I came across this poem which I posted to my blog nearly thirteen years ago. I had completely forgotten about it, and now I just have to share it with you (again).
At Sunday services at Blessed Trinity Church (Anglican), I usually read aloud a hymn from the hymnal as a poem, but I think that I will share this poem instead. E.E. Cummings is my favorite poet, and one of my prized possessions is a copy of Complete Poems: 1913-1962 by E.E. Cummings published by Harcourt Brace and given to me by a co-worker at the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ) Bookstore in 1989. It's long out of print, and Tam covered the book jacket with a library-quality protector, and it now graces the prized position at the exact center of my poetry bookshelf.
Here is the poem; I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I do:
77
i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities -i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection: over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains
i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature -i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)
E.E. Cummings
In addition to enjoying Cummings' poetry, I have also come to appreciate his paintings; this one is my favorite thus far: The Artist's Mother:
And this was the first painting by Cummings that I encountered: Patchen Place:
And this one I saw for the first time tonight as I draft this post: Bouquet in White Vase:
"Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer."
~Maya Angelou
Prayer is the heart and soul of my existence. I don't write this to sound all holier than thou-ish; I write it because I have no other choice. Prayer isn't anything more or less than talking with God. Because praying became too difficult when I first became ill with chronic pain, I found help in praying through the Book of Common Prayer in which prayers are written to be read aloud as a church body or by oneself in private prayer.
I also found great solace in a slim little volume of prayers that I pulled out earlier today to pray from: A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie. It's now out of print in its original form; an updated form is available on Kindle, but I only want Baillie's original book, not a revised edition. I've mentioned this book many times on this blog over the years, and it's a book overflowing with solace and peace.
And gratitude. There's a book -- a very popular book -- a New York Times bestseller for over a year, that I can't recommend highly enough: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Counting our blessings -- the biggies as well as the little incidentals of our ordinary days -- this is truly the heart of following God and feeling His Love for each and every one of us.
And Ann Voskamp's blog, A Holy Experience, is truly, to misquote John Keats' poem "Endymion," "a thing of beauty and a joy forever." There's nothing quite like pulling up a chair on Ann's huge front porch to listen to her words of wisdom born of suffering, and the resulting joy of a life being lived perfectly imperfect, as we all are.
And, ahhh! The pen of Maya Angelou is gentle one moment and militant the next -- calling out the wrong and lauding the right and with compassion for everything and everyone in-between. She is a Truthteller, Maya is. And she doesn't hold back her punches, no matter whose jaw she is aiming for. Yet her love conquers the injustices she rails against -- and she can be as gentle as this beautiful quotation I've chosen to share with you this week.
I need to get to bed ... as soon as I post the new Collect for Septuagesima (the Third Sunday Before Lent) -- it's included in this week's sidebar -- to our Book of Common Prayer's Facebook group, copy down the verses of the Communion hymn I'll be reciting as poetry via Zoom for our Blessed Trinity Anglican Church's service tomorrow, and pray Compline before bed.
Wishing you all a wonderful Sunday, whether you will be watching the big game or enjoying the unseasonably warm weather here in San Diego (it's supposed to be 83 here on Sunday) or doing whatever else you enjoy most on this day of relaxation and rest. The majority of my family will be trying to slay a green dragon in our 84th Dungeons & Dragons session. Here's hoping we survive until Week 85!
It seems a lifetime ago, yet it seems so immediate that it could have been yesterday. We were so removed from the actual events of September 11, here on the West Coast, awakened by my father's phone call after pulling into our family's mountain cabin with four sleeping kids at 2:00 AM just a few hours previously. We had finished packing up our city home of ten years, picked up the kids from my parents' beach house, and drove an hour east, past the small mountain town that we were moving to, and arrived at my family's 500 square foot cabin to stay until we could move into our new-to-us mountain home.
We had only "rabbit ears" on the small TV in the cabin, so most of the news was blurry and static-laden. I remember being half-asleep all day, trying to watch the news, setting up my laptop on the kitchen table but only able to be online for half an hour at a time in order to keep the phone lines free to talk to family, the realtors, etc. All while taking care of four kids ages 18 months to nine years old. The little guy was still nursing, and I was trying to homeschool the older two kids while the preschooler created mayhem.
Because I was so news-deprived, I tend to spend each anniversary of September 11 watching crystal-clear videos of the events in New York, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania. But the first anniversary was the most powerful because I could finally see, with astonishing clarity, the videos and photos of all that I couldn't see on September 11, 2001, and for several weeks afterward, as our escrow was delayed because of the New York banks needing time to start back to work again.
