‘bird,’ ‘snow,’ ‘mountain,’ ‘water,’ and so on. You’ll use that word to give you an idea for your poem.” He spreads his palms again. “But we’re not going to do that yet, either.”
“The suspense is killing me,” Adrian Barrow says. He’s kind of the class clown, except he writes really good poems.
“I’m sure you’ll survive,” Mr. Gallagher says with a smile. “Now there’s another way to approach your poem. Each partnership can work on a single poem. Each of you can contribute ideas, lines, images to it. You can build the poem together.”
“But we’re not going to do that either, I bet,” Adrian says.
“You’ve got me pegged,” Mr. Gallagher says.“What we’re going to do is have a little challenge. I’m going to give you a subject to write about. We’ll be able to take a look at all the different ways each of the groups writes about the same subject. It’s a subject that will be wide-open. It’s limited only by your imagination. The subject is, drum roll please…”
“Oh, the suspense!” Adrian says.
“…months of the year,” Mr. Gallagher says.
“Which month?” Kerry Wilson asks.
“Any month,” Mr. Gallagher says. “Every month, if you’d like.”
“How long should it be?” Kerry asks.
“As long as it needs to be,” Mr. Gallagher says. “Just like most of your other poems.”
Allison and I sit at a corner table and start to brainstorm. We go through each of the twelve months. We think of things that have happened to us in each of the months. We list things we associate with each of the months. Like for January: snowball fights, ice-skating, school being cancelled, basketball games, colds. Or April: blossoms, green grass, Easter, baseball season, robins, spring rains, spring breezes.
After half an hour we still haven’t started our poem, but we have a page full of ideas for dozens of poems. Which isn’t all bad, I guess. Mr. Gallagher keeps telling us that the hardest part of writing poems is coming up with ideas.
We have plenty of those.
Mr. Gallagher keeps us busy all day. There’s no time to think of anything but poetry. By the time school’s out and I meet Ginny at the bus, Allison and I have completed the first draft of our month poem and I’ve written four new poems of my own.
It’s been my best day of writing in three weeks. Maybe I’ll have something good enough to read on Friday night after all.
Fifteen
ginny’s news
Mama and Dad both went to work today, so I’m at Ginny’s when the phone rings. The second she’s done talking she starts squealing and jumping up and down.
“I got it! I got the part!”
I know without her saying any more just what she’s talking about. She’s been in enough plays you’d think she wouldn’t be this excited. But I guess if I kept getting game-winning base hits I’d probably be just as excited as I was the first time. Not that I ever expect to get another game-winning hit.
“The lead?” I say. “Did you actually get…”
“I did! I did! I get to play Annie!”
Annie is a musical about a girl who grows up in an orphanage run by a mean woman. She’s about ten oreleven when she gets picked to spend the Christmas holidays at the mansion of Daddy Warbucks, who I guess was the richest man in the United States. The play takes place a long time ago, like the 1930s or ‘40s. It’s a whole new world for Annie because she’s never had anything. Not only that, she’s treated like a princess when she’s at Daddy Warbucks’ mansion, while the woman who runs the orphanage treated all the girls like slaves. It’s a really neat play. I know Ginny will be great as Annie.
She auditioned at the Children’s Theater for the part a few days after we started at Valley Lakes School. She got a callback last week to come and read for the part again. She said she knows of at least a dozen girls who got callbacks. She said a lot of the others who didn’t get picked to play Annie will probably get
“The suspense is killing me,” Adrian Barrow says. He’s kind of the class clown, except he writes really good poems.
“I’m sure you’ll survive,” Mr. Gallagher says with a smile. “Now there’s another way to approach your poem. Each partnership can work on a single poem. Each of you can contribute ideas, lines, images to it. You can build the poem together.”
“But we’re not going to do that either, I bet,” Adrian says.
“You’ve got me pegged,” Mr. Gallagher says.“What we’re going to do is have a little challenge. I’m going to give you a subject to write about. We’ll be able to take a look at all the different ways each of the groups writes about the same subject. It’s a subject that will be wide-open. It’s limited only by your imagination. The subject is, drum roll please…”
“Oh, the suspense!” Adrian says.
“…months of the year,” Mr. Gallagher says.
“Which month?” Kerry Wilson asks.
“Any month,” Mr. Gallagher says. “Every month, if you’d like.”
“How long should it be?” Kerry asks.
“As long as it needs to be,” Mr. Gallagher says. “Just like most of your other poems.”
Allison and I sit at a corner table and start to brainstorm. We go through each of the twelve months. We think of things that have happened to us in each of the months. We list things we associate with each of the months. Like for January: snowball fights, ice-skating, school being cancelled, basketball games, colds. Or April: blossoms, green grass, Easter, baseball season, robins, spring rains, spring breezes.
After half an hour we still haven’t started our poem, but we have a page full of ideas for dozens of poems. Which isn’t all bad, I guess. Mr. Gallagher keeps telling us that the hardest part of writing poems is coming up with ideas.
We have plenty of those.
Mr. Gallagher keeps us busy all day. There’s no time to think of anything but poetry. By the time school’s out and I meet Ginny at the bus, Allison and I have completed the first draft of our month poem and I’ve written four new poems of my own.
It’s been my best day of writing in three weeks. Maybe I’ll have something good enough to read on Friday night after all.
Fifteen
ginny’s news
Mama and Dad both went to work today, so I’m at Ginny’s when the phone rings. The second she’s done talking she starts squealing and jumping up and down.
“I got it! I got the part!”
I know without her saying any more just what she’s talking about. She’s been in enough plays you’d think she wouldn’t be this excited. But I guess if I kept getting game-winning base hits I’d probably be just as excited as I was the first time. Not that I ever expect to get another game-winning hit.
“The lead?” I say. “Did you actually get…”
“I did! I did! I get to play Annie!”
Annie is a musical about a girl who grows up in an orphanage run by a mean woman. She’s about ten oreleven when she gets picked to spend the Christmas holidays at the mansion of Daddy Warbucks, who I guess was the richest man in the United States. The play takes place a long time ago, like the 1930s or ‘40s. It’s a whole new world for Annie because she’s never had anything. Not only that, she’s treated like a princess when she’s at Daddy Warbucks’ mansion, while the woman who runs the orphanage treated all the girls like slaves. It’s a really neat play. I know Ginny will be great as Annie.
She auditioned at the Children’s Theater for the part a few days after we started at Valley Lakes School. She got a callback last week to come and read for the part again. She said she knows of at least a dozen girls who got callbacks. She said a lot of the others who didn’t get picked to play Annie will probably get
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