Poetry

Apr 23 2018

A poem a day keeps the doctor away! All triteness aside, it may well be true that this variation on the old adage instructs well concerning our need for daily literary consumption of poetic language.

Our 3rd grade class currently engages in this practice, immersed in a unit featuring Knock at a Star, an anthology of poems for children. The eager squeak of opening desks gives proof of their delight for the daily readings!

As our Petra mission states,

“Recognizing our need for God’s grace, Petra Academy strives to awaken love and wonder in our students by teaching them to observe with humility, think with reason, and articulate with charity for the flourishing of humanity and the renown of Jesus the Christ.

We realize that this articulation includes not just the more-often valued prose writings, but poetic expression as well.

How does this happen? Since children learn so well through imitation, from the earliest years at Petra, we read poetry. Beginning with nursery rhymes, fingerplays, chants, and songs in the pres-school and kindergarten years, progressing to classic poems for reading or memorizing in the 1st through 6th grades, then delving into the epic classics in the upper grades, we seek to provide children with a rich diet of poetic language that they may delight their ears and strengthen their hearts for meanings given symbolically, metaphorically, and rhythmically through words.

Ultimately, by training children to enjoy and write poetry – thus developing the capacity for poetic language – we go far to awaken love and wonder for God’s creation, our fellow man, and yes, for God’s word, the Bible. One of my favorites, Psalm 19, states:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech/ night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”

This psalm proclaims God’s creation, the “work of his hands” as being rooted in speech and words, and it is written, not surprisingly, as a poem.

So, there is a place for adding to this great symphony of poetic expression. Why not share a poem a day? You can start and return often to Psalms, and go on to many lovely anthologies and classics available at our public library or school library. Read with expression, read with delight, and read for the sake of truth and beauty. It just may be the start of a wonderful new state of spirit and health for you and your family.

Here are some poems to delight the poetic palate written by members of our third grade class. Bon appetit!

“Seasons” by Maggie Koenen
When it is winter foxes dive for food in the snow,
When it is winter bears go into caves and sleep,
When it is winter snowmen appear and snow blows.
When it is spring apple blossoms glow in the morning light,
When it is spring green grass grows,
When it is spring baby animals are born.
When it is summer animals like to take a dive,
When it is summer you don’t need to wear shoes on soft green grass,
When it is summer birds gather at the feeder.
When it is summer it is the perfect season for climbing trees.
When it is fall leaves drift to the ground,
When it is fall everything turns red, brown, orange, pink, and yellow,
When it is fall the earth is beautiful.

“A Playdate” by Isabella Evans
I’m excited when it’s the day
And nervous at the same time,
But when he or she comes we
Do what we do.

“Poem to Make you Smile” by Elijah Glover
I like teddy bears
Ones from the gift shop
There are fuzzy black or brown
Big or small
Simple ones and complex ones
Happy dappy teddy bears.

“First Day” by Kendall Cote
Sometimes on the first day of school
I am really shy
Maybe too much–
I don’t even want to say “Hi”
I feel so lost
I don’t know what to say
But then I say at least “Hey”.

“My Mom” by Ezra Penland
My mom is one who work and helps
At night she cleans dishes and gets laundry
At morning she get the clothes for school
She drives, she cooks,
She’s how our family hooks.

“Keeva and Deer” by Aiden O’Dwyer
Deer come to our yard every night.
They eat grass, until Keeva comes.
“Bark!” she says,
And the deer run away, saying,
“Panic and run! Panic and run!”

Apr 16 2018

I want to believe it’s happening – for real, this time.

None of this “get your hopes up, only to be crushed by another 6-8 inches of snow” stuff.

Spring. I want spring. And I want spring to stick around.

“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot, “breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

It has certainly at times felt that way – dead, dull – but I saw green grass today, and the memory and desire of past spring and summers came to mind and heart. It’s coming; it just takes a while.

