Goodbye to Christmas Trees

 

Ewes Taste Christmas - 2012

Photo by Amy LV

Students - it's that time of year when Christmas trees line the roadsides. When I was a girl, this was always a tough week. I'd want to keep the tree up for as many weeks as we could, and I fantasized about it becoming a Valentine Tree and a St. Patrick's Day Tree, and an Easter Tree. But one day or another, the needles would begin to fall, and out it would go...down the concrete steps, down the driveway, straight to the curb. And there it would lie, and there I would stand, kissing the tips of its needles and saying, "Goodbye."

If you have read this blog for a while, you know that I have a soft spot for inanimate objects. I feel what I imagine they feel. You can see this in Pumpkin and Christmas Tree Lot too. Today's poem is about imagining the feelings of something else, and it's about goodbyes. So if you ever imagine what something else is thinking, or if you have a certain type of goodbye that is tough for you, that might be a good place to begin today's writing. Too, this is a poem written TO something, to a Christmas tree. Such a poem is called a poem of address. Is there anything you want to talk to? If so, then go ahead and address it in a poem!

You may notice that the first line of both the first and third stanzas match the song, "O Christmas Tree." This was a fun way for me to begin, by jumping into the words of a familiar song from the season.

Back in my girlhood days, I was comforted to know that our small town of Vestal, NY recycled old Christmas trees as mulch for town parks. Today I am comforted to know that our Icelandic sheep happily munch our old tree right up!

If you haven't yet peeked into how third grade teacher Mary Bieger uses writer's notebooks and seen Arya's entries...there's a new notebook up at Sharing Our Notebooks, my blog devoted to writer's notebooks.

Joann is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Teaching Authors. Have a great time in the garden of poetry!

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Imagery Poems & Edible Books

Last night was the Western New York Book Arts Center's third annual Edible Book Festival.  This is part of an international edible book celebration, and it was our family's second year attending.  What a blast!  Here is how this festival works.

1.  Artist chefs  make and bring edible books to WNYBAC.

2. Guests mill around and admire the books while eating pizza and drinking wine or pop.

3.  Judges walk around tasting and evaluating books on a variety of criteria (taste,creativity,most bookish).

4.  Winners are announced and everyone eats the books!

It's difficult to imagine a better party, actually.  I wonder if this festival subconsciously inspired last Friday's poem, Eating Reading.

Perhaps next year we will enter our own edible book.  Here are a few of this year's entries.  Because I do not recall all of the winners in each category, I will not mention any here.  Simply enjoy the goodies.  This is just a small sampling of the edible books from this year's festival.

 The Giving Tree

Amateur Artist Chef Jennifer Mauser

 Huckleberry Flan

Amateur Artist Chef Gina Maria Kleinmartin

 The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Amateur Artist Chef Katherine Czarnecki

 The Lasagna Cookbook

Junior Artist Chef Conrad Kegler

Where the Wild Things Are -Before

Professional Artist Chef Lindsay Haigh

(one of Mark's former students!)

Our Hope Won Bookmarks in the Drawing!

Bookmarks by White Hyacinths

Thank you to the Western New York Book Arts Center for putting on this tasty and whimsical community event.

And now, for today's poem writing thought.  After a year of daily poems and strategy ideas.  I will be revisiting one strategy/technique for each day of April.  Today's thought is: read and write poems full of specific images and pictures. 

Imagery Poems

Students - poems sneak inside readers' minds with little brushes and paint pots.  But the trouble is that poets don't really have brushes and paint pots.  Instead, we try to brush with words and paint with images.  This is a particular area in which I would like to strengthen in my own poetry, but in these poems you might be able to see where I have tried to puzzle words together in ways that are "paintable."

Snow Piano
Sunflower
This Windmill
Hands
Baby Raccoon
Preserving Fall
Dandelion Dot-to-Dot
This Morning

Sometimes it helps to really look at the thing you are writing about.  So go ahead - set up your desk with a special object and really study it.  You  might even want to make a little sketch of your object to follow the lines just so.  Then you will know how to write from what you saw.  Another thing to try - just close your eyes and look carefully at the memory or moment in your mind.  Then open up and write.

My colleague Kim Miller, a great fourth grade teacher at Durand Eastman Intermediate School in the East Irondequoit Central School District, recommends "raising nouns to the second power."  For example, if you have written "snack," you can elevate that to "chips."  Then to elevate it one more time, try "Doritos."  Don't you have a more clear picture in your mind now?  Specific is see-able.  General is not.
 

By the way, all of this month's poetry tips are perfectly applicable to prose.  What we learn at poetry's knee will serve us in all of our writing.

Speaking of images, here is one of The Poem Farm, a mosiac of the whole year.  When I stroll through these pictures, I feel as if I am reliving this whole past 365 days!

Yesterday's Poetry Friday was a veritable poetry mob.  If you were not able to visit yesterday, do not miss all of the magnificent and joyful posts at the Poetry Friday buffet.

Where the Wild Things Are - After

Professional Artist Chef Lindsay Haigh

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