But what really caught my attention was a moment in which the US Poet Laureate, Billy Collins (whom I would meet in 2013 at the Writers' Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University), read aloud his poetic tribute on the first anniversary of September 11. "The Names." It struck me viscerally, even more than U2's "Beautiful Day" and "Walk On" (two of my favorite songs by my favorite band) at the Superbowl halftime show a few months after the tragedy.
Poet Billy Collins at The Writer's Symposium by the Sea, 2013
The thing I love about Billy Collins' work is that he is supremely unpretentious. With his poetic talent and his academic cred, with his position as our nation's Poet Laureate for two years, he could easily be as pretentious as all-get-out. But he's not. He is (no past tense here!!) our nation's poet. He speaks the language of the everyday American, with a hint of sarcasm, with a twinkle in his eye. But not with this poem. Here he is, reading "The Names" again, at the request of PBS:
If you would like to read more about Billy Collins and his poetry, check out his page on The Academy of American Poets at poets.org: Billy Collins. (To read some of his poems, click the bar beneath his photo.)
US Poet Laureate Billy Collins
Thanks for allowing me to remember those dark days, but not very dark as I was a continent away, in a wee mountain cabin with four small children, trying to find out what the heck was happening on this beautiful autumn day, a day of change as we moved from one house to another nineteen years ago. I knew that what was happening was big and scary, even through the static fuzz of the 12-inch TV screwed into the wall seven feet from the floor.
But Billy Collins made it real the next year, made it actual. Made it tangible. And I can't thank him enough.
"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song."
~Blessed Pope John Paul II
Icon of the Resurrection of Christ, Eastern Orthodox
"On Easter Day, the veil between time and eternity thins to gossamer."
~Douglas Horton
"Resurrection of the Christ" ~Fra Angelico
"There is not room for Death, Nor atom that His might could render void: Thou--Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed." ~Emily Bronte
"Resurrection" by Carl Heinrich Bloch
"No pain, no palm;
No thorn, no throne;
No gall, no glory;
No cross, no crown."
~William Penn
"Resurrection" by Van Dyke
"Christ is risen! We are risen! Shed upon us heavenly grace,
Rain and dew and gleams of glory from the brightness of your face;
That with hearts in heaven dwelling, we on earth might fruitful be,
And by angel hands be gathered, and be ever, Lord, with thee."
THE COLLECT FOR EASTER SUNDAY OR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
ALMIGHTY God, who through your only eternal Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; Grant that, by your mighty power going before us, we may die daily to sin and live with him forever in the glory of his resurrection; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and rules with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. (References: Acts 2.24; John 9.25; 1 Peter 1.3; Hebrews 2.14-15; James 1.4)
Wishing you all a joyous Resurrection Day and a glorious Eastertide!!
This season of Advent has been amazing. On the Sunday before Advent began, I approached our associate pastor and asked if we could celebrate Advent this year. We were already looking forward to Pastor Joe Murrell's return to Pine Valley Community Church after a four-year absence following ten years of pastoring here previously. Pastor Joe and his lovely wife, Jenny, were packing their home in Paradise, California in preparation to return to Pine Valley when the Camp Fire swept through Paradise, destroying their home along with nearly 16,000 additional residences, businesses, and other structures. So Pastor Jeff thought that celebrating Advent, which Pastor Joe had done in his time previously at PVCC, was a great idea. We worked out the details, and it's been wonderful celebrating Advent as a church together, especially during this time of transition.
Since Pastor Joe returned, he has preached on "Advent and Joy" and, today, on "Advent and Love." So Advent at PVCC this year has not merely been about families coming up to light the Advent candles and read the Scriptures covering the four themes of Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Advent has permeated the entire service, from the sermons to the prayers to the worship songs. And this morning four members of our worship team sang a lovely arrangement of the German Advent carol "Es istein Rose entsprungen" which was first published in 1599 and was translated into English by Theodore Baker in the 1890s and renamed "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming." The poetry of this hymn is absolutely incredible, and hearing it sung in four parts acapella was even more impressive. Here are the English lyrics:
Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming From tender stem hath sprung! Of Jesse’s lineage coming, As men of old have sung. It came, a flow’ret bright, Amid the cold of winter, When half spent was the night.
Isaiah ’twas foretold it, The Rose I have in mind; With Mary we behold it, The virgin mother kind. To show God’s love aright, She bore to men a Savior, When half spent was the night.
This Flow’r, whose fragrance tender With sweetness fills the air, Dispels with glorious splendor The darkness everywhere. True man, yet very God, From sin and death He saves us, And lightens every load.