My impatience is not unique to me, nor to the situation of waiting for the seasons to change. As parents, we all can be impatient with our kids – waiting for them to “get it,” wanting them to grow. But think of from where they’ve come, even just this year. Today, I marvel at our 1st graders, now reading; at our 4th graders, now working new maths; at our 9th graders, now well-versed in the various types of energy; at our 12th graders, just weeks away from presenting the fruits of their year-long thesis research and writing.

Today, I remember Pre-Kers once having to learn the basics of being in school, now walking in lines and holding doors for each other with the best of them; I recall seeing 6th graders start the year as our oldest grammar students, now almost ready to become our youngest upper students; and I notice how our 11th graders have studied the greatest of works by Dante and others, and are beginning to think not just about next year as seniors, but beyond next year as graduates.

Spring’s rain stirs dull roots – cleansing them, giving them something to channel, providing what’s needed to grow. The rain can be cold, is always wet, and often interrupts what we think God’s sovereign weather patterns should be. But there is always purpose in it – even when it’s late (or what we consider late) – at least that’s what the Scriptures tell us (Leviticus 26:4, Deuteronomy 14:11, Deuteronomy 28:13, Job 5:10). And growth (eventually) comes with it.

Spring. I want spring, even if it takes more rain and snow to get there.

May April not be so cruel after all.

“O Father, you are sovereign in all the worlds you made
Your mighty word was spoken and light and life obeyed
Your voice commands the seasons and bounds the ocean’s shore
Sets stars within their courses and stills the tempests’ roar”

Jan 19 2018

Our Secondary students enjoyed Petra’s first ever Poetry Slam, an element of the House artistic competition. Students spent several weeks looking at the Fruit of the Spirit as described in Galatians 5:22 and were challenged to write a poem that reflected one or all of the virtues listed. Nineteen students took up the challenge and then presented before the student body, with two of our Humanities teachers scoring their efforts both in writing and presentation. Below are our 4th and 5th place poems.

Abaddon Joel and His Lack of Self-Control
by Ava Bentz (9th grade)

Once in a land that was far, far away,
there happened a story, that is still told today.
It warns you of sin and toils of vice
and tell you how to do things that are nice.
Sounds cheesy, I know, but don’t let your eyes roll,
for there is much danger in no self-control.

There lived a man in the city of Sol,
whose unfortunate name was Abaddon Joel.
His parents didn’t love him from the day he was born,
so he was often left alone and forlorn.
No one was there to teach him good things,
like how to tie shoes, or how a bee stings.
But one thing that was never taught to Joel
was how to practice self-control.

Being alone to himself all day long,
he wasn’t like other boys, fast and strong.
He was more of the squishy sort, and by no means an athlete,
but rather enjoyed eating many a sweet.
His face would be stuffed to the brim with taffy,
after a few years, he became quite a fatty.
And nothing could be done for Abaddon Joel,
for alas, the man had no self-control.

Every day passed and he only swelled,
he could no longer fit the place that he dwelled.
Nor could he see his toes anymore
or walk up the stairs, much less to the store.
His stomach would rumble and tumble and roar,
but the idiot would only eat more and more.
Until his guts burst at the seams
as he persisted eating creams.

His insides then popped with a bang!
And as his intestines flew, the air rang
with the lesson that must stay in your soul,
for God’s sake, have a little self-control.
Otherwise if you do not,
and please don’t let this be an afterthought,
Control your will and avoid this sin,
and do a favor for that poor intestine.

The Gaffer’s Gait
by Abby Laird (12th grade)

Trembling hand holds steady flame —
The frozen flowers of haemetichue fall
Shattered
Once again.

Calmly, grey-haired savant ambles near,
Firmly grips shaking shoulder with a hand
While the other
Dusts the table top.

With a huff leans down and whispers
What this tongue can recite quite capably —
What my ear recognizes almost as a well-known
Tale known only well by two.

His voice sounds like a tuning radio —
And I tune him out. Amidst the
Vainly prescribed dull humming,
The blood-red tongue demands I pay it mind.

