by Charles Ghigna
Let's build a poem
made of rhyme
with words like ladders
we can climb.
with words that like
to take their time,
words that hammer,
words that nail,
words that saw,
words that sail,
words that whisper,
words that wail,
words that open
window door,
words that sing,
words that soar,
words that leave us
wanting more.
from The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems
selected by Paul B. Janeczko
Candlewick Press, 2019
Monday, July 29, 2019
Monday, July 22, 2019
Breathing (Monday Poem)
by Ellery Akers
I love to feel as if I’m just another body, a breather along with the others:
blackbirds taking sips of air, garter snakes
lapping it up with their split tongues,
and all those plants
that open and close and throw up streamers of oxygen:
maybe that cottonwood that tilts across the creek-bed
is the very one that just sucked up carbon dioxide
and let me breathe, maybe I should hang a card around it,
Thank you for the next two minutes of my life,
maybe some of the air I just swallowed used to be inside the hot larynx of a fox,
or the bill of an ash-throated flycatcher,
maybe it just coursed past
the scales of a lizard–a bluebelly –
as he wrapped himself around his mate,
maybe he took an extra breath and let it out
and that’s the one I got.
Maybe all of us are standing side by side on the earth
our chests moving up and down,
every single one of us, opening a window,
loosening a belt, unzipping a pair of pants to let our bellies swell,
while in the pond a water beetle
clips a bubble of air to its shell and comes back up for another.
You want sanitary? Go to some other planet:
I’m breathing the same air as the drunk Southerner,
the one who rolls cigarettes with stained yellow thumbs
on the bench in the train station,
I’m breathing the same air as the Siamese twins
at the circus, their heads talking to each other,
quarreling about what they want to do with their one pair of hands
and their one heart.
Tires have run over this air,
it’s passed right over the stiff hair of jackrabbits and road kill,
drifted through clouds of algae and cumulus,
passed through airplane propellers, jetprops,
blades of helicopters,
through spiderlings that balloon over the Tetons,
through sudden masses of smoke and sulfur,
the bleared Buick filled with smoke
from the Lucky Strikes my mother lit, one after another.
Though, as a child, I tried my best not to breathe,
I wanted to take only the faintest sips,
just enough to keep the sponges inside,
all the lung sacs, rising and falling.
I have never noticed it enough,
this colorless stuff I can’t see,
circulated by fans, pumped into tires,
sullenly exploding into bubbles of marsh gas,
while the man on the gurney drags it in and out of his lungs
until it leaves his corpse and floats past doorknobs
and gets trapped in an ice cube, dropped into a glass.
After all, we’re just hanging out here in our sneakers
or hooves or talons, gripping a branch, or thudding against the sidewalk:
as I hold onto my lover
and both of us breathe in the smell of wire screens on the windows
and the odor of buckeye.
This isn’t to say I haven’t had trouble breathing, I have:
sometimes I have to pull the car over and roll down the window,
and take in air, I have to remember I’m an animal,
I have to breathe with the other breathers,
even the stars breathe, even the soil,
even the sun is breathing up there,
all that helium and oxygen,
all those gases blowing and shredding into the solar wind.
from Practicing the Truth by Ellery Akers
Autumn House Press, 2015
I love to feel as if I’m just another body, a breather along with the others:
blackbirds taking sips of air, garter snakes
lapping it up with their split tongues,
and all those plants
that open and close and throw up streamers of oxygen:
maybe that cottonwood that tilts across the creek-bed
is the very one that just sucked up carbon dioxide
and let me breathe, maybe I should hang a card around it,
Thank you for the next two minutes of my life,
maybe some of the air I just swallowed used to be inside the hot larynx of a fox,
or the bill of an ash-throated flycatcher,
maybe it just coursed past
the scales of a lizard–a bluebelly –
as he wrapped himself around his mate,
maybe he took an extra breath and let it out
and that’s the one I got.