Although I know best the version sung in German by the Kings Singers of Kings College, Cambridge, Charlotte Church sings a lovely version in English that I've included for you here, with the lyrics included.
What a way to celebrate the fourth and final Sunday of Advent with Christmastide peeking around the corner!!
O LORD, raise up your power, we pray, and with great might come among us; And, as our sins and wicked ways greatly hinder us in running the race that is set before us, let your abundant grace and mercy come quickly to help and deliver us; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit, belongs all honor and glory, now and always. Amen. (References: Isaiah 51.9; Hebrews 12.1; Romans 3.24-26)
Wishing you all a blessed Advent and a joyous Christmastide!!
This week U2 dropped another amazing single from their upcoming Songs of Experience album, and while I've loved "The Best Thing About Me" (especially hearing it live at their concert in September), I think I love "American Soul" even more.
My neighbor (we Pine Valleyans are all "neighbors" up here in a town of 1500) has been working with Jacob Needleman, author of American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders which explains a lot about the mess America is in right now.
We've lost our soul.
And my neighbor, in her eighties, also loved the music and lyrics to U2's "American Soul" because some of the same ideas from Needleman's book--and Judith's latest writings in both poetry and prose--reflect the loss of America's soul.
At the U2 concert in San Diego in September, the pre-concert "show" was a selection of poetry about America. I didn't notice it scrolling down the large screens at first...until I caught a beloved line written by Langston Hughes, one of my top five poets. Poem after poem scrolled...another by Hughes, then Carl Sandburg, Rita Dove, Robinson Jeffers, even Robert Pinsky (whom I met at February's Writer's Symposium by the Sea)...all poems about the heart and soul of America. And the whole concert was backed by the imagery of America--the Joshua Tree songs as well as the new rhythms and lyrics, familiar because of their source and the talent of U2, but new-to-us in an uncomfortable-comfortable way that gently scolded and taught and celebrated.
So U2's "American Soul" reminds us of who we've been...and who we can be again.
Here are the lyrics, courtesy of ATU@.com:
"American Soul"
Blessed are the bullies For one day they will have to stand up to themselves Blessed are the liars For the truth can be awkward
It’s not a place This country is to be a sound Of drum and bass You close your eyes to look around Look around, around Look around, it’s a sound Look around, look around It’s a sound
It’s not a place This country is to me a thought That offers grace For every welcome that is sought
You are rock’n’roll You and I are rock’n’roll You are rock’n’roll Came here lookin’ for American Soul
It’s not a place This is a dream the whole world owns The pilgrim’s face It had your heart to call her home
Hold on, brother John Too many mothers weeping Dream on, brother John In your dreams you can’t be sleeping
You are rock’n’roll You and I are rock’n’roll You are rock’n’roll Came here lookin’ for American Soul American, American
Put your hands in the air Hold up the sky It could be too late But we still gotta try
There’s a moment in a life Where the soul can die In a person, in a country When you believe the lie The lie, the lie, the lie
There's a promise at the heart Of every good dream It's a call to action Not to fantasy
The end of the dream The start of what's real Let it be unity Let it be community For refugees like you and me A country to receive us Will you be my sanctuary RefuJesus
You are rock’n’roll You and I are rock’n’roll You are rock’n’roll Came here lookin’ for American Soul
You are rock’n’roll You and I are rock’n’roll You are rock’n’roll Came here lookin’ for American Soul American Soul, American Soul
This Tuesday marks ten years of the monthly writers' workshop which meets at our local county library, the social hub of our mountain village. We started meeting on the second Tuesday of the month in September 2007, and within a couple of years, I started a website/blog for our group: MECAC Writer's Workshop. The "MECAC" stands for Mountain Empire Creative Arts Council which was started by Judith Dupree and myself back in 2006 and which soon included the writer's workshop meetings. Due to health issues and changes in our lives, MECAC is now concentrated almost solely on the writer's workshop. And that's fine.
2017 Writer's Symposium by the Sea line-up of speakers
But most of all, we've shared our writing with each other. We bring the next poem, the next chapter, the next editorial, the next blog post, the next reflective essay, and we distribute copies and then read our work aloud, receiving encouragement and constructive feedback. Occasionally we tackle a writing prompt together, sharing the results and commenting on the good and the "needs help" areas.
And often we celebrate publication by the members of our group, whether a poem or an editorial is published in the Valley Views or the Alpine Sun (our town's monthly publication of news & events, or the newspaper of the next-largest town on the way "down the hill" into San Diego, respectively), or an article or poem printed in a periodical, or a book self-published on Amazon, or a book published by a publishing company. It's all happened within our group over the last ten years.
