Today Years Old

Welcome to Day 5 of the August Open Write. A very special thank you to our August educators who have hosted this month’s open write: Gayle Sands, Margaret Simon, Anne Burg, and Scott McCloskey. You have taken such good care of our hearts and minds. To learn more about the Open Write, click here.

Born in Memphis on June 1, 1937, he has received several Academy Award nominations for his staring roles in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption, Million Dollar Baby – which he won for Best Supporting Actor – and Invictus.  He has also won a Screen Actors Guild Award, A Golden Globe Award, and three Obie Awards.*  [Note: none of this is about the guy pictured above.  He’s won none of those awards.  His name is not Morgan Freeman.  He’s just some English teacher – named Scott McCloskey – from Michigan who occasionally writes poetry.]

* “Morgan Freeman.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 30 July 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Morgan_Freeman#Awards_and_nominations. Accessed 5 Aug. 2022.

Inspiration

Have you heard of the saying, “I was today years old when I found out about…..”?  It’s what we say when we find out something surprising, something new that we’ve just learned.  For instance, did you know that snails have the most teeth of any animal in the world?  The Rainbow Slug (essentially a snail without a shell) can have as many as 700,000 teeth.  That’s a lot of teeth.  Or did you know that ceiling fans have a switch on the side so you can change their directions, which you should do depending on the season (clockwise in winter and counterclockwise in summer)?  Isn’t being a life-long learner pretty cool?  There’s new stuff to learn every day!  Let’s use this to our advantage!

Process

Think of the most recent (most interesting / startling) thing that you’ve learned.

[If you need help “finding” interesting and/or startling facts, here’s a list of thirty at (https://www.boredpanda.com/today-years-old-people-share-facts/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic).]

Use it in a free verse poem.

You could examine the fact.  Interrogate it.  Expand on it.  Or simply just share it with the rest of us.

[Were you to use this “in class,” you could have your students research a topic, find an interesting “fact” and then explore that “fact” in a poem.  You could even have them cite their sources so you (and your other students) could learn more about the given (or self-chosen) topics.] 

Here are two poems that seem to explore some interesting facts (among other things, of course).

Kay Ryan’s “A Plain Ordinary Steel Needle Can Float on Pure Water” can be read here (https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2014%252F03%252F12.html), and you can even listen to it read by Garrison Keillor if you’d prefer (at 3:23 mins.).  

Or you can read Ada Limón’s poem “What I Didn’t Know Before” here (https://www.washingtonsquarereview.com/ada-limn).  If you’d like to hear Limón read this beautiful poem herself, just fast forward to around thirty-five minutes in the video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr3nuEVUygQ).

Scott’s Poem

Toxoplasmosis

Watching an episode
of Chicago Med,
I realize that some
cat owners have a
single-celled parasite
in their brains that
compel them to
take care of their cats.

I smile, looking over
at you, curled
on the couch,
wife of mine
for over twenty-five
years, arm crooked
around the Kindle,
half watching,
half reading,
and I think, this
is gold, I can use
this, fashion
it into a poem
about attraction,
about want and need,
about how deeply
I love you,

but I just can’t seem
to get past the notion
of consent – or lack
thereof – if I’m being
“made” to love you or
if it’s my own free will,
and besides
there’s the problem
that this parasite
is excreted
by the cats
in their feces,
and no amount
of linguistic wordplay
could get passed that.

Your Turn

Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may choose to use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe.