depicted by Chinese Ming Dynasty artist Shen Zhou. 
Words that come up a lot about Shen Zhou's landscapes, flowers, and other works are "reverent" and "gentle." I find his work both those things and would add: "warm" and "calming." His work definitely inspires patience in me. Thank you so much for reading!


Patience Has a Soft Voice

it hums across
dusty summer

serenades
long, searing season
with a whisper-gentle song

turr-turr-turr

drowsy clouds
listen

sky-door opens—

siss-siss-siss

rain
- Irene Latham

Wisdom Has Wide Eyes (poem)

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference for Roundup.

I'm super-excited about Wild & Precious Writer, the digital course I'll be launching next month! Gratitude to those who have joined me as Founding Members...I'm so grateful for your enthusiasm and support... and your devotion to your writing life. Beautiful!

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, read this post...and go here to subscribe to my email list so that you don't miss out on all the goodness that's coming. :) (Founding Member offer was made through my email list.)

Today's poem is a companion piece to last week's "Courage Has Four Feet." Perhaps this is a theme I'll revisit during this year of ArtSpeak: Animals? We'll see! Meanwhile, enjoy Dürer's Little Owl from way back in the Northern Renaissance, when "animal paintings" became a genre of art. 

Like Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer aimed to be precise and often used real (stuffed) specimens as models for his work. At the time, these pieces were considered more "craft" than "art." I'm kind of in love with them and will be featuring quite a few of Dürer's animals this year. :) 

Here's a quote that celebrates the beauty of what's "real," the idea that governed these artists' work:

"Nature holds the beautiful, for the artist who has the insight to extract it. Thus, beauty lies even in humble, perhaps ugly things, and the ideal, which bypasses or improves on nature, may not be truly beautiful in the end." - Albrecht Dürer

Something to think about as we write our poems: what makes them beautiful?

Thank you so much for reading!

Wisdom Has Wide Eyes

it blends in,
unnoticed

listens to starshimmer,
studies canopies
and knotholes

stays awake
across cruelest hours
to hunt

for meaning
             movement
                         connection—

once seen,
the sky cannot be
unseen
- Irene Latham

Courage Has Four Feet (poem)

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure and visit Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading for Roundup.

Today's ArtSpeak: Animals poem is inspired by one of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings. I so appreciate his desire for accuracy, and how his studies and drawings were an essential part of the process. 

I think we writers do our own versions of this as we research and draft and cut and try again! 

In fact, the Private Eye method (which I've shared about many times and continue to practice!) is equally as concerned with finding the right words as it is about drawing in exquisite detail what you see in the jeweler's loupe. It's such a great practice for writers... if you haven't tried it, I hope you will!

And here's a quote to consider...although please don't use it as an excuse to stay in research mode FOREVER...at some point, one must simply WRITE the thing! (Ahem. Writing these words as much for myself as anyone!)

"For verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only a little or not at all." - Leonardo da Vinci

And now, my poem! Thank you so much for reading.

Courage Has Four Feet

sometimes it wakes
slowly—

a bear summoned
by snowmelt
birdsong
hunger

it shuffles
into a greening wood
thunder in its throat
lightning it its eyes

heartstorm
stirring
beneath each
wobbly step

- Irene Latham