Picturing Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, a celebration of verse initiated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996.

Last year, inspired by friend and professional colleague Buffy Hamilton, I created a SlideShare that linked poems and images, using both my own photographs and some found via a Creative Commons search.

In 2012, I challenged myself to use only images I had captured to illustrate the words of poets - and to provide one slide for each day of April. While the finished product may lack some of the visual impact of last year's effort, it provided me with even more personal satisfaction.

Picturing poetry

View more presentations from Diane Cordell

There are many ways to celebrate National Poetry Month in the library and classroom. April 26 is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Last year I Skyped with students in a number of states, sharing a favorite poem and listening to the children read their own choices.

This year, I've already read about an interesting Poem in Your Pocket Day activity from Cathy Jo Nelson:

"All the 'pockets' have poems ready to be had, and the pockets also have a qr code to poems from poets.org so kids can save them to their smart-phones as an option."

...and I'm sure that John Schumacher and Shannon Miller, of Two Libraries, One Voice, will have some wonderful, interactive celebration planned, as they did last year.

Some useful resources for educators include

• The Children's Poetry Archive
• Children's Poetry
  
• Poetry 180 (a poem a day for American high schools, from the Library of Congress)
• 30 Great Poems Everyone Should Know
  
• 30 Ways to Celebrate
  
• Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month with the New York Times (an impressive collection of links and resources)

In her essay, Why We Should Read Poetry, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Amy Lowell called poetry "the height and quintessence of emotion, of every sort of emotion" She concluded,

"We should read Poetry because only in that way can we know man in all his moods - in the most beautiful thoughts of his heart, in his farthest reaches of imagination in the tenderness of his love, in the nakedness and awe of his soul confronted with the terror and wonder of the Universe. Poetry and history are the textbooks to the heart of man, and poetry is at once the most intimate and the most enduring."

So share a poem, write a poem, illustrate a poem, memorize a poem, recite a poem. The possibilities are endless and rewarding.


Related postings:

• In My Grandfather's Voice: Found Poetry
• A Poetry Sampler
• The Journey
• From the Heart
• The Reader
• 365 Project: April
• The Rainbow Connection
  

A Matrix Barcode

Wikipedia defines it this way:

"A QR Code is a matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by QR scanners, mobiles phones with camera, and smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.

Common in Japan, where it was created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. QR is the acronym of Quick Response, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed."

A QR code can be read by any mobile phone that has a camera to scan and process its information. It provides a quick and easy way to collect data - for example, contact information about people you meet at conferences or the addresses of useful wikis and websites.

Libraries are exploring the use of QR codes. Sacramento Public Library has a Text 4 Answers page which allows patrons to "Use our QR Code to add our text reference service to your phone's contact list. First, download I-nigma's free QR Code scanner to your mobile device."

Half Hollow Hills Community Library posts QR codes on end stacks as subject guides.

Patrons of San Diego State University Library are advised that they may use QR codes to:

• Download contact information to your address book with a Vcard
• Initiate a call on your phone
• Visit a mobile website
• Display a message on your phone

Thanks to a link from Cathy Nelson, I was able to access QR-Code Generator, enter the URL of my blog, and create a unique QR. The resulting bit of informational art is now displayed at the top right of each page.

I'll definitely add the QR code to my next batch of business cards. It would be fun to print it on a button, t-shirt or mug, also.

I have a feeling that we may be seeing a great deal more of these intriguing matrices in the future, at work, in the marketplace and in our daily lives.

Holiday Reading

Inspired by a Tweet from Leslie Edwards, Cathy Nelson blogged her holiday reading list.

As a (sort of) retired lady, I'm not under the time constraints faced by working teacher-librarians. I can, and do, read as the mood strikes me. Since I access and process so much information daily via the internet, my recreational reading tends to be fiction.

In addition to a little holiday book collection that I revisit each year,



I have in my stack:



The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Death narrates this tale of Liesel Meminger, a child who learns to steal books because she finds comfort in words during the horrors of World War II.




Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan

Despite her untimely death, Bibi Chen "joins" her friends on a trip to China and Burma.






The Lost Art of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith

In addition to the popular No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency stories, Smith is the author of this series featuring Scottish philosopher (and sometimes detective) Isabel Dalhousie.






Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Rumor has it that Santa is going to bring me this steampunk adventure set in an alternative world on the cusp of WWI.





Anyone else care to share their stack?



"To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful,
ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry." -Gaston Bachelard



"Christmas Books" by dmcordell

For Cathy, On the Occasion of her Birthday

"Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives." -Alexandre Dumas, fils

"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that." -E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

"Friends are the sunshine of life." -John Hay

Happy Birthday, Cathy!

Those Were the Days

My friend and fellow librarian, Cathy Nelson, tagged me with a meme. It’s called “Those were the days” and it began over at the Books, Bytes, and Grocery Store Feet Blog.

Since I've been around for quite a few years now, I have a LOT of memories to share. In the interest of brevity (and to highlight some previous posts), I'm responding with selected photos and blog links.



Children of my era were expected to spend a lot of time outdoors. We all had bikes, wagons, dolls and/or trucks...and big imaginations. A favorite game was the very non-PC "Cowboys and Indians," inspired by Saturday morning TV shows and Saturday afternoon matinees. My first heroes were cowboys, and that larger-than-life frontiersman, Davy Crockett.



School and church were a key element in our lives then, and, along with most of my friends, I sang in the choir. We gave two concerts a year, with a mixed program of show tunes and religious hymns. As a special treat one year, we were all taken to see The Sound of Music performed on Broadway, with Mary Martin as an unforgettable Maria. I'm not sure if I could still read Gregorian chant, but my choir experience gave me a wonderful heads up when I studied Latin in high school.



Every home I've ever lived in had a yard with lilac bushes. Their scent brings back memories of ragged childhood bouquets for mom and shady spots for playing, reading, and dreaming.


Birthdays were a special occasion, and we celebrated with fancy parties in our homes. Little girls wore their best dresses and shiny patent leather shoes. Frilly little baskets held nuts and sweets; cake and ice cream were served on the dining room table, with lemonade or, a rare treat, soda. We played games, and gifted the birthday child with paper dolls, board games, and outdoor toys. Sometimes there was a shiny new bike; children's books were only available in hardcover, and were treasured accordingly.



Ah, yes...books! Although they didn't have a lot of money when starting out married life, my parents always made sure there were books in our house. A voracious reader, I worked my way through the great illustrated children's classics: The Brothers Grimm, Pinocchio, Robin Hood, Heidi. Some of the stories were difficult to comprehend (Collodi's Pinocchio is quite different from Disney!) but I devoured them all. When I was in the upper elementary grades, I biked to the local public library with friends; during my high school years, the Troy Public Library provided an interesting assortment of novels and short stories, usually from the adult section, since YA literature was not yet a real literary genre. My love of reading began early; it has never left me.

That's a sampler of memories, enough, I think, for a meme response. I invite any who stop here to contribute bits of their personal history. We could create an interesting memory quilt, an everyman's history book.