Our Beehive Brains Make Metaphors

Beehive Brain

by Amy LV

Students - Lately, I have been thinking about how the more different things we do in life, the more we learn. And the more we learn and know, the more we can write about. The more we understand about the world and how it works, the more comparisons and metaphors and similes we can make. If we did not have beehives in our yard, I may not have decided to write about how a beehive is like a brain. Experience grows a writing garden. See, a beehive is NOT a brain. And a brain is NOT a beehive. But they are similar to each other, and in writing My brain is a hive, I make a metaphor, or comparison, calling one thing another thing that it is not actually, but is like.

Learning something new develops our brains, and as my husband Mark has taken on beekeeping, I have learned from him about bees and hives and caring for these creatures. Watching bees got me to thinking about our amazing brains. As bees gather nectar to make honey, we gather ideas to make writing. We gather ideas to make paintings and songs. We gather ideas to make our lives as we wish them to be. Our brains can be as busy as beehives!

In the below video, you can see some of our bees working away in the frames of a hive. Unlike bees, we can choose what to put in our beehive brains. How do we wish to grow our brains? What do we wish to learn about? I think about this a lot.

You may have noticed a couple of wordsmushes and one made up word in today's poem. One of my favorite parts of writing poetry is playing with words. One can do a lot with the 26 letters that make up our English language. And those of you who speak more languages...you have even more letters and words to work with.

A Peek Inside a Hive

Video by Mark VanDerwater

Thank you to all of the librarians, teachers, administrators, tech people, custodians, secretaries, and students of the Williamsville Central School District in Williamsville, NY. Over the past few weeks, I have been fortunate to spend six days at the following elementary schools: Dodge, Heim, Maple East, Maple West, Forest, and Country Parkway. I feel very lucky and dedicate today's poem to everyone at those schools. Thank you for spending time with me.

Please don't miss yesterday's post HERE. Award-winning author Marilyn Singer came for a visit with her latest book, WILD IN THE STREETS: 20 POEMS OF CITY ANIMALS. She shares a bit about her writing process, a reverso poem from the book, and her publisher, Words Pictures/Quarto, has offered a book giveaway too.

Catherine is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Reading to the Core. Visit her place to celebrate gratitude this week, with a poem, a video, a new anthology by Miranda Paul, and a giveaway too. Please know that we gather each Friday, sharing poems and poemlove, and all are always welcome.

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If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Honoring a Life: Mary Oliver

Letterpress Cards, Printed December 2019

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Our earth lost a great poet in Mary Oliver yesterday.  Mary Oliver was an award-winning poet who wrote books and books poems about the natural world and her relationship to it. She believed that poetry "mustn't be fancy" and many of us have loved her poems for a long time. She drew her last breath at 83, and many of us are thinking about her with gratitude today.

Today's poem is a poem about Mary Oliver's death, and the deer, wild geese, grasshoppers, sea, sunrises, and nuthatches all joined me.  These, of course, feature in her poetry, and I imagined that yesterday, at the moment of her death...they all stopped in place.  I enjoyed rereading some of her work as I chose these images.

In Oliver's poem, "Sometimes" we read these words, beautiful advice for all poets and humans.

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

Last month, our friend Dave came to visit us. We are housing his letterpress in our barn, and he taught us how to use it. He asked us to select a quote to print.  We chose Mary Oliver's words as you can see on the above cards.  Below, you can see the type set into the chase of the press.

The Form in the Chase

Photo by Amy LV

And here is the chase snapped into place, ready to print.

Quote in Place for Printing

Photo by Amy LV

Our family has been talking about how this was a perfect quote to choose, and how strange it is that now the author of these words is no longer with us.  We are happy we chose to pay tribute to her wise voice with our little print project. So much gratitude to Dave for teaching us.  

Writing about people who are gone is healing and helpful. If you have ever loved and lost a person or a pet, you might consider writing about this person.  If you choose to write about a person, you, too, might wish to use some of his or her own words in your poem as I did by naming the creatures Mary Oliver wrote about.  Through writing, we can honor a life.

Tricia is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup at The Miss Rumphius Effect, honoring the life of poet Mary Oliver with Oliver's "In Blackwater Woods". Please know that the Poetry Friday community shares poems and poemlove each Friday, and everyone is invited to visit, comment, and post.  And if you have a blog, we welcome you to link right in with us.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Listening to Seasons: Squeaky Snow Secrets

Twelve Below!

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Brrrr!  That's what I have to say this morning.  Winter has been long for us Western New Yorkers this year, and we have truly had a chance to experience all kinds of snow: soft quiet snow, crunchy hard top snow, fat flakes, and today...squeaky snow.  Squeaky snow, some of you may have noticed, is a sound we hear only in the coldest weather.  You can learn about why here.

All seasons come with sights and smells...and sounds too.  Whether you live in a cold place or a warm place, your outside world is full of sounds, and these sounds change as the seasons change.  When you find yourself wondering what to write about, you might consider the sounds of  seasons.  What do you hear outside?  Turn off any electronics, close your eyes, and just listen.

You'll see that today's poem does not rhyme and that it goes down the page like...well...like footprints.  I did not originally write the poem this way, but after playing around with the line breaks a few different ways, this seemed best, most walking-like.  A poem with a shape that is part of its meaning is called a concrete poem.

If you do not live in a squeak-snow-place, I recorded this for you just today!

This beautiful book, written by Judi K. Beach and illustrated by Loretta Krupinski, is one of my favorite books about snow, a lyrical list book naming all of the types of snow including "kitten" for snow that sits on a window and the favorite of our children when they were little, "wings of white butterflies."

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In exciting and breaking news, (it is now Friday afternoon as I write), the Penn State University Libraries and the Pennsylvania Center for the Book have just announced the winner of the 2014 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award.  "Selected by a panel of teachers, librarians and scholars, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award was the first award of its kind in the United States. The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, the Penn State University Libraries and Lee Bennett Hopkins share joint administration of the annual award" (from the website).

Many congratulations to Andrea Cheng for having won for ETCHED IN CLAY: THE LIFE OF DAVE, ENSLAVED POTTER AND POET.

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This year the committee also named two honor books, and they are COALTOWN JESUS by Ron Koertge and RUTHERFORD B., WHO WAS HE?": POEMS ABOUT OUR PRESIDENTS by Marilyn Singer and illustrated by John Hendrix.

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Congratulations to all winners, and thank you to Lee Bennett Hopkins for always recognizing, supporting, and teaching children's poets and for spreading the love of poetry to children in countless visible and invisible ways.

In giveaway land, Linda Kulp Trout the winner of the Samuel Beckett letterpressed quote from last week's giveaway!  Please send your snail mail address to amy at amylv dot com, and I will mail out your piece this week along with the Jeannine Atkins book for Margaret, some signed bookplates, and the rest of my happy, towering pile of outgoing mail.

Anastasia is hosting this week's Poetry Friday smorgasbord over at Poet! Poet!  Swing on by and visit all of the poetry celebrations in the Kidlitosphere this week.  All are welcome!

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