Poetry Friday: The Quiet World

Last night I talked with my husband who's visiting the grands in Texas. Today is my seven-year-old granddaughter's birthday, and her daddy's. I hung up the phone and the house was so quiet. I went in search of a poem about this silence and found this one. It perfectly captured how I'm feeling.
I hope you enjoy, too.

The Quiet World
BY JEFFREY MCDANIEL

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred  
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear  
without saying hello. In the restaurant  
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,  
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.  
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,  
so I slowly whisper I love you

Read the rest here.

There's more Poetry Friday at Fomagrams.

Conference Overload

I'm in between back to back writers' conference weekends.

Last weekend at the Auburn Writer's Conference (Auburn University), I sat in three workshops. Evalina Galang, director of MFA program at Univ of Miami, talked about plot. Wendy Reed, producer on Alabama public television, talked about differences in non-fiction genres.  Poet Melissa Dickson talked about persona poems. The second day was filled with keynote addresses and readings.

I gleaned a few gems from the sessions and readings, but I always come away from these type conferences feeling like I've gotten too much of not enough. A one-hour session just doesn't give enough time for ingesting or digesting the information, inspiration, imagination in a workshop leader's notes.

Tomorrow I head for Birminghim and the SCBWI Southern Breeze fall conference. Another day of short workshops. Again I'll glean. Again I'm going to feel like it's too much of not enough.

I'm about ready to declare a fast from conferences!

My husband has gone to Texas to spend the weekend with the grandbabies. I'm lonesome, but getting some work done. But it's pretty bad when I resort to a 1970s musical version of Tom Sawyer on TV to go with dinner. Okay, I'm switching channels. Now.

Ooh, I got to Google phone call with the grands and call their spelling words to them. Now that's satisfying.

Low Level Biographies Correlated to Georgia Performance Standards

A new set of biographies for Georgia first grade teachers!

The set features the titles required by the Georgia Performance Standards for first grade. These folks are hard to find at a low reading level, so my fabulous editor at State Standards Publishing has just released this new set for all you first grade teachers out there looking for low-level readers.














I was thrilled to write six of them and fellow SCBWI Southern Breeze writer, Ashleigh Halley wrote the other two.



It was a good experience all around. Ashleigh and I look forward to knowing how these books fit your teaching needs, so let us know what you think.