Our group is ever-changing, but usually we end up with six to eight writers showing up on the second Tuesday of the month. I think our record is thirteen writers. Some of our group are published authors, and some are just now trying out their writing wings, andall are welcome. I've been with the group the longest, so by default I've become the leader, with Judith, a poet who most recently published Sky Mesa Journal with Wipf and Stock Publishers, starting to come a year or two after the group began. Teresa, a poet from Campo, has been coming for at least seven or eight years, and Dianne, who started writing memoirs and has recently embarked on a mystery novel, has been attending for at least six years. Others are a bit newer, including Elaine who moved to our mountain communities from the East Coast, and Linda who lives atop Mount Laguna and has published a series of time-travel romances. And the oral tradition remains strong with Elwood and his wife Pearl who drive up the mountain from Alpine. Mary, a new writer, also comes up from Alpine. Teresa and Mary often have their therapy dogs with them, and Lancelot and Pup Pup curl up at our feet, content to listen to stories, too.
At a Write-In at the Pine Valley Library, November 2015. From left to right: Mary, Sermsee, Linda, Judith, Dianne
Over a year ago we lost a dear member, Betty from Mount Laguna who wrote songs and memoirs, to cancer. But we keep an eye on her rocking chair, knowing that she's ever with us in spirit. And longtime member Maureen moved from Descanso to Oklahoma after the publication of her first book, but the "gang's all here" when she can attend our meetings when she visits San Diego once or twice a year. Others come and go, but these writerly souls are the beating heart of the monthly Writer's Workshop.
I've shared poems and parts of my fan fiction novels and stories with this beloved group, but lately I usually come empty-handed, with too much grading and teaching on my plate to give me time to write regularly, if at all. Even writing in my journal is a rare opportunity. I don't want to lose the joy of writing, the freedom that comes when nib scrolls its path across the page, when words pop into mind and are committed to paper. Writing is a joyous thing, a cleansing thing, a hallowed and holy thing.
And everyone can do it, from telling a story aloud to publishing a book and everything in between. It's a joy that I pray we can--and I pray we will--expend our hearts and time in accomplishing.
One of my writing students at our homeschool co-op Class Days wrote something in an essay that I immediately jotted into my quotation journal (I've collected hundreds of quotations on writing in my journals and via Pinterest). Deceptively simple, this seemingly simple sentence says it all. Lydia wrote:
"Words convey far more weight than we often acknowledge."
And while I added one of my favorite Poe quotes on writing to my Quotation of the Week in the sidebar of this blog, these words spoken by Robert De Niro at the 2014 Academy Awards give us the flip side of writing:
"The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, and consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that's on a good day."
And Anne Lamott, my favorite writer who writes about writing, wrote:
"If you can't find an hour to write, even Jesus can't help you."
So when our little group of writers gather on Tuesday evening, I'll share the joy of this tenth anniversary of the Writer's Workshop, and together we'll freewrite to a prompt, listen to each other read our work aloud, offer our two cents' worth of feedback, and, most of all, we'll celebrate the joy of writing!
This school year marks 15 years of teaching and working at Brave Writer. Julie Sweeney Bogart started Brave Writer in January 2000, and I joined the Brave Writer team (of four other employees) in 2002.
Over the past few years, I've settled into a great schedule at Brave Writer; I'm teaching 48 weeks a year now, with some overlap of classes. I love teaching kids and families, mostly homeschoolers, via these online classes. I've written most of the materials I teach; the only class I teach that I haven't written is Groovy Grammar; the rest I've either overhauled and largely rewritten or have written from scratch.
So here are the classes, with dates and links, that I'll be teaching this fall at Brave Writer:
The Groovy Grammar Workshop:August 28-September 22 (4 weeks). This family workshop turns grammar on its head! Rather than relying on boring workbooks and grammar rules that no one can keep straight, we explore how words work together to create clarity and meaning. We "collect" words, play games with them, make up words by creating a "fictionary," and then explore how words work together in Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky." We conclude the class with writing our own Jabberwocky-style poem using nonsense words. Much family fun is in store in Groovy Grammar!!
The Shakespeare Family Workshop: August 28-September 29 (5 weeks). In this family workshop, we explore Shakespeare's life through a scavenger hunt, draw or create models of the Globe Theatre, and examine the language of Shakespeare's time. Then we'll have an informal study of Shakespeare's sonnets before we explore Shakespeare's plays, spending a week each on comedies (focusing on Much Ado About Nothing), histories (focusing on Richard III), and tragedies (focusing on Hamlet). So if you want a fun and extensive exploration of Shakespeare and his works, this family workshop is ideal!
