SOL 2016 Day 1 - Poem for Tania: Piazza della Rotunda

Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life March Challenge 2016

Today I begin the Slice of Life March Challenge, writing and posting every day this month. Wish me luck.

During the summer of 2015, my poet friend Tania Pryputniewicz of Feral Mom, Feral Writer began a poetry challenge with me. She began with giving me the task of writing a poem using the letter Z, one of my favorite letters for obvious reasons. Then I sent her a prompt of my own: write about a resting place. At the time, I was at rest on an Italian vacation, so relaxation was on my mind. It took a few months but, as requested, she finally wrote a poem. Tania's lovely poem, Meditation Garden, Encinitas inspired me, but in a way I didn't expect. Somehow it made my thoughts turn to Italy again.

One of my favorite places in the whole world (or at least the parts I've been to) is the Piazza della Rotunda in Rome.  On every visit to that city, no matter how short, I always make my way there to sit at a table at the same cafe and dream I'm Roman. Here's poem about a slice of the life in that beautiful place.

Tania, now it's your turn to send me another challenge. You said you had a good idea for me. Send it my way.

Piazza della Rotunda

Pantheon cool, serene,

oldest of the buildings 

cradling the body
of this small piazza.

Tourists stream past
my café table under 

its orange umbrella,

orange drink in my hand.

We have all emerged

from our heat-addled naps.

Stroller wheels rattle

over cobblestones,

nuns in white habits

eat gelato scooped

from the corner stand.

Sunburned shoulders

peeking from skimpy tank tops,

girls huddle on fountain steps,

giggle and bubble

like the water behind them.

Their friend snaps photos,

Egyptian obelisk

their solemn backdrop.

Small brown men,

from the Phillipines

or Indonesia perhaps,

shoot shiny

toys into the air,

hoping one will land

near a child’s foot.

She might pick it up

and beg to keep it.

We all long 
for bright tidings

to soar over our heads

like birds, like stars

into Rome’s

blue-falling night.

Related Links:
Respective poems from the first challenge: 
Write a poem using the letter Z:
Firenze Poem, For Tania from Italy by Lisa Rizzo
21 Zs for Lisa: Omen Hunting in Yo El Rey Roasting by Tania Pryputniewicz

The Power of the Internet Part III

Only one week to go before the monthly challenge begins!

Back on March 27, 2012 I wrote a post about writing odes with my eighth grade students:

Writing Odes with Eighth Graders

Just when I start dreaming of early retirement, the sun shines through the dirty, cracked windows of my classroom, and I forget all the bureaucratic and political hoo-ha to fall in love with teaching all over again. That’s what happened when I spent the day writing odes à la Pablo Neruda with my 8th graders.  (read more here)

In the last two years, my classroom website,   http://www.msrizzo.org   has just languished in the cloud without me. I'd even forgotten I had that website at all. Then today I got an email from Karin Warzybok, an 8th grade teacher at Sussman Middle School in Downey California telling me how much her students had enjoyed one of the odes written by one of my students. She even posted the poem on her blog: Warzyblog. And she wants the assignment I used to teach those wonderful poem. What an honor for my former student (I wish I could remember his name! Since I had to remove it before posting his poem, all I have are his initials: S.S.), and what an honor for good teaching. 

Once again I have been pleasantly surprised at the power of blogging. I've written before about hearing from people who had found my blog, and reached out to me. I even had one of my photographs I wind up in an art exhibit in Germany. (The Power of the Internet or How I Wound Up in an Art Exhibit in Germany)

When we blog, we can reach so many lives in ways we don't even realize. How encouraging it was to get that email the week before the Slice of Life Challenge begins. Just when I was starting to get cold feet. 

Can I do this? -- Taking up the Slice of Life Story Challenge

It's been over three months since I last posted to this blog, and even that post was just a "hey, look at me" short notice of publications. No real writing, no real effort. That's been the issue with this blog ever since I took my new job.

When I started blogging, I knew who I was, I knew what this blog would be about.  I was a poet and middle school language arts teacher who loved to travel.

Four years later, I'm still a poet and still love to travel. What has changed? My job. After 23 years teaching 7th and 8th graders, I left the classroom to become an instructional coach for language arts teachers. I'm still an educator and I'm in classrooms all the time. But teacher? I no longer grade papers or create lesson plans. I don't go to parent-teacher conferences or bus duty. I'm no longer responsible for 90 or more 12 and 13-year-olds on a daily basis. It's hard for me to say "teacher" when I realize that all the things that make teaching so complicated are no longer part of my working life. It almost seems like it would be an insult to all the teachers I know who are still in the trenches.

I never expected these feelings to stop my blog dead in its tracks, but they have.




Then in the course of doing some research on how to help teachers implement writing workshop in their classrooms, I stumbled across the Two Writing Teachers website. What a wealth of information!   For weeks I've been reading posts on tips about writing workshop and sharing it with teachers I work with.

Inevitably, all this led me to the Slice of Life Story Challenge. According to their website, "the individual challenge began on Two Writing Teachers in 2008 and has grown each year. Adults, classroom teachers and their students across six continents participate in this weekly challenge as well as in the month-long challenge in March."

