Poetry Friday: Poetic Reflections on a Thursday at All Write

Thursday at the All Write conference in Warsaw, Indiana was filled with these wonderful celebrations of poets and poetry:

Poetic Moment #1:  In Christy Rush Levine's session, Structuring Reading Workshop for the Magic that Might Go Down, we were treated to Ted Kooser's poem "Selecting a Reader."  This poem is her choice for the first shared text of the school year, scheduled for day two of a new school year.

Writers are my rock stars!

Poetic Moment #2:  Georgia Heard joined our table tonight at the All Write dinner.  She quickly discovered that we are a group of friends united through our shared writing on our blogs.  Our table included writers from Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Tennessee.  And more bloggers were scattered throughout the crowd at dinner. Georgia graciously indulged my request for a photo with her and Ruth Ayres.

Poetic Moment #3:  Our guest speaker at the evening banquet, Seymour Simon, shared Walt Whitman's poem, "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer."  As we listened to the final words of the poem, "...from time to time looked up in perfect silence at the stars," the room was filled with the kind of "deep sigh elation" that can only come when a roomful of teachers recognize they are in the hands of a masterful storyteller.  We loved the stories he shared of the writing life he began as a second grader with a story about space monsters.  His stories were woven with threads of poetry.  We were treated to two more recitations:  Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice," and May Swenson's poem, "The Universe."  He reminded us that poetry and nonfiction are closely related.  Both narrative forms are mysterious and poetic.  It was gratifying to see how Simon used poetry to share stories about his writing life and this mysterious, magnificent universe in which we live.

                                                                    Head over to A Year of Reading

for this week's roundup of poetry love. 

Thanks for hosting, MaryLee!