The MLA Research Essay: September 25-November 3 (6 weeks). This class is intended for high school juniors and seniors only, with a small class size of only ten students to provide maximum teacher-student interaction. Using the college textbook TheMLA Handbook, 8th Edition (2016), students will research and write a 5-7 page college-level persuasive research essay using the most recent format of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Students do not need to purchase the textbook; all posts will include materials from the text, and students may contact the teacher with additional questions. Students will finish this course with a college-level essay and much knowledge of how to do academic research.
Playing with Poetry Workshop: November 6-December 12 (5 weeks). This family workshop class focuses on writing many kinds of poetry: free verse, visual poetry, Japanese poetry, traditional rhymed verse, and alternative poetry forms. We'll also explore reading and analyzing poetry, and there are several fun optional activities such as song lyrics as poetry. This workshop is a wonderful way to introduce families to the fun and games of writing poetry, providing a solid foundation in poetry analysis and the history of poetic form. So much fun!!!
I'll be teaching the same courses in the spring in a slightly different order, with the addition of a high school literary analysis course on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. More on that class in December when I post the spring schedule!!
Fall registration began on Monday, July 31, so please enroll as soon as possible since all of our classes were full for the entire 2016-2017 school year!! Be inspired!! Write bravely!!
2016 has been a rough year for many others besides us. We nearly lost our home. Keith had little to no work for much of the year. I was overworked, trying to keep the family afloat with working from home while homeschooling our youngest. Those of us with genetic mutations (E, T, myself, and likely B) had a very rough year, both physically and emotionally. Our household has been far less than peaceful. And then there's the election and the loss of many talented people this year, both the famous and the "ordinary." (Not that anyone is truly ordinary...)
So we pray for a fresh, new year with a fresh, new outlook, mindset, and love for God and others.
So as we return soon from the rush and exhaustion and joy and pain that make up the Holy Days with a selection from one of my favorite Tennyson poems, one which always brings to mind my beloved Brit Lit professor, Dr. Arthur Seamans, who used to quote this poem in an appropriately ringing voice:
From In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (published 1849)
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
So as we ring out all that was evil, injurious, sad, wrong, unjust, hurtful, grievous, and sinful in 2016, may we welcome all that is brave, true, right, courageous, beautiful, holy, lovely, sacred, and godly in 2017!!
For Guidance
O GOD, by you the humble are guided in doing right; Your light illumines the darkness for those who trust in you; In our doubts and uncertainties, give us grace to ask what you would have us do, so that the Spirit of Wisdom may save us from all false choices; In your light may we see light, and in your straight path may we not stumble; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Sources: Psalm 26.9; 36.9; John 1.5; Jeremiah 17.7)
May God grant us all a healthy and blessed New Year of 2017 as we strive to follow the example of Christ our Lord as we live, serve, and love in His ways.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! And a Happy Eighth Day of Christmastide as well!!
Praying to follow the Light, this year and always,
A re-post from the Archives with an all-important addendum at the end...
With the exception of the few years we did not attend Heritage Christian School's Class Days because of my illness, I have mostly taught high school students. In fact, since returning to EC II Class Day for Elizabeth's 10th grade Biology Lab three years ago, I have taught only high school writing, both college prep and honors levels--to mostly 10th-12th graders.
But this year was different.
At the end of last year, I was informed of two things: 1) My Advanced Writing Class (honors, grades 11-12) was closed due to lack of students (actually, there were students who tried to register later and couldn't), and 2) The 4th-6th poetry teacher had decided not to return to Class Day after all, so a class of 15 students was now without a teacher. And guess what? Both classes were scheduled for first period, so shifting to the poetry class was an easy move. The idea of teaching a poetry class was intriguing, so I volunteered to cover the class--which meant "design and write and then teach the class, and grade all student work."
Once September rolled around, both the families and I were to adjust a bit. Somehow misinformation escaped about the class: I was told that the class was a poetry class and therefore designed the syllabus and wrote the class to reflect the subject of poetry; however, some parents were informed that the class was a creative writing class. I added more writing to the class via the writing of responses during our first semester as we read and discussed the lives and works of such poets as Robert Louis Stevenson, e.e. cummings, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, and Emily Dickinson. We lost a few students whose families wanted a creative writing course rather than a poetry class or who felt the class was too much work for their current workloads, but overall, the class seemed very successful.
