Susan Kennedy

“The poet dreams of the classroom

I dreamed
I stood up in class
And I said aloud:

Teacher,
Why is algebra important?

Sit down, he said.

Then I dreamed
I stood up
And I said:

Teacher, I’m weary of the turkeys
That we have to draw every fall.
May I draw a fox instead?

Sit down, he said.

Then I dreamed
I stood up once more and said:

Teacher,
My heart is falling asleep
And it wants to wake up.
It needs to be outside.

Sit down, he said.”
― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

“Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“We cannot create what we can't imagine.”
― Lucille Clifton

“When students write from experience, they can breathe those specifics into their writing- dialect, odd smells, precise names of plants- that can animate even the most tired and tedious text.”
― Ralph Fletcher, What a Writer Needs