Slice of Life: Audacious Poetry Promoter

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.

Thanks to Stacey, Tara, Betsy, Dana, Beth, Anna, Kathleen, and Deb

                   for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

If it's April, then I'm celebrating - sunshine, longer days, blossoms, and National Poetry Month!  Similar to the familiar book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, I come to you today with the fun a retired teacher can have with a platform for poetry.  It all starts with Books, Brownies and Beyond, our after school book club.  If it's April, then you can be sure that I have at least two bins of poetry books in the trunk of my car.  I start collecting them in March with visits to our library on Mercer Island, the Bellevue library, and even a stop by the Issaquah library.  I stop by the school library and pull a cart of favorites from the shelves that I can roll down to book club each week.  We read poetry books at book club, we sticky note our favorite poems, we copy them, and we mount them on colorful paper - all in preparation for today's Books, Brownies, and Beyond blitz of bulletin boards. We'll head out with those favorite poems and staplers in hand this afternoon to share poetry love with our larger school population.

If it's Poem in Your Pocket Day, then you can be sure that I'll be somewhere at school with a poem in my pocket.  This year I showed up in an apron with multiple pockets and poems.  Members of Books, Brownies, and Beyond manned a table so students could stop by to share the poem in their pocket and receive a sweet treat in return.  At lunch, club members joined librarian Carrie Bowman to hand out poems rolled and tied with ribbon at Tuesday's book club meeting.

If it's the day after Poem in Your Pocket Day and I'm subbing as secretary at the front desk of our school (with lots of candy left over from the day before), I'll sneak in an announcement:  "Ms. Behnke is subbing for Ms. McCann.  Stop by the front office, share a poem, and she'll share from her leftover stash of candy." 

If I'm subbing in the front office, then you can be sure that I'll take advantage of the front counter to promote favorite poetry books.  If you pause for more than a moment, I'll plead with you to peruse the pages of Daniel Finds a Poem,  my latest "favorite" poetry book.  

This teacher (with no poem in her pocket) recited
Shakespeare's Sonnet XCVIII verbatim.  

A few of my "favorite" poetry books!

If you're placed in the front office for a appointment with an administrator,  I'm sure to share a "favorite" book with you, A Fury of Motion:  Poems for Boys by Charles Ghigna. I'll ask you which poem you liked best (the one about soccer), and you'll ask me which poem I liked best ("What's a Poem?")  And the best moment of my day?  When you  pull up a rap on your   i-pad (written for a social studies project on prohibition) to share with me!