The students also worked on a Poet Project over the course of the first semester which included the writing of a report on the life of a particular poet and then the copying of five poems by that poet as part of the project. So on our last day of first semester, the students presented oral presentations of their Poet Projects, covering the lives and works of Christina Rossetti, Walter de la Mare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Shakespeare, Aileen Fisher, Roald Dahl, and Langston Hughes.
During the second semester, our poetry class focused on the writing of poetry. We studied stanzaic structures and wrote couplets, tercets, and quatrains; we tried the Japanese forms of haiku and tanka, and we played with visual poetry in the forms of acrostic, cinquain, diamante, shape, and concrete poems before concluding the semester with letting loose with some free verse.
Our little class of eleven students, grades 4-6, also hosted two Guest Poets: Judith Deem Dupree, author of living with what remains, and Kathryn Belsey who recently completed her Pacific University MFA thesis, Fire Stormand published two poems in the latest In Posse Review. Both poets read their work and/or taught a lesson to my little class, and both were impressed with the quality and depth of work produced by these young poets.
Kathryn Belsey ("Kitty" to those who know and love her) suggested that I should publish my students' work into an anthology of sorts. Our final class on June 10 consisted of a Poetry Reading for parents and family of the poetry class, each student choosing his/her three favorite poems that he/she composed for class and reading them aloud before the class. Secretly I e-mailed the parents, requesting them to e-mail me copies of their students' three poems which I then formatted into a 27-page anthology with "The Poetry of XXXXX XXXXXXXX" at the top of each page, each student (except one) receiving two pages for their poetry--one poet needed three pages as her poems were lengthier than the rest.
I found that I could e-mail the PDF version of the anthology right to Staples, and I picked them up right before class, beautifully bound and ready to present as a special gift to each student in class. After the group of parents had applauded each young poet, I opened the boxes from Staples and handed out the anthologies; both the parents and the students were ecstatic at seeing their work "in print." I wrote an introductory page similar to what I've written here as well as a Table of Contents listing the "Featured Poets" alphabetically, and finishing the anthology with one of my own poems as a gift to them: "Easter Life."
I received many hugs on our last day of class from these wonderful young poets as well as the thanks of many parents who commented, "You brought poetry into our home," and "XXXX loved writing poetry so much that she wrote in her pajamas before starting school" and "I can't get XXXXX to stop writing poems!"
Those comments are more than adequate reward for putting heart and soul into teaching these young poets. My hope and prayer for them is that they will keep writing poetry long after our class ends and that poetry will continue to be a force in their lives long past this year's class.
From Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance:
Hail, Poetry, thou heav'n-born maid!
Thou gildest e'en the pirate's trade.
Hail, flowing fount of sentiment!
All hail, all hail, divine emollient!
Addendum: 11 June 2016:
Last night I attended the high school graduation ceremony of Heritage Christian School, and I watched many of the students from that 2009-2010 4th-6th grade Poetry Class graduate. Over the last two years, many, if not most, of these young poetry students spent another year with me in Expository Essay (11th and 12th grades only), applying their poetry skills to the Poetry Explication Essay and earning extra credit with their own original poems, as well as writing nine other formal essays over the course of the school year. Yes, out of the 80+ seniors who graduated last night, 18 had come through one of my classes, either Poetry, Discussing Shakespeare, or Expository Essay.
Once I get caught up with my Brave Writer class, I'll post here about my "retirement" from teaching Class Day, a volunteer position that I took on starting nineteen years ago in 1997.
My Prayer Times with The Divine Hours (This photo was taken before the BCP 2011 was completed, so please forgive the 1928 BCP shown here.... ;)
Three times each day I pick up one of the three Divine Hours prayer books edited by Phyllis Tickle. Together, all three take us through the entire year with The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime, The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime, and The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime.
This series of prayer books contains The Morning Office, The Midday Office, and The Vespers Office for each day. Then each month has a separate section for a week of Compline Prayers that can be prayed for each day of the week throughout the month. Because I pray the Compline from The Book of Common Prayer 2011, the vast majority of the time, I pray The Divine Hours three times each day: before breakfast, before lunch, and before bed.
Image from Amazon
While the Morning and Midday offices contain both a Reading from the Scriptures plus a reading from the Psalms, The Vespers Office usually contains a hymn or poem instead of Readings from the Old or New Testaments. Often these hymns are ancient to the church but very new and fresh to me.
The Vespers Office for last Tuesday had a wonderful old hymn that reads like a poem (as many song lyrics do--we study song lyrics as poems in The Playing with Poetry Workshop at Brave Writer), and I wanted to share it here with all of you. (When I perused a short Wikipedia bio of William Mercer, he is indeed referred to as a poet in the post, so either he wrote this hymn as a protest (as he espoused the Protestant cause during and after the Reformation) or someone else set this poem to music. Either way, the words seemed to sear themselves into my soul....
