Happy National Poetry Month! This month I am tagging along with poet/author Amy Ludwig VanDerwater during what has become her annual NPM Project. You can click here to learn more about this straight from Amy! This year she is writing and sharing a new poem every day, each highlighting a different poetic technique, but keeping the same subject. Her challenge, 1 Subject 30 Ways, is also a bit of an informal book study and master class, as she’s using her fall 2017 release Poems Are Teachers (Heinemann) as her guide. Join us!
Today’s poetic technique chosen by Amy is letting your title open the door. As Amy notes, the words in the title need not appear again in the text, but (hopefully) guide the reader in to take a closer look. My subject is, and will be all month long, vernal pools. Woods Walk was inspired by my walk around Walden Pond on Tuesday, and time spent at the adjacent Wyman Meadow vernal pool habitat (named for a relative of my husband’s, we recently discovered!), which literally springs to life in late March.
I am fortunate enough to live just a few minutes drive away, and enjoy visiting Thoreau’s simple, yet significant special place throughout the year. I couldn’t help but wonder at the many changes this natural community sees throughout the seasons.
As you’ll notice in the lines of my poem, the vernal pool habitat (or pond-hole as Thoreau sometimes referred to it) swells with activity in the late spring and then life recedes, as does Walden’s shoreline, as summer approaches. The chosen movement of the salamanders honors Thoreau’s love of “sauntering.”
I hope you’ve been following along the journey of the 2018 KidLitosphere Progressive Poem, a fun annual collaborative project lovingly begun in 2012 by poet/author Irene Latham. This poem has magically, and quite literally this year, been growing right before our eyes daily during the month of April. This year we are following along the journey of Jasmine, a seed, and her companions Moon and Owl. Jasmine, from a long line of poet’s jasmine, began is beginning to make her way in the world and find her poetic voice. The process has been fascinating to follow and I was excited to dive in for the first time with line eighteen. I hope you will follow Jasmine’s journey for the remainder of our Progressive Poem month by clicking on the blogs in the list below. I can’t wait to see what happens next!
April
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This post is part of my personal National Poetry Month celebration. I hope you’ll join me in sharing your favorite poetic gems throughout the month of April whether they are written by you, your students, or another poet.
Wondering and Wandering 
Why, of COURSE this lovely place is named for family! Love. These verbs are the best. Hope for one is so different than hope for another, no? Thank you, Christie, for joining me on this journey. It is so much fun to travel together – from pool to sky and back.
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Died and went to heaven and back when I learned that two weeks ago, Amy.
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Wonderful alliteration. in “salamanders saunter” and dragonflies dart.” The nature imagery is strong here.
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Thank you, Glenda. I am so pleased you enjoyed it. A labor of love.
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