Maybe all of us are standing side by side on the earth
our chests moving up and down,
every single one of us, opening a window,
loosening a belt, unzipping a pair of pants to let our bellies swell,
while in the pond a water beetle
clips a bubble of air to its shell and comes back up for another.
You want sanitary? Go to some other planet:
I’m breathing the same air as the drunk Southerner,
the one who rolls cigarettes with stained yellow thumbs
on the bench in the train station,
I’m breathing the same air as the Siamese twins
at the circus, their heads talking to each other,
quarreling about what they want to do with their one pair of hands
and their one heart.
Tires have run over this air,
it’s passed right over the stiff hair of jackrabbits and road kill,
drifted through clouds of algae and cumulus,
passed through airplane propellers, jetprops,
blades of helicopters,
through spiderlings that balloon over the Tetons,
through sudden masses of smoke and sulfur,
the bleared Buick filled with smoke
from the Lucky Strikes my mother lit, one after another.
Though, as a child, I tried my best not to breathe,
I wanted to take only the faintest sips,
just enough to keep the sponges inside,
all the lung sacs, rising and falling.
I have never noticed it enough,
this colorless stuff I can’t see,
circulated by fans, pumped into tires,
sullenly exploding into bubbles of marsh gas,
while the man on the gurney drags it in and out of his lungs
until it leaves his corpse and floats past doorknobs
and gets trapped in an ice cube, dropped into a glass.
After all, we’re just hanging out here in our sneakers
or hooves or talons, gripping a branch, or thudding against the sidewalk:
as I hold onto my lover
and both of us breathe in the smell of wire screens on the windows
and the odor of buckeye.
This isn’t to say I haven’t had trouble breathing, I have:
sometimes I have to pull the car over and roll down the window,
and take in air, I have to remember I’m an animal,
I have to breathe with the other breathers,
even the stars breathe, even the soil,
even the sun is breathing up there,
all that helium and oxygen,
all those gases blowing and shredding into the solar wind.
from Practicing the Truth by Ellery Akers
Autumn House Press, 2015
Monday, July 15, 2019
Mysteries, Yes (Monday Poem)
by Mary Oliver
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
from Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver
Beacon Press, 2009.
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
from Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver
Beacon Press, 2009.
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Baseball Signals Summer (FAMILY magazine reviews)
Summertime, and the season is baseball. These perfect books
connect with readers and children of all ages for America’s favorite game.
Whether you’re a player, a participant or a fervent fan, these terrific tales
provide a chance to enjoy!
Knuckleball Ned
by R. A. Dickey
illustrations by Tim Bowers
Former
major league knuckleball pitcher and award winner Dickey has crafted a picture
book debut about a ball with limited spin that causes whimsical forward motion.
Ned, a nervous baseball isn’t sure how his first day at school will be. But
after he wobbles and bumps his way down the aisle on the bus, he makes friends
with Sammy the large softball.
At school
the Foul Ball Gang makes fun of him and plays a trick on Ned’s new friend
Connie Curveball. All the other balls know who they are - fastballs, sliders,
etc. - but Ned hasn’t figured it out yet. Although he does discover he can also
float and glide. When he rescues Connie’s shoes from the tree where the Foul
Ball Gang has thrown them, he realizes he’s not a knucklehead, he’s Knuckleball
Ned and proud.
Bowers uses
bright acrylics and cartoon features to distinguish between the kinds of balls,
no small feat to keep the story moving with characters that are so similar in
shape. Facial expressions actively communicate emotions and movement. Most are
partial page illustrations with lots of white space to allow for clean lines.
The several double page spreads are important for showing significant movement
and highlighting critical elements in the text and its climax. This delightful
tale is a charming anti-bullying book for youngsters of all ages.