The steady flicker–that composed chide —
Is new to me, though I had long before
Taken to memory the script and
Listened to the words.

I hear the pepper-bearded man, but with
Renewed heart at last. Grasping
Steady flame with even hand,
I start my task anew.

Read our 1st place entry and our 2nd and 3rd place entries.

Jan 17 2018

Our Secondary students enjoyed Petra’s first ever Poetry Slam, an element of our House artistic competition. Students spent several weeks looking at the Fruit of the Spirit as described in Galatians 5:22 and were challenged to write a poem that reflected one or all of the virtues listed. Nineteen students took up the challenge and then presented before the student body, with two of our Humanities teachers scoring their efforts both in writing and presentation. Below are our 2nd and 3rd place poems.

The Forest
by Oscar Johnson, 11th grade

Far back in the woods is a pond,
in a meadow of trees tall and old.
It ripples like glass and it shines as you pass,
it sparkles like gems set in gold.

In summer the meadow glows green,
with the songs of birds borne on the breeze.
The fish in the ponds swim so carelessly on,
and the warm sun shifts bright through the trees.

In fall the meadow is filled
with the colors of thousands of leaves.
Wind carries them down spiraling toward the ground,
drifting gently with grandeur and ease.

In winter the meadow is white,
with the ice glistening clear on the pond.
The barren trees shudder with snow that they bear,
that then tumbles on down through the fog.

In spring the great meadow revives,
as the life gently blooms ‘mongst the woods.
The blossoms fold gently from trees young and old
in this heaven of beautiful goods.

If ever you do find this place,
tucked far back in the woods and the hills,
come quickly and find me and show me the way,
to a home far from toils and ills.

True Love, True Joy
by Valerie Lewis, 11th grade

He walked along and saw all he could see.
Within a hall of pictures, paintings, art.
They all held symbols of what he could be;
a man of God, or a man of his own heart.

One held an image of another man.
Whose vice was that he loved his looks too much.
To sit, to stare and watch, his only plan.
The viewer’s thought was how can art be such.

He walked along and saw another still.
Of man and wife whose house was filled with gold.
They would not stop and share a single bill.
The filled their days with all that could be sold.

The viewer’s heart was sad from what he saw.
Each man’s love was only for himself.
He thought that art should fill the eyes with awe.
So on he walked and muttered to himself.

Until he saw a painting of a girl.
She sat in rags covered with filth and mud.
Her hand stretched out beginning to uncurl.
A smile on her face began to bud.

Another man stood by and gave a gift.
He gave the little girl a little doll.
The critic’s prior thoughts began to shift.
His soul was not dejected after all.

He saw joy and love in many different forms.
But the last painting of the girl and toy.
Was a reflection of a truer form.
For all carry in their hearts love and joy.

So he took both and shared them all around.
But knew to question each of them in turn.
For it is our maker both be bound.
So ask if God is whom our hearts all yearn.

Read our 1st place entry and our 4th and 5th place entries.

Jan 15 2018

A distinctive of many classical schools is the incorporation of a House system, a program designed to develop community, camaraderie, and healthy competition within the student body. At Petra, that is the purpose of our eight houses: Avilion, Bedivere, Enid, Excalibur, Galahad, Gawain, Nimue, and Pendragon. These groups of students are integrated across the grades, incorporating 7th-12th grade students in each house, while also making each house co-ed. Students then have the opportunity to interact with other students that they don’t normally see during the day.

The houses compete for the House Cup through a series of fun competitions that challenge their athletic, artistic, academic, and dramatic skills in traditional and non-traditional activities such as relay races, paper plane building contests, and medieval games of skill and chance. The benefit of students engaging in these light-hearted competitions is that it gives them an opportunity to encourage one another.

Most recently, our Secondary students enjoyed Petra’s first ever Poetry Slam, an element of the artistic competition. Students spent several weeks looking at the Fruit of the Spirit as described in Galatians 5:22-23 and were challenged to write a poem that reflected one or all of the virtues listed. Nineteen students took up the challenge and then presented before the student body, with two of our Humanities teachers scoring their efforts both in writing and presentation.

