Poetry Friday: Chinese Lantern Plant

Happy Poetry Month!

I received a nice surprise in my mailbox a week ago—the April issue of Cricket. 

My poem “Chinese Lantern Plant” is on page 16. I just adore Irene Rinadi’s wonderful illustration. The garden in full bloom gives me hope that spring might finally be here with summer right around the corner. We had snow last week, but this weekend is supposed to be beautiful, sunny, and warm. I hope your weekend is filled with spring weather, buds, blossoms, and poetry. 

Michelle has the Roundup at Today’s Little Ditty.

Chinese Lantern Plant
by Sheri Doyle


Who has hung
a hundred paper lanterns

heart-shaped

tomato red

rustling in the garden
above a grassy dance floor
where crickets sing and
beetles jitterbug?

Wordless Wednesday—spring break

Happy 10 Year Blogiversary, Irene!

I’m so happy to be a part of Irene Latham’s celebration today. Her blog is a great source of inspiration for me and many other writers and readers. I will add to the celebration with my original poem all about writing and following one’s instincts as WILD as they might be.

trust your instincts

saw two pterosaurs fly overhead today

you probably saw two blue herons, some might say

ha, I laugh, two blue herons

the pterosaurs drifted across the clear bright blue 

graceful, wild, beautiful

in a sweep of near-silence, without a flap

gliding in from 200 million years ago 

or so

ha, two blue herons

if I believed what some say

I’d never write poems about pterosaurs

© Sheri Doyle

 Please join the party at Live Your Poem! Congratulations, Irene!

Poetry Friday: Enormous Smallness

Writer Matthew Burgess and illustrator Kris Di Giacomo have captured the playful spirit of E. E. Cummings in this charming biography for young readers. Burgess reveals how Cummings’s love of nature and his sense of imagination as a child developed into an exploration of language. The delightful illustrations blend fittingly with lively displays of text—words and letters dot the trees, spot tulip petals, hover in clouds, and spout from an elephant’s trunk.

From a young age, Estlin Cummings expressed his fascination with nature through his poems, which his mother recorded in a book.

Estlin’s first workspace was his tree house where he created art and wrote poems.

Quotations weave in and out of the story of Estlin’s life. We learn more about the poet through the words he spoke, the words of those around him, through full poems, and poem fragments.

Burgess and Di Giacomo introduce Cummings’s experimental style in a way that is intriguing and accessible.

Children will be fascinated to see Cummings as an inventor of words who broke rules and faced criticism.

Readers will discover that despite the criticism Cummings received, he pursued his dream and went on to become respected and loved for his work as a poet.

Surrounding examples of the poems is the poetic telling of Cummings’s life—Burgess’s words are as playful as the poet they describe. Throughout the book, Burgess and Di Giacomo reveal the interconnectedness of the enormous and the small.

E. E. Cummings is an attractive personality for children to explore. Young readers are sure to connect with the poet’s playful approach to expression wonderfully expressed in this book.

Enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings

by Matthew Burgess

illustrations by Kris Di Giacomo

Enchanted Lion Books

2015

Thanks for stopping by! For more Poetry Friday fun this week, please visit Write. Sketch. Repeat.