Basically, this challenge is designed to get teachers and students to write their own "slice of life" stories and share them with the world, to get them to embrace their own identities as writers. This is exactly what I'd like to inspire in the teachers I coach, hoping they will then bring this passion for writing to their students.

Since finding out about the challenge, I've been toying with the idea of contributing for months, but the idea of a daily challenge for an entire month sounded too daunting. Finally today I decided that I'd just go for it. After all, what better way to inspire others than by modeling it myself. Isn't that what teachers do? Maybe there is some teacher left in me after all.

So here is my first post. I have one more Slice of Life Tuesday to go before the March challenge begins, so I can see how it feels. All I know is, it's the first excitement I've felt about my blog in a long time.

November Harvest: Two Publications

November 1st brought the news that my poem "Prairie Easter" is now online in Allegro Poetry Magazine published in England.This is my second publication with this journal. 

Then today I got my copies of the Fall edition of Naugatuck River Review in which my poem "Autumn" appeared. 

Once again I'm honored to have my work published with many other wonderful poems.  It also helps ease the two rejections I received only days before.

If-Then: Making Connections, My Best Seller and a New Book

Today my friend Jayne Benjulian sent me an email with a link to Poetry Daily. This online poetry anthology features a daily poem chosen from work published in various journals, furthering a poem's audience while at the same time offering support to literary journals. Today’s featured poem was one of Jayne’s that will appear in Spillway Poetry Magazine's upcoming issue.  How wonderful it is to see Jayne's work honored. Reading her beautiful poem made me think about how we can never predict the connections we may set in motion. 

Then while emailing a new internet literary friend, I found myself pondering about such connections in my own life. In May I wrote a post that four of my poems had appeared in When Women Waken. Now editor Anora McGaha has helped  further our association by kindly including a link to my chapbook on the When Women Waken website. (While you're there, consider buying a copy of my book as well one of their journal issues.)

I think sometimes it helps to stop to appreciate our if-then stories. Of course being the teacher that I am, this made me remember one of my favorite children's books,  If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond. If you haven't read it, you should. It is a delightful story about the effects of our small actions. 

All of this made me look back on one of my biggest if-then stories. If I hadn't found  Big Table Publishing while trolling the internet for possible journals in which to place my poetry, I never would have gotten my chapbook In the Poem an Ocean published. For that I have to offer a big thank-you to their Acquisition Editor, Robin Stratton. She is another online friend whom I have never met, having conducted our lively conversations about my book entirely via email.  Now my book is included on Big Table's best seller list. 

If I hadn't published that chapbook, I would never have had the courage to look for writing events to attend. If I hadn't done that, I never would have found A Room of Her Own Foundation. If that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to attend their wonderful retreat for women writers at Ghost Ranch in 2011. 

If weren't for that, I never would have met an inspiring group of women writers, including Jayne.  At that same retreat, I also met Ruth Thompson. If I hadn't met her, I wouldn't know about her small press, Saddle Road Press, which she runs with her partner and fellow writer, Don Mitchell. 

Then I wouldn't be able to announce that this summer Ruth agreed to publish my next book. So now, thanks to her, I'm on my next journey of writing and revising a new manuscript of poems. Just figuring out which poems to include is a marathon if-then in itself.  

Family Respite: Salmon and a Poetry Challenge

These past two weeks I've been in Portland, mostly helping my 88-year old parents.  In the midst of a heatwave that has kept temperatures above 90º for over a week, it has not been easy to keep my spirits up. I know I'm in a situation shared by many others my age, but sometimes that knowledge doesn't help. When I felt like I couldn't take anymore, the heat broke and Oregon's beauty gave me respite when I needed it most.

The other day while walking in my quiet Sellwood neighborhood in southeast Portland, I came across a small section of Chrystal Springs Creek. 

A part of the Johnson Creek Watershed, a sign called it a salmon resting place. The creek was once channeled through a culvert under an apartment building. The water flowed too quickly for the young salmon who needed to use this waterway. 



Restored in 2012 to its natural state, it is now a lovely piece of wilderness tucked in among houses and lawns.  This bit of natural hope lifted my spirits on a particularly difficult day.

This made my think of my poet comrade Tania Pryputniewicz, also dealing with family issues.  In her blog Feral Mom, Feral Writer, she sent me a poetry challenge while I was in Italy. Now we are trying to continue these challenges, hoping they will help us find our own resting place, to keep poetry flowing despite the day-to-day concerns that seem to bog down our lives.

So, Tania, here is your challenge: write a poem about a resting place.  When you give me yours, I'll respond in turn. 

"Old Cars" published in Allegro Poetry Magazine

I'm very excited that my poem "Old Cars" has been published in Allegro Poetry Magazine Issue 5. This online journal is based in the United Kingdom. What an honor to have my work in such an international forum. You have to love this about the internet!

To find my poem, scroll to the bottom of the screen. Mine is the last one before the contributors' biographies. Don't forget to read some of the other wonderful poems along the way.