The Hymn: "Son of Man and Son of God" by William Mercer (d. 1675) How bright appears the Morning Star, With mercy beaming from afar; The host of heaven rejoices; O righteous Branch, O Jesse's Rod! You Son of Man and Son of God! We, too, will lift our voices: Jesus! Jesus! Holy, holy, yet most lowly, Please draw near us, Emmanuel, come and hear us. Though circled by the hosts on high, He deigned to cast a pitying eye Upon his helpless creature; The whole creation's Head and Lord, By highest seraphim adore, Assumed our very nature; Jesus, grant us, through your merit, to inherit Your salvation hear, O hear, our supplication. Rejoice, you heavens; O earth, reply; With praise, you sinners, fill the sky, For this his Incarnation. Incarnate God, put forth your power, Ride on, ride on, great Conqueror, Till all shall know your salvation. Let us cry, "Bless the Lord," and again,"Bless the Lord" Praise be given evermore, by earth and heaven. I especially appreciated the internal rhyme, such as "Holy, holy, yet most lowly" and "through your merit, to inherit." I wish that I knew the melody to such a lovely and carefully-crafted poem. As long as I'm posting about The Divine Hours, I think I'll post this week's Collect from the BCP 2011:
FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER (Rogation Sunday)
THE COLLECT:
O LORD, from you all good things come; Grant to us, by your holy inspiration, to think of good things and then accomplish them by your merciful guidance; Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and rules with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. (References: James 1.17; John 15.5; 2 Corinthians 3.5; Philippians 1.6)
So what are some of your favorite hymns? Leave your answers in the responses. Thanks!! Wishing you a blessed week in the love and peace of our Lord, Jesus Christ,
I've attended the Writer's Symposium by the Sea many times over the 21 years since Dr. Dean Nelson, my creative writing professor and later office-mate at Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU), started inviting some of the most renowned authors to share their thoughts on the art and craft of writing.
Of course, PLNU is a place where I have nestled, heart and soul, since first hearing of the college during my senior year of high school when I escaped from Algebra II with friends to view yet another college presentation. (However, any college presentation was a vast improvement over Mr. Winters' droning on and on about algebraic formulas I'd never see again.) But by the time that the PLNU presentation was over, I knew that I'd be throwing aside my plans for the famous English departments at Dartmouth and UC Santa Cruz (Go, Banana Slugs!) in order to attend this Christian college that was half the population of my high school.
And I adored every moment of my time at PLNU. I cried on graduation day as I didn't want to leave this family of people who loved all things literary as much as I did. So I returned with my Master of Arts and began my teaching career.
That was nearly 24 years ago, and walking on campus this week made me feel as though I had never left.
This year's Writer's Symposium by the Sea featured four writers: sports writer/announcer Dick Enberg, young adult writer Robin Jones Gunn (whose event we attended), African-American poet Nikki Giovanni (we attended two of her events), and Christian feminist blogger/writer Sarah Bessey (whom I really wanted to see, but it just wasn't possible). My lovely friend, poet and author Judith Deem Dupree, kindly purchased my tickets as an early birthday present, and we attended the three sessions together.
(I'm assisting Judith with various aspects of her new book, Sky Mesa Journal, to be published by Wipf and Stock later this year. It's a joy to work with her on this amazing piece of prose-poetry ponderings.)
The talk by Robin Jones Gunn was wonderful, but the two talks we attended with the legendary Nikki Giovanni were amazing! She's a 72 year old black woman who speaks her mind, no matter who her audience may be. On the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's, Nikki does not mince words. And she drops the most amazing names: she babysat for Morgan (Freeman)'s kids; she went to Maya (Angelou)'s house, she interviewed Rosa (Parks) in her living room, she entertained the Queen of Ghana with a bottle of Utopia beer ($250/pint), she met with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip (at their request), etc.
The afternoon session with Nikki Giovanni, which was supposed to be for faculty and students (but Rachel, the departmental assistant, smuggled Judith and me in) was definitely tamer than the evening session, but it was still memorable. I snapped the above photo just before Nikki began reading some of her poems--and does she ever read her poems in an interesting manner (this reading was posted on YouTube; it's not from the Writer's Symposium, but I will post the interviews and readings as soon as they are available):
In all of the interviews Dean Nelson has done over the 21 years of the Writer's Symposium by the Sea with writers as varied as Garrison Keillor, Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Yancey, Anne Lamott, etc., I've never seen him lose control of an interview. Until now. It wasn't a bad thing--it was interesting and rather hilarious to watch Nikki grab onto one random topic and then another so fast that I don't think that anyone could have caught up with her.
