National Poetry Month 16 of 30: The Red Pen
Red pen
over the first letter of my name.
The C
now a red K.
This teacher
had no idea who I was.
High School.
Red pen
over my stories,
my thoughts,
my dreams.
Stifling my voice,
making me silent.
© Cathy L. Mere 2014
I'm writing poetry for 30 days. For the first seven days of the challenge I wrote about "objects of memory," and then I wrote about "objects I just can't live without." For the next seven days I will be writing about objects that can be found at school. This will help me to prepare for a little poetry writing with students. Our class will be taking poetry around the building in the days to come.
April is National Poetry Month. Again this year, inspired by Mary Lee Hahn, I'm joining other poetry bloggers (view links in sidebar) taking the challenge to share poetry each day during the month of April. For thirty days my hope is to write a new poem each day. The first two years I took this challenge I wrote any poem that found me. This year, however, I've decided to try to write a poem about an object each day. If you've read Billy Collins' poem, The Lanyard, you may have noticed the way he took an object to tell a much more meaningful story of his relationship with his mother. My hope is to find the deeper significance in the things around me.
I try as hard as I can not to grade in red pen. Read a poem once upon a time (have a copy at school) written by a 6th grader that compared her words to soldiers going forth to do battle for her and coming back scarred and bloody from the sword of the teacher's red pen.
ReplyDeleteOuch.
ReplyDeleteThis one's powerful and painful. So much in so few words.
Oh, ugh. Oh, sigh. Even in kindergarten. The echo between these two moments is dead on. And deadening. So true and an important reminder.
ReplyDelete