The winning poem was “Love” by 11th grader Maya Moody, a villanelle poem describing the work of the Holy Spirit in restoration. The particular style of poem that she wrote has a notoriously difficult structure to follow, which gave her just enough of an edge to win the competition (we’ll post the 2nd-5th place entries later this week):

Love
by Maya Moody, 11th grade

In fullest love the godhead hovering
With brightness cov’ring nothingness in light.
The breath ignites the formless man to life.

The sovereign unseen hand uncovering
The promised sons amid the starry night
The Holy Ghost restoring men from strife.

To fall from high for man’s discovering
With white-hot feathers on incarnate light
The breath ignites the formless man to life.

With snap and crack the hearts of men recovering
The flames baptizing them in burning white
The Holy Ghost restoring men from strife.

When uncouth Hebrew mouths are uttering
In foreign tongues the power of his might
The breath ignites the formless man to life.

The spirit o’er his church is hovering
With beating wings to fan the faithful light
The Holy Ghost restoring men from strife
The breath ignites the formless man to life.

Read our 2nd and 3rd place entries and our 4th and 5th place entries.

Oct 10 2016

Memory and memorization get a bad rap these days. We are told that, in the era of Google, there is no need to memorize anything anymore. After all, the argument goes, why take up personal hard drive space when everything we need to know is somewhere in the Cloud?

It’s an attractive idea, I suppose, as it appeals to our preoccupation with convenience, but such catalogued memory does us few favors when the Internet’s down.

Memory is not merely for the sake of nostalgia—“that memory-substitute that remembers only backward, and selectively,” writes James K.A. Smith in his Comment Magazine editorial, “Memory, Forgetting, and Hope.” He continues:

Nostalgia is the selective memory of traditionalism. Instead of drawing on the past like a well to nourish our imagination going forward, nostalgia mourns a mythical ‘golden age’ while conveniently forgetting the injustices in that history. Nostalgia invokes ‘the tradition’ as a white knight while deflecting your attention from the serfs crushed underfoot. Nostalgia ends up being its own form of forgetting.

Our Petra Recitations are a monthly opportunity for students to recite on our stage a little of what they are learning in our classrooms. The purpose of all the memory work leading up to these recitations is not to demonstrate how amazing our students’ little hard drives are (though they are), nor is it to gather together and warm ourselves by the nostalgic flames of psalms and poetry from better days gone by. Rather, we learn and memorize and recite because, as Smith continues,

In our age, bent on ‘progress,’ remembering is a revolutionary act…We’re convinced that there are all sorts of buried treasures in our tradition that can be mined for contemporary challenges. Nourishing intellectual water lies in the deep wells of Christian heritage—and yet, all too often, we don’t realize we’re dying of thirst even while slurping up any ‘new’ thing. There are bottles of joy and wisdom and imagination in the Christian cellar that prior generations have abandoned.

The psalmist writes in Psalm 71:17-18,

O God, from my youth you have taught me,
and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
So even to old age and gray hairs,
O God, do not forsake me,
until I proclaim your might to another generation,
your power to all those to come.

We have nothing to proclaim without the memory of that which we have been taught. At Petra, ours is an invitation (once again, a la Smith), “to take, eat, remember, believe: this is the rite of a stretched people who know how to hope because they know how to remember.”

This is why we gather for our elementary recitation each month, and why we are planning our first-ever secondary recitation later this week. Perhaps one day, we will have a parental recitation (though I fear most of us have given up on the idea and purpose of memory, reducing it to little more than the process of holding a phone number in our heads before transferring it to our phones).

The degree to which words and ideas have a hold on us has much to do with the degree to which we have a hold on them. As our children learn everything from the Scriptures to “The Skin Song,” may they also learn by way of recitation that there is power in memory – not just to remember the past, but to remember the past for the sake of the present and the future.