She read more poems in the evening session, and Dean started off the interview by teasing her about being mentioned in a Kanye West song, and it happens that Nikki is a very good friend of Kanye's mother. She quickly moved through Downton Abbey, mentioning how hilarious it was that Mr. Carson had to cook in last Sunday's episode, to having a bat named after her, to taking Barack Obama to task for plagiarizing her phrase "We shall overcome."
"Poems have work to do," she says. They are to inform, delight, and leave something with people. When asked about the lack of punctuation in some of her poems, she advised Dean that these poems "work on the breath" like a song. "Poets build bridges," she says next, then applauds Pope Francis for his bridge-building.
Yet she was a history major in college. But she does say about African American feminism, "We want to be part of the ones who forgive, not to be the ones who put Jesus on the cross."
"Very few dumb people quote me," Nikki asserts with a wicked grin before complaining that the Fisk Jubilee Singers should have been on Downton Abbey last season. A professor at Virginia Tech, she glories when her students are successful.
"Poems are right there with good wine and caviar" she advises, but she means red wine only, for earlier in this interview she had asked rhetorically, "Whoever fell in love over white wine?"
"Black women are the best things that ever happened in the world. It's a great thing to be black. I recommend it," she says with another mischievous smile.
In both the afternoon and evening talks, Nikki made this statement: "I married my mother, and she widowed me." She openly describes her mother as a victim of physical abuse...a situation which gave her an innate skepticism about men. "We have to be willing to tell the truth," she says.
Then she's talking about having no interior doors in her house. Not even on the bathroom. "It's my house, and I plan to live in it." She continues, "Doors are stupid. They're a waste of wood."
She advised us at both talks to read something every day. In the afternoon talk, she recommended the comic strip "Zits." Nikki is also a Trekkie, yet in the next moment she says that all of the recent talk about race is "tiresome."
"Life is interesting--why not enjoy it?" she states at the end of the afternoon talk. And she finishes the evening talk by citing the title to one of her books, Chasing Utopia, which wasn't philosophical at all; rather, it was about trying to obtain a bottle of the world's most expensive beer, Utopia, at $250/pint.
The entire evening interview will be shown on UCSD-TV in about six weeks, and then will be posted on their Writer's Symposium site where we can watch all of the previous interviews Dean has conducted since the Symposium began 21 years ago: UCSD-TV Writer's Symposium by the Sea. The interview with Nikki Giovanni and the other speakers will be at the top of the page when they are posted.
So it was a lovely week--especially staying with a dear friend who now works at PLNU in the Literature Department as an adjunct. We spent both evenings chatting while grading essays and preparing lessons for our students. Perhaps we can get together when the pressures of teaching are not quite so manic. Leaving her home after praying together lightened my stress-load considerably.
Law Street Beach on the 5th of July last year--early (before the crowds return!)
We're heading to my parents' place at the beach today and tonight. Living just half a block from Law Street Beach in Pacific Beach, my parents always invite the whole crew down for the 4th. The beaches are extremely jam-packed, so I usually just go for a walk on the boardwalk rather than face the sandy crowds and the stickiness of sunscreen. I'd rather hang out on the deck and enjoy the sunshine and the view in relative peace.
Sunset from my parents' deck
Keith refuses the crowds--not that I blame him; he'd rather enjoy a quiet house than the beach crowds and my semi-insane family. I love watching the sunset first from the deck, and then the four-five fireworks displays visible from the deck starting at nine, and then Sea World puts on their display at 9:30; we "oooh" and "aaah" while eating dessert. Elizabeth made peppermint brownie bites and orange protein balls (Wild Orange oil, honey, dried cranberries, almond butter, and coconut, all rolled in coconut and chilled-yum!), and we'll pick up some ice cream to go with it.
In honor of Independence Day, I thought I'd post the same poet distributed this morning by the Academy of American Poets in their Poem-a-Day e-mail:
I
am the darker brother. They
send me to eat in the kitchen When
company comes, But
I laugh, And
eat well, And
grow strong.
Tomorrow, I’ll
be at the table When
company comes. Nobody’ll
dare Say
to me, “Eat
in the kitchen,” Then.
Besides, They’ll
see how beautiful I am And
be ashamed—
I,
too, am America.
Langston
Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He is the author of The
Weary Blues (Knopf, 1926) and Montage
of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951), among other works. He died on May 22,
1967 in New York City.
Wishing you all a joyous celebration of our nation's independence,
