2020 Post #28 -- Toi Derricotte's "Cherry Blossoms"

by Brett Vogelsinger

I recently asked students what they noticed they had more time to do during the days of our state's stay-at-home order. One student told me, "I'm taking long bike rides again," and then added after a slight, shy pause, "and I'm noticing flowers a lot more."  

There is a vulnerability in 21st century teens acknowledging that they look at flowers.  

You have likely noticed that this great pause we are taking tears down some of the walls that prevent us from sharing that kind of vulnerability.  Teachers unabashedly confess their love of their classes and their chagrin at being torn unexpectedly from their students.  Students express what they miss about school, and the strange new discoveries they are making in confinement, pulling out old crates of Legos, watching backyard birds.  

The poem "Cherry blossoms" by Toi Derricotte, is about pausing to take notice of flowers.  It is also about togetherness, and the common bonds we enjoy during warmer seasons and our shared interactions with beauty.  While our shared interactions may be on hold right now, our common bonds are not, beauty is not.  

The first and last stanzas of the poem seems to resonate more than ever right now: our desire to "mingle our breath" and our simultaneous need to be "patient" with social distancing. The crux of the poem creates tableaux of the kind of moments we are craving to return to again.  

There is no special assignment to go along with this poem.  If you use a poem of the day with your class, it is important to have days where there is no writing, no analysis, no wisdom nugget you specifically hope to impart.  Just enjoy the poem. Share it.  Marvel at it's beauty, it's relevance, it's heart. 

And for the fascinating story behind "the friendship of the cherry trees" in Washington D.C. see the National Park Department's page here.  

Further Reading:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past ten years. He is the creator of the Go Poems blog and the author of Poetry Pauses: Teaching With Poems to Elevate Writing in All Genres.   Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2020 Post #25 -- A Poetic To-Do List

by Brett Vogelsinger

This week, two inspiring, creative educators -- Austin Kleon and Katherine Schulten -- brought a poem back to the surface of my attention that I had forgotten about for some time.  "Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale" by  Dan Albergotti is a bittersweet look at what we can do with a period of confinement, ennui, boredom.  In times like these, the poem feels both realistic and empowering; it is a poem that wears a wry grin. 

I brought this poem to my students during a live class meeting via video conference this week and asked a quick question after our first read. "Why do you think I chose this poem to read with you now?" Of course, that was an easy pitch, and students had no problem identifying links between the idea of being stuck "in the belly of the whale" and being confined during this period of stay-at-home orders and mass quarantine.  Fewer of them, though, were aware of the biblical allusion in the title, to the book of Jonah. 

A student read the poem a second time on our video conference, and I proposed this question: "What do you notice about the structure of this piece?  How is it built?" Your students may note the fact that is is a "to do list," it is made up of short sentences, and that each sentence begins with a verb, the grammatical structure of a command.  One student pointed out to my class that the first few items seem realistic, and the poem seems to become more whimsical, then more philosophical as the list progresses.  I thought this was a particularly astute observation.  

"Let's try writing one like this!" I said to my students.  "Call it something like 'Things to Do While Stuck at Home' or 'Things to Do During COVID-19.'  There is one catch.   Let's take the first three things that come to your mind and exclude them from our list.  We want to avoid stating the obvious in poetry."  All classes chose the same three things to exclude:  sleeping, watching TV, and playing video games.  

After a few minutes of drafting, I gave them an assignment to complete after our video conference class time ended.  Students could revise their first drafts and post the revised version on a collaborative writing space on OneNote.  I would provide feedback for everyone's revised drafts before next week.  

Here are some memorable excerpts, written by my students: 

Paint the walls. Sing in the shower. Pull weeds from the dirt. Buy a blanket to cuddle up in. Go for a run. Laugh with joy when you're with your family. -- Brielle G. 

Make your bed
Wash your clothes
Dust everything in your room
Because apparently
Your room is disgusting
Although you don't see it
Anyway
Build something with wood and nails
Doesn't matter what it is, just build
And finally
Make your family LAUGH -- Christian P. 

Pace the concrete sidewalk. Walk among the trees. Get out and live a little.
Try something new. Change your surroundings.
Look up and open your eyes. See the world around you. Move outside your bubble. -- Shayne S.

I am grateful for how this poem helped me to see my students' present situations and perspectives while also allowing us to talk about poetic structure, theme, and grammar.  It brought us back to a Writer's Notebook style of response that I have missed since our last day of school, which was refreshing and necessary and lively.  

Further Reading: 

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher and NBCT at Holicong Middle School in Doylestown, PA.  He is the founding editor of Go Poems, facilitates his school's literary magazine, Sevenatenine, and contributes monthly posts at Moving Writers.  You can find him on Twitter @theVogelman.  

2020 Post #9 -- Adjusting to a Quiet World

Brett Vogelsinger retweeted this tweet from Jose Olivarez, and I was struck dumb for a moment:

I had never read this lovely poem, but it so played the right cultural and thematic chord (a government restriction on words, apparent social isolation, simplicity in community and love and humanity) that I instantly knew I was  using Jeffrey McDaniel's “The Quiet World” as the first poem in my distance learning plan.

Taking a page from Carol Jago, I wanted my students to simply experience the poem, and I wanted to give them two very simple directions. First, I invited students to tell me the line that struck them the most, something we always do in class when we first read a poem. The poem’s power is in its emotional use of language, which plays on the fact that conversation is limited to one hundred and sixty-seven words a day, so students’ choice of lines would be a wonderful entry point into thinking about the poem’s large themes of connection, love, and humanity. Once they’d chosen their line, I simply wanted them to tell me how this poem and its themes felt resonant during this pandemic where we are social distancing and distance learning.

The trick of this lesson was in how they shared their responses. I posted my own response to our class Flipgrid (click here to see my video) so the students could see and hear my own words, which felt important for the poem’s themes and for our current social isolation. I then encouraged them to record their own videos based on my two directives.

Seeing students’ faces and hearing their voices while they talked about isolation, humanity, and community—this was a win. And having a virtual discussion about the power of words and the importance of making real connections especially in the face of crises like the COVID-19 pandemic was a terrific reminder of how powerful poetry can be in shaping how we see the world around us.

Here are some student Flipgrid response excerpts about the poem’s connection to the pandemic:

“I think this [personal connection] relates to what is going on right now because we’re all so lonely in our houses so if we call our friends on the phone and we’re not even talking—we’re just doing our homework or something—like you still feel someone is there with you and you’re less alone.”

“…making sure we say, ‘I love you’ and talking to people that we love is in important. And I think that goes along with what is happening now just because we can’t really see people that we want to see, so making sure we stay connected to them through things like [Flipgrid] and on our phone is how we can stay connected.”

“Because of the coronavirus, we’re all so distanced from each other and people are always saying on social media...that we need to stick together and that’s where I feel the connection [to this poem] is.”

Further Reading:

Will Melvin teaches tenth and eleventh-grade English at CB South High School in Warrington, PA.  Follow him on Twitter (@WillMelvinCBSD).