(Just look at that toe on these red boots? I want a pair, and who cares about blisters! )
As part of my "spiel" for last week's seminar at the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching was a suggestion for using the renga, a collaborative poetry form, in the classroom. Why not try it now, I enthused, even though we didn't have much time left. Each of us began with 3 lines, passed our paper to the left, so that the person next to us could add 2 lines based on ours, and so forth--3-2-3-2. Of course we didn't have enough time to finish. Here is how the renga I began ended up when we had to break for lunch. (I'd just been telling them about wearing cowboy boots to a gathering of k-4 students at Iron Station Elementary a few years back.) You may go my posts on the renga and how to use it in the classroom--just scroll down the list of posts till you find them.
Cowboy Boots
Cowboy boots
rubbed blisters ripe as plums
on my feet
and by damn did I walk funny
for days afterward
dog caught me weak
dragged me down
where the neighbor took a peek
no, not peeking just looking
making medicine from weeds
healing the heels
why won't new boots come broken in
or come with a blister discount coupon of 20 % off
why don't cowboy boots
open up the wild west where we can roam
free as our imaginations let us?
***********************
I won't identify the teachers or writers who added their lines to this brilliant poem; the beginning and end are mine,
for which I take full responsibility!
2 comments:
love the renga! How fun. And just this week I wore new shoes for a time that was too short to warrant the blisters I got on BOTH heels. They weren't stylish like the cowboy boots. They were sort of those athletic/cute flats. Now the question: do I give them away or try to break them in by wearing bandaids on my heels?
Karen, do I have blister stories. But I won't go there! I finally realized that I need to use moleskin for the first days of wearing new shoes, especially ones that I knew I'd be walking in a lot. Those red boots are so cool; mine are black with turquoise designs up the sides. They were given to me by my friend, poet doris davenport. So, I think of them as my poet's boots.
I wouldn't give the shoes away. Let the blisters heal and then use moleskin till you've broken in the shoes.
Post a Comment