Dial, $17.99
Interest Level:
Pre-Kindergarten – Grade 1
Beverly Billingsly
Can’t Catch
by Alexander Stadler
Two friends,
Beverly and Oliver (both bears), are always chosen last for playing softball,
their academic skills and abilities notwithstanding. When they decide to do
something to change this humiliating state of affairs, Beverly’s first attempt
is not successful. Carlton, the star, declines to teach her saying, “Either
you’ve got it or you don’t.” In his opinion, “being good at sports is not
something you can learn.” Fortunately, Beverly doesn’t believe him. When she
stops by the library looking to learn how to play, the librarian asks, ”Have
you considered practicing?” And then offers to coach them.
Partial
page gouache and ink illustrations show the characters actively involved in
playing and practicing. Cheerful, bright and animated characters match the
breezy text to show a familiar experience for youngsters who are not innate
athletes.
Drawing a face on the softball,
Mrs. Del Rubio, looking more like a red headed woodpecker than a coach, advises
Oliver and Beverly that “Wallace” (the ball with the new face) “can’t stand to
touch the ground.” The two buddies practice every chance they have. Despite a
slight setback when Beverly gets knocked out by a fast ball, the two continue training,
until a game when together they put their developing abilities to work. While
neither of the two are stars, the satisfying ending for this engaging story clearly
encourages readers that practicing can develop skill.
Harcourt, $16
Interest Level: Pre-Kindergarten
– Grade 2
Baseball Hour
by
Carol Nevius
illustrated by Bill Thomson
Poet Nevius’ rhyming text is deftly written and pairs smoothly with
artist Thompson’s detail oriented, photo-realistic illustrations for a kid’s
version of baseball practice. Beginning with warm-ups, the text spins through
throwing and catching, to batting practice and finally, with players divided
into teams, proceeds to a practice game.
The illustrations depict a
multicultural group of kids, with close-ups of a cleated foot on the base,
stitching on gloves and balls, a determined look on one face, and a surprised
look on another face when the ball lands in the mitt. There is power when bat
and ball connect, plus a slide toward home, and a tagged out that extends
excitement as the game progresses.
Teamwork is showcased in this book. Especially
heartwarming is the climactic double-page spread, when “our time is up and
practice ends. Arms like spokes, a wheel of friends” demonstrates, in a melding
of words with pictures, kids’ hands celebrating in a cooperative pile.
Marshall Cavendish, $16.99
Interest Level: Kindergarten – Grade 2
Monday, July 8, 2019
Sand and Sea (Monday Poem)
by Karla Kuskin
Sitting in the sand and the sea comes up
so you put your hands together
and you use them like a cup
and you dip them in the water
with a scooping kind of motion
and before the sea goes out again
you have a sip of ocean.
from Moon, Have You Met My Mother?
The Collected Poems of Karla Kuskin
HarperCollins, 2003
Sitting in the sand and the sea comes up
so you put your hands together
and you use them like a cup
and you dip them in the water
with a scooping kind of motion
and before the sea goes out again
you have a sip of ocean.
from Moon, Have You Met My Mother?
The Collected Poems of Karla Kuskin
HarperCollins, 2003
Monday, July 1, 2019
Pick Up Your Room (Monday Poem)
by Mary Ann Hoberman
Pick up your room, my mother says
(she says it every day):
my room's too heavy to pick up
(that's what I always say),
Drink up your milk, she says to me,
don't bubble like a clown;
of course she knows I'll answer that
I'd rather drink it down.
And when she says at eight o'clock
you must go straight to bed,
we both repeat my answer:
why not go left instead?
from A Bad Case of the Giggles: Kids' Favorite Funny Poems
selected by Bruce Lansky
Meadowbrook Press, 1994
Pick up your room, my mother says
(she says it every day):
my room's too heavy to pick up
(that's what I always say),
Drink up your milk, she says to me,
don't bubble like a clown;
of course she knows I'll answer that
I'd rather drink it down.
And when she says at eight o'clock
you must go straight to bed,
we both repeat my answer:
why not go left instead?
from A Bad Case of the Giggles: Kids' Favorite Funny Poems
selected by Bruce Lansky
Meadowbrook Press, 1994
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