My guest this week on Poetry from Daily Life is Constance (Connie) Levy, who lives in St. Louis in a neighborhood of trees, birds, squirrels and other creatures she welcomes into her poems. Connie started writing poems in first grade. Her first book of poetry, “I’m Going to Pet a Worm Today,” was published in 1991, when she was 60 years old. She is a former elementary grade teacher and adjunct college instructor. A veteran of school visits, conferences, lectures, and workshops, Connie was named a Distinguished Alumna in Arts & Sciences by Washington University in St. Louis. ~ David L. Harrison
Many classroom visits ago, a second-grade boy rose from his seat as I was introducing a poem and called out, “Don’t talk, just do the poems!” With that in mind I will keep my comments brief and save space for the poems to do their own talking.
Family vacations when our children were young usually included a body of water of some kind. If the water was still and pebbles were available, we would search for our personal pebbles and test our flinging skills. This poem preserves those happy moments we had, enjoying the fun of the contest and the wonders of water. It is in my book, "SPLASH! Poems of Our Watery World."
Find a shore
and pick a pebble,
A flat one
you can spin.
Do not plunk it
or slam dunk it:
fling it sidewise
just to skim
the water skin.
Make it touch
as dragonflies do,
skip and touch
and skip again,
to raise a row
of water rings
that grow and grow
and then –
pick a pebble.
Fling it in.
Skilled hands are handy in other ways, as well.
With a twist
of hand and wrist
In one smooth stroke
he flips
two slippery eggs
in the pan
without breaking
a yolk.
When I first visited classrooms to share my poems and tell how they came about, I found the children eager to tell their own stories and write their own poems. The poetry readings became reading and writing sessions. Any writer who works with children in the schools will tell you how enriching that experience is for both children and poet.
My own love of poetry began at home with patty-cake and nursery rhymes and progressed to first grade in Miss Yule’s class at Hamilton school. There, I learned and loved “Who Has Seen the Wind?” by Christina Rossetti, “Firefly” by Elizabeth Madox Roberts and “The Little Turtle” by Vachel Lindsay. I still remember them. And there, I wrote my first poems. I peaked in grade three. Then and now, most of my poems are of the natural world: birds, ants, trees, worms, water, grass, frogs, dogs and other interesting creatures.
“Interesting” is a word I use often. As children do, I find many things interesting that others overlook, such as a wasp checking out a weed, a spider wrapping up her recent catch or the surprisingly heavy weight of a bucket of water.
I love the sound of poetry, the music it makes, its shape and the way it looks framed on the page, and rhymes, alliteration, playfulness, the images it forms, the way it touches our senses and illuminates ordinary things. Words are center stage in a poem and may perform in surprising ways when playing with other words. A poem is your friend when you need one and if you memorize a poem it will stay with you forever.
Constance Levy has received numerous honors and awards including the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Excellence in Children’s Poetry, The Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award, American Booksellers “Pick of the Lists,” National Council of Teachers of English “Notable Book,” The Bank Street College “Children’s Books of the Year,” the “William Allen White Award List (Kansas), and the New York Public Library’s 100 titles for “Children’s Books.” For more information, go to www.constancelevy.com.