This week we have a math poem by Mary Cornish that appears in Kassia Omohundro Wedekind’s new book, Math Exchanges. Enjoy this poem and then head over to the Stenhouse site to preview the book online. Kassia will be embarking on a four-stop blog tour starting October 3.
Numbers
Mary Cornish
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition—
add two cups of milk and stir—
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication’s school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else’s
garden now.
There’s an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers’ call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn’t anywhere you look.
This week we have the last poem in our series from California English teacher Gayle Hobbs. If you have a poem you would like to share about your teaching life, send it to zmcmullin@stenhouse.com!
Thinking Survived
By Gayle K. Hobbs
There they sat waiting.
impressive thoughts flung through the air
so they could be grasped and absorbed.
Thoughts came and floated
endlessly among the laughter
and jeers,
anxious and ignored.
Some seized at passing
concepts, while they floated
slightly hackneyed and worn.
Precious few partook of
the knowledge and experienced
a new abundance being born.
This event was a daily endeavor
practiced in the halls and caverns
of our princely schools,
While those at home
saw not the visions and
impatiently aborted these tools.
Yet, thoughts survived,
and spontaneously thrived,
Waiting for extraordinary minds
to absorb
as they bloomed fresh, anxious,
not ignored.
Gayle Hobbs is an English teacher in California and she has shared her poems on the Stenhouse Blog before. Enjoy this lovely poem and then get writing!
Recipe for a Summer Afternoon Short Story.
by Gayle K. Hobbs
Take a bowl full of words and phrases
Stir until sentences form.
Drop in a couple of interesting characters
Add a few descriptive details and shake delicately
While the story firms up, pepper in a few shavings of intrigue and mystery.
Simmer in the summer afternoon shade.
Right before the story is completely done, add a tablespoon of humor and a dash of irony.
This will complete your vacation short story.
Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli use My Many Colored Days, Color Me a Rhyme, and My World of Color, along with other poetry books to help their students think about and make connections to colors in their own poetry. These poetry books help children think about colors not just as something they see, but something that also involves smells, sounds, tastes, and feelings.
What is Purple?
Purple is a violet singing a sweet, sleepy lullabye.
It is the taste of grape jelly spread on warm wheat toast.
The purple smell is the night sky on April Fool’s Day.
Medicine trickling down your throat is a purple feeling.
Purple explodes in your mouth like Fourth of July fireworks.
The full moon on a misty May night has a purple glow.
Purple is a forgetful two-year-old with a mind of his own.
It is the shy feeling that hides deep inside your heart.
This week’s poem was selected by Stenhouse general manager Dan Tobin.
“Like a lot of people, including some recent commenters on our blog, I have ambivalent feelings about Facebook. It can be a wonderful place for connection and communication, but it can also make you feel like you’re stuck in a time warp. Or like you’re trying to talk in the present and past tense at the same time.”
The Facebook Sonnet by Sherman Alexie
Welcome to the endless high-school
Reunion. Welcome to past friends
And lovers, however kind or cruel.
Let’s undervalue and unmend
The present. Why can’t we pretend
Every stage of life is the same?
Let’s exhume, resume and extend
Childhood. Let’s all play the games
That preoccupy the young. Let fame
And shame intertwine. Let one’s search
For God become public domain.
Let church.com become our church.
Let’s sign up, sign in and confess
Here at the altar of loneliness.
This week’s poem is another Stenhouse staff selection. Chris Downey, editorial manager, picked Michael Ondaatje’s poem Bearhug. “I read this poem years ago in school and it stuck with me,” says Chris. “It resonates even more now that I’ve got a child of my own.”
Bearhug
Michael Ondaatje
Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight
I yell ok. Finish something I’m doing,
then something else, walk slowly round
the corner to my son’s room.
He is standing arms outstretched
waiting for a bearhug. Grinning.
Why do I give my emotion an animal’s name,
give it that dark squeeze of death?
This is the hug which collects
all his small bones and his warm neck against me.
The thin tough body under the pajamas
locks to me like a magnet of blood.
How long was he standing there
like that, before I came?
This week we have a video poem created by Julie Ramsay’s class, inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” This video, along with many other projects created by students, can be found on a special website created to accompany Julie’s book, “Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?” Collaborating in Class and Online, Grades 3-8. To gain access to the site, just purchase the book on the Stenhouse website!
Learning Far and Near
Listen my children and you shall hear,
Of the learning time from far and near,
On the twenty-ninth of May in 09,
Every digital citizen is still alive,
Who remembers the famous project we did,
We said to the world “Joy, Joy we,
Have done every thing alive. Like digital stories,
Wikis, Jing, READ posters, scanner colleges,
Tech and writing projects, more, more, and more.”
Our communications both back and forth
Traveled across from our Alabama school
Digitally riding to the Peoria Bay
Right when the sun,
Rose over the day where to our writing,
And ideas you never said “Nay.”
The writer’s block never came,
As we wrote to you for ever more,
A worldly collaboration with each letter,
Across the sky like a rainbow,
And a huge experience that was magnified
By flattening of classroom walls in our stride,
While everyone went through the valley of learning from another,
And we stayed on track and never,
Missed an opportunity to teach or learn.
Others wonder how we do it
But it takes lots of effort with us two,
We worked together in a quest for the best.
That’s why we say unto you thanks,
For a year that will stand out as the best!
—Sean (inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere)
I don’t know about you, but after complaining all winter long about the cold, right about this time of the year I start to complain about summer. It’s too hot. And humid. And the bugs… Not to rush the time, but I thought this lovely student poem from Kate Messner’s new book Real Revision captures what is ahead.
Sometimes outside in September
You feel the cool crisp air
as it gently wraps you in its arms
Sometimes outside in September
You see the brightly colored leaves
As they make their confusing journey across
Your feet to there [sic] end
Sometimes outside in September
You hear the crunch of a leaf
That has fallen off a tree
Sometimes outside in September
You feel the wind kiss your finger
And it leaves your fingers with a chill
Sometimes outside in September
You taste the crisp cool air
Each time its [sic] a new taste full of flavor