The Poetry Toolbox

I'm teaching a free workshop at Madison Public Library! It's a series of three workshops, and while they do build off of one another nicely, you by no means need to go to all three (it's summer, and I know how hard it is to commit to three weeks of anything inside when the sun is out!).

Last time, we:
* read great poems and discussed how imagery, sound, and metaphor were working in them
* participated in a great metaphor-writing exercise
* talked about conceit poems

If you're not familiar with conceit poems, they're essentially poems centered on an extended metaphor. Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," for example, when read literally, is about a guy standing in the road, while metaphorically, it's about the decisions we make.

If you'd like to come to the next workshop, anyone who has written a conceit has the option of sharing, so feel free to give it a shot and bring it along!  We're a friendly group!

Next week, we'll be talking about repetition, rhythm, and anaphora-- poems starting with the same word or groups of word.  We'll read and discuss poems and work on a writing prompt or two.

You can still register here!!

Where Our Eggs Come From!

We picked up our first CSA share of the year yesterday!  This year, we decided to switch to Christensen Farm for a few reasons:

1.  Pick up is on Tuesday at the farmer's market down the street from our house. This is ridiculously more convenient than our last CSA's Saturday delivery.  And our farmers are there at the market, so we get to meet them!

Chicken in the Field!

2.  They are closer and smaller.  It's run by a family from Monroe with adorable children.  I like to live vicariously...

3. They have eggs! I would like to share with you the video of the chickens who lay my eggs and the coop in which they lay them, but I can't get the video to link up here, so you will have to trust that they are some of the happiest chickens you've ever seen.  Also, their eggs are amazing.  (You can see the video on the homepage of the farm-link above, and I did find this photo of one of their happy flock.)

This week, we got asparagus, spinach, lettuce, rhubarb, radishes, carrots, and a jar of red currant grape jelly (and eggs). We had eggs and toast with jelly for breakfast, and it was the happiest way to start a rainy day! At the market, we also picked up a bag of Farmer John's cheese curds-- they were the squeakiest, freshest cheese curds any of us had ever eaten.  We'll never buy cheese curds anywhere else, ever!

OK, I'm starving now...

Finally Summer!

This past weekend was the first weekend we spent at home since... err... a long time?, and we got so much done!  On Friday, we drove through Horicon Marsh and while we didn't see many birds, we saw a doe giving birth, which is kind of better.  I don't know why, but I was surprised to see her on her own, hunching over in the tall marsh grasses.  Of course she didn't need help, but I guess I thought (somewhere in the back of my head, because it's not something I actually think I've ever considered) that maybe a doe would be surrounded by other does while giving birth.   (These back-of-head-thoughts may be rooted in the Golden Books/Disney rendition of Bambi.)  What a remarkable thing to experience.

On Saturday, we went to the Farmer's Market and bought some plants to eat (asparagus and baby kale) and plants to grow (swiss chard, a jalapeno, and kohlrabi).  We also bought a tiny cherry crumb pie from an Amish stand and, of course, cheese curds.  Oh wait. We also shared a strawberry rhubarb crumb bar while we were there...  It was good.  We walked there and back, which isn't too far at all, but I can definitely feel the extra 15 lbs I'm carrying around with me these days!

After the market, we went to Happy Bambino, which is a fantastic baby store with the friendliest, happiest staff anywhere, and I finally learned what I needed to know about cloth diapers!  Hooray! And then we bought some potting soil and topsoil and compost and came home to plant!  Matthew put baskets on my bike, we put our plants in pots, and we moved our sage, which we were able to keep alive since last fall, back into the earth.  We also have peas coming up and chives that came back this year.  Now, we cross our fingers that the earwigs don't come back...