Today I visited first and second grade classes at Marion Cross School here in Norwich. I brought with me a box of tricks I had kept from a workshop with Christopher Bursk at the Frost Place. Every day he put a small toy on the table for each of us and asked us to think about how and why the object could help us write poems.
Think of them as inspirations for writing poems, he said.
So I did.
Gifts at a Poetry Workshop
for Christopher Bursk
Here’s what he gave us:
a small plastic ball,
a rubber frog,
a fairy with purple wings
a bubble bottle and blower,
an alphabet block
a small spatula
a miniature pirate.
1. The plastic ball
It never would stop rolling
had a mind of its own,
insisted on getting under
bureaus and bookshelves,
where it found the dust
of the ages. Rolled its way
up mountains and across
oceans, went wherever
it wanted to go. Outdid the Rolling
Stones in singing, the steam roller
in making roads, curled hair
better than any beauty parlor,
beat the Lilac Breasted Roller,
in catching lizards, scorpions,
and snails, gave skates a speed
they’d never had before,
inspired fitness devices
that built balance, muscle,
better bodies, now and then
became the subject of a poem.
2. The Rubber Frog
Older than our species,
frogs know how to adapt
to the world they’re in,
can live both in and out
of water, fatten well
on what they eat, are
great jumpers, swimmers,
climbers, reproduce in
large numbers, have become
the subject of myth and legend,
even starred on Sesame Street.
Food source for humans
and other predators, frogs
like poets, are flexible,
jumping from place to place,
going where they will.
3. The Fairy with Purple Wings
Even if fairy tales aren’t your thing
it’s good to have a fairy on your desk
who’ll wave her magic wand, transform
your writing into ethereal wonderment,
fly with you to never-never land,
take you deep into the forests
of your mind.
4.Bubble wand and bottle
Useful to blow away
the cobwebs of the brain,
capture thought within
those translucent orbs,
let them fly up and out
onto your page before they
pop and are gone.
5. Alphabet Block
Green V, red I, Z outlined
in black, a grasshopper,
a TV, and a six or nine,
where the block falls.
A green
grasshopper jumped
into an old T.V, hopped
six times across the screen,
took nine long leaps
into the land of Z,
dove into its reflectingpool,
left a shimmering
I on the surface to show
who it was and where
it had gone.
6. Small spatula
Cooking utensil too big
for the fairy, too small
for human use, but good
for scraping out those
gooey words that clog
our poems and make
them stick.
7. The Pirate
His smile belies his dark profession.
Adept at finding and taking
treasures, he’s the key to it all;
without the derring-do to snare
and capture what you will, you’ll
always lack the nerve to seize
whatever you can find
and make it new and rich,
hidden chest on a desert island,
words golden and bejeweled.
what Christopher Bursk gave us most of all in each of his classes:
windows to imagination.
I did not read my poem to the first and second graders, but they all loved the little objects I had brought and understood right away what the pieces could mean in terms of writing poems (without my ever using the word metaphor).
Here are the poems I provided as examples.
Who Has Seen the Wind?
By Christina Rossetti
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Rabbit by Mary Ann Hoberman
A rabbit
Bit
A little bit
An itty-bitty
Little bit of beet
Then bit
By bit
He bit
Because he liked the taste of it
Every Tree by Kobayashi Issa
Every tree
With its calling card...
Spring buds.
We talked about how these poems used language, form, repetition, how a poem could be as short as a haiku and as long as an epic. The topic the children wanted to write about was spring. It is still quite cold in Vermont, rivers and lakes are just beginning to melt; there are huge snow mounds everywhere.
We made a list of signs of spring that they could hear, see, feel, taste, or smell, and wrote about them. They made great observations. A few produced something quite poetic; everyone wrote something. They may work further on their poems, perhaps producing a poem written collectively.
Perhaps a poet or two may have found a lifelong calling today.
Think of them as inspirations for writing poems, he said.
So I did.
Gifts at a Poetry Workshop
for Christopher Bursk
Here’s what he gave us:
a small plastic ball,
a rubber frog,
a fairy with purple wings
a bubble bottle and blower,
an alphabet block
a small spatula
a miniature pirate.
1. The plastic ball
It never would stop rolling
had a mind of its own,
insisted on getting under
bureaus and bookshelves,
where it found the dust
of the ages. Rolled its way
up mountains and across
oceans, went wherever
it wanted to go. Outdid the Rolling
Stones in singing, the steam roller
in making roads, curled hair
better than any beauty parlor,
beat the Lilac Breasted Roller,
in catching lizards, scorpions,
and snails, gave skates a speed
they’d never had before,
inspired fitness devices
that built balance, muscle,
better bodies, now and then
became the subject of a poem.
2. The Rubber Frog
Older than our species,
frogs know how to adapt
to the world they’re in,
can live both in and out
of water, fatten well
on what they eat, are
great jumpers, swimmers,
climbers, reproduce in
large numbers, have become
the subject of myth and legend,
even starred on Sesame Street.
Food source for humans
and other predators, frogs
like poets, are flexible,
jumping from place to place,
going where they will.
3. The Fairy with Purple Wings
Even if fairy tales aren’t your thing
it’s good to have a fairy on your desk
who’ll wave her magic wand, transform
your writing into ethereal wonderment,
fly with you to never-never land,
take you deep into the forests
of your mind.
4.Bubble wand and bottle
Useful to blow away
the cobwebs of the brain,
capture thought within
those translucent orbs,
let them fly up and out
onto your page before they
pop and are gone.
5. Alphabet Block
Green V, red I, Z outlined
in black, a grasshopper,
a TV, and a six or nine,
where the block falls.
A green
grasshopper jumped
into an old T.V, hopped
six times across the screen,
took nine long leaps
into the land of Z,
dove into its reflectingpool,
left a shimmering
I on the surface to show
who it was and where
it had gone.
6. Small spatula
Cooking utensil too big
for the fairy, too small
for human use, but good
for scraping out those
gooey words that clog
our poems and make
them stick.
7. The Pirate
His smile belies his dark profession.
Adept at finding and taking
treasures, he’s the key to it all;
without the derring-do to snare
and capture what you will, you’ll
always lack the nerve to seize
whatever you can find
and make it new and rich,
hidden chest on a desert island,
words golden and bejeweled.
what Christopher Bursk gave us most of all in each of his classes:
windows to imagination.
I did not read my poem to the first and second graders, but they all loved the little objects I had brought and understood right away what the pieces could mean in terms of writing poems (without my ever using the word metaphor).
Here are the poems I provided as examples.
Who Has Seen the Wind?
By Christina Rossetti
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Rabbit by Mary Ann Hoberman
A rabbit
Bit
A little bit
An itty-bitty
Little bit of beet
Then bit
By bit
He bit
Because he liked the taste of it
Every Tree by Kobayashi Issa
Every tree
With its calling card...
Spring buds.
We talked about how these poems used language, form, repetition, how a poem could be as short as a haiku and as long as an epic. The topic the children wanted to write about was spring. It is still quite cold in Vermont, rivers and lakes are just beginning to melt; there are huge snow mounds everywhere.
We made a list of signs of spring that they could hear, see, feel, taste, or smell, and wrote about them. They made great observations. A few produced something quite poetic; everyone wrote something. They may work further on their poems, perhaps producing a poem written collectively.
Perhaps a poet or two may have found a lifelong calling today.