Poem By My Daughter

A poet

A poet is a liar with a silver tongue pen, and a bleeding heart on the other end.

We are anagrams and metaphors and sphinxes in sheep skin.

Every letter is an actor that we send into the wind,

And we're only as good as the words you believe in.

Erika E. Mooney

Copyright March 2014

Happy Mother's Day!

Alex's Underwater Painting

Mixed media, on high school display

Alex's Horse

Plight of the Writer

"Mr. Editor, I revised it again, sir.  Now will you read the whole thing?"

Erika's Anime Creation

Erika's Valentine Poem to Us

L is for lots of laughter
O is for only you
V is for valuable for all time

E is for everlasting and true

Christmas Eve

We spent our Christmas Eve with family as Alexandra took photos of the Christmas decor.

Later that day, I carried on my father's tradition of visiting the
beach in winter. We also enjoyed the splendor of my inlaws' backyard feeding ground.

More of Alex's Art

Alex's Owl and Super Bunny

More of Erika's Artwork

My favorite is the teapot painting. It was done on a kind of parchment paper and feels heavy.

My Older Daugher's Poem

Today the clouds look pregnant

as if they had a heavy load

soon they dropped their fat hail

much more than they could hold

down

down

dropping their balls of ice

covering everything in sight

making trees hard to see

Today the clouds look pregnant

as if they had a heavy load.

by Erika E. Mooney
Draft 2
2/22/08