NANOWRIMO: The Correspondence of Ms Holmes

This year for National Novel-Writing Month, I am writing a novel, and so are some of my junior students. We are signed up in the Young Writers section of the Nano website. For the first time, I am going to write about teaching. I have usually avoided the subject that takes up too much of my life. But here goes . . .

To follow my progress or to read the novel as I'm working on it, please go to the Ms Holmes website.

Experts123 Question about Poetry

You know my answer is better than the #1 one, so Like mine please so I can move up in the ranks:

Question about Poetry

Index of My Online Articles

Shaun Perkins: Online Articles


Education (Lessons Plans, etc.)

How to Memorize a Poem
Creating an Anti-Brochure for Ayn Rand's Anthem
Decoding Classic Fiction with One Question

Summer Rain: July 6, 2010

After several days of hot weather, today it rained in the middle of the day. I went out on the porch, which has a tin roof, and sat for a while listening to the rain and the other sounds around me. This audio is of me doing some random talking, several birds calling, and the rain softly clicking on the porch roof.

Writing all Over the Place

I have been branching out with my writing, finding new places to publish and new topics to write about.

Suite 101
I am mainly doing book reviews and educational articles at this site.

Examiner
Here I am focusing on storytelling news.

Associated Content.
I have just started here, but I would like to do more audio reports and poems on this site.

Thanks for reading!

Old Martha: Where Stories Begin

I created this story for Oklahoma's centennial in 2007. I tell it with the beat of a djembe.

The little girl swept the ashes from the fireplace and went outside to get fresh wood. Her back ached and she was hungry, but she knew she had to get the chores done. There would be no fun for her that day. It was chore day. When she was bending over the woodpile, she heard a sound—it was like the beating of her heart, soft, regular, rhythmic. And she felt it in her heart but it was outside her skin. It was coming from the woods beyond the house. Though she knew she would get in trouble for not finishing her morning tasks, she put down the firewood and she walked across her backyard and into the woods.

Sea of Love

Come with me, my love, to the sea, the sea of love.
This Al-Pacino-Ellen Barkin movie from 1989 can grow on you.
John Goodman sings and knocks back the Budweiser. Pacino drinks too much Scotch and looks good sweating.

But the best thing about the movie is its love of poetry.For the most part it's a typical police drama with a career cop drinking too much and putting his foot in his mouth way too often. He's lonely. Ellen Barkin is sexy and very 80's ruffled looking with her smirk and tough voice. But it's the poetry. The killer likes it. And the cop exists because of it.

Goodmnan says of the killer, "She's a poetry-lover." Pacino says, "More like a poetry-hater." The killer finds victims through poetic ditties in the newspaper personal ads. So a serial killer associated with poetry. Okay. Even crazy folks can feel the poetry bug.

Prologue: This and Then That

It was too hard being in this body. And when I decided to leave it, I knew you would understand. You were the opposite of perfect, and so we were just alike—two extremes. You were nothing like me, and because of that, you knew everything about me. I hid my beauty behind your scars, and we made a whole.

When I look in the mirror I don’t see what Jerrold or Brandon or Mark see. They can’t stop gushing over my “big green eyes” and my “hoochie-mama curves” and long brown hair “with the gold streaks like rays of the sun.” I didn’t invent any of it—what they said or what I am. I don’t use highlighter. I wear very little makeup. We were alike in that way, and so we were different.

Fundamentals of English: 2nd Hour

Crickets
Sing in the walls and behind the books.
They have gone through the set
Of encyclopedias, made a nest
In #23 Pumps to Russellville
And eaten their way through
The rest of the set.
They have learned so much
They can’t stop singing about it.
They want us to know about
Poland and how glaciers
melt and the population
Of Leningrad and the parts
Of a chrysanthemum.
All of their knowledge sounds
Like an irritating noise to us,
But to the lone cricket
In the corner of the room,
It is the song of wisdom

Walk Across Town

I was 13-years-old, just out of school for the summer and eager for every day to start, waiting for the dirty hot sweatiness of an Oklahoma June so I could head to the creek on my bike, plunge in and let the sun dry my skin. But in mid-May, the weather was still only lukewarm, and I put a T-shirt and overalls on before starting off for the newspaper office where Mom worked.

7 Weird Things About Me

1. I used to make bug cemeteries in the back yard when I was a kid.

2. I used to drive a taxi on the graveyard shift when I lived in the city--and I never had a problem except with talkative drunks.

Alive End: Preface

I wrote the goodbye letter to Sleep and mailed it. I thanked Sleep for the good times and the bad and indicated that maybe I would see it again sometime but that I didn’t seem to be able to use it just then. Even when I get so tired and my body feels like an anchor sinking to the ocean’s depths, I can’t bury that hook into Sleep.

So, Sleep, go find someone else.

Poem of the Day: Tenuous

The way of this life is a tenuous one.
My son flirts with joy at a cherry popsicle
in the afternoon and that evening
must stand his ground in the backyard, when
he tells his new friend Stuart,
I am not a baby. You think I'm a baby.
The way of this life is a tenuous one.