Vanessa's poem: Monday, 1.31.11

"The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost.

In the last stanza, why the word "sigh"? Why not a chuckle, or a stern look or a smile?

Is this a poem about the power and freedom of choice, or something else? Does the speaker strike you as someone in control of his fate, or controlled by it?

What is the most important line in the poem, as you read it?

Johannah's poem, 1.28.11

"Sadie and Maud," by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Thursday's poem, 1.27.11

"Publication Date," by Franz Wright.

Wednesday's Poem

"Somewhere in the World," by Linda Pastan. At the Writer's Almanac.

Tuesday's Poem: Garcia Lorca

The Moon Wakes

Notice that this is a different translation from the one we used in class.

When the moon sails out

the bells fade into stillness

and there emerge the pathways

that can’t be penetrated.

When the moon sails out

the water hides earth’s surface,

the heart feels like an island

in the infinite silence.

Nobody eats an orange

under the moon’s fullness.

It is correct to eat, then,

green and icy fruit.

When the moon sails out

with a hundred identical faces,

the coins made of silver

sob in your pocket.

Friday's Poem

By Mary Oliver, "White Eyes."

Thursday's poem.

At the Writer's Almanac, "French Toast."

Bloggies: Week 1 Winners!

Congratulations to the following bloggers--each has earned the right to drop a vocabulary score this quarter.

Best Reader's Log: MadEASY

Best Personal Blog: Happy Talk

Best Use of the Internet: Black Coffee

Our next reading logs/Bloggies will be on Tuesday, February 1. You will need to have read and logged two more weeks worth of reading goodness by then. Happy reading!

The Bloggies, Week 1

In the comments here, nominate a blog for our first installment of The Bloggies!

Don't just nominate your friends; browse the class blogs and nominate a blog for any of the following categories: Best Reader's Log, Best Personal Blog, Best Use of the Internet.

Nominations close at midnight tonight!

Ice

by Gail Mazur

In the warming house, children lace their skates,

bending, choked, over their thick jackets.

A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy

it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,

clumping across the frozen beach to the river.

December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,

the first sheer ice, black, then white

and deep until the city sends trucks of men

with wooden barriers to put up the boys’

hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,

of trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour

of distances moved backwards without falling,

then—twilight, the warming house steamy

with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs

aching. Outside, the hockey players keep

playing, slamming the round black puck

until it’s dark, until supper. At night,

a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.

Although there isn’t music, they glide

arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,

braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never

be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,

find her perfect, skate with her

in circles outside the emptied rink forever?

The Poetry of Bad Weather

Debora Greger

Someone had propped a skateboard
by the door of the classroom,
to make quick his escape, come the bell.

For it was February in Florida,
the air of instruction thick with tanning butter.
Why, my students wondered,

did the great dead poets all live north of us?
Was there nothing to do all winter there
but pine for better weather?

Had we a window, the class could keep an eye
on the clock and yet watch the wild plum
nod with the absent grace of the young.

We could study the showy scatter of petals.
We could, for want of a better word, call it “snowy.”
The room filled with stillness, flake by flake.

Only the dull roar of air forced to spend its life indoors
could be heard. Not even the songbird
of a cell phone chirped. Go home,

I wanted to tell the horse on the page.
You know the way, even in snow
gone blue with cold.

from Southwest Review, 2006
Volume 91, Number 1, Page 90

Copyright 2006 by Debora Greger.
All rights reserved.

Day 1

For today's class, browse a few of these sites linked above. The Foundation site is one of the best and most fun to play around with. Find the poem you want to be the first in your journal and copy it down, as neatly as you can. Skip lines only at line breaks.