Aug 28 2015

by Sam Koenen, Academic Dean

koenen_tetons — The Koenens in the Tetons (l to r): Sam, Maggie, Catherine, Clara, Tjabe

One evening this summer, I sat on my front porch and began a short volume of poetry by Wendell Berry. The first poem was only three lines long, but its powerful image forced me to stop reading and to think about its implications.

Though this poem consists of a single image, it contains many wise lessons that all of us—teachers, students, and parents—can seek to apply as the new school year approaches.

Like Snow

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.”

The poem’s single metaphor is an exhortation for us to work as the snow works. By contemplating what it means for snow to “work”, we can draw four lessons from Berry’s exhortation.

1) Work with consistency. Berry’s snow falls quietly, without rushing and without anxiety. Its consistent, step-by-step efforts eventually blanket the landscape completely. This time of year, it is common for students to start worrying about the next nine months of books and papers, math problems and science labs, projects and deadlines—and for some, the looming horror of the junior thesis.

Teachers often experience a similar anxiety, wondering how they will be able to prep all the assignments their students are worrying about, as well as attend sports games, teacher training meetings, be home with their families, and serve in their churches—all at the same time.

Berry’s poem encourages us to remember the wisdom of consistency. The nine months’ of work we are worrying about comes to us a single day at a time. When we focus on the work we have today, our work isn’t so overwhelming and our anxiety settles down. The snow doesn’t spend time fretting about the amount of ground it has to cover in complete and precise detail. It just starts working flake-by-flake, and eventually it completes its task.

2) Work with contentment. The snow accepts the landscape it’s been given. It doesn’t complain about the challenging sharp corners and vertical surfaces it will struggle to cover. The snow simply does the best it can with what it has in the time it has been given.

Several times this year, both students and teachers will be given assignments that tax them, assignments full of sharp corners. Instead of wasting time in worry or complaint, let us commit now in the ease of summer to simply knuckle down and do the work we’ve been given. Let us trust that as we work (and pray about our work), we will find all the resources, energy, and wits we need to complete our work well. Let us commit now simply to do our best with what we have and trust God to provide what we lack.

3) Work with charity. The snow also teaches us to be utterly charitable in our work. Snow covers everything and leaves nothing out. It is considerate of every part of the landscape. The snow also works in a way that blesses others. It gains nothing from its work, but creates beauty and comfort in the emptiness of winter.

It is easy to forget that our work should always be marked with charity. All true Christian endeavors seek both to glorify God and to bless our neighbor. As the first day of school approaches, let us pray that God will fill us with love for each other, so that as we write lesson plans or papers, as we hear lessons or give them, as we discuss and learn and teach and spend our days together in Petra’s hallways, all our work will bless those around us—leaving nothing and no one out.

4) Work with hope. Finally, the snow teaches us to labor in the faith that our efforts will not be in vain. The snow of winter provides the ground water needed for the plants of spring. But it never sees the fruits of its labor. It has no immediate reward, no instant gratification for its work. In fact, the snow has passed away by the time its work comes to fruition.

So it often is with schoolwork, especially at a classical, Christian school. Mid-year, students are tempted to ask, “What’s the point? Where’s the payoff for all my blood, toil, tears, and sweat?” They don’t see an immediate purpose to the work they are doing (aside from the ability to quote Churchill in their angst). But the reason the payoff isn’t visible is because they aren’t looking far enough down the road. Growth in an oak tree can be measured only over many years. And it takes a long series of faithful, patient waterings to produce this growth.

When students look for an immediate payoff, they have forgotten that they are very much like trees (Ps. 1), and the work their teachers have given is water for their roots and sunlight for their leaves. Through the grace of God, their Petra education is growing their souls, nourishing their hearts, and fertilizing the soil of their roots so their thinking can go deep.

When we—students, parents, and teachers—begin to question the point of our work at Petra this year (as will inevitably happen), let us remember that we all labor in the dawn of everlasting results.

And remembering this, let us turn and begin our work again, “quietly, quietly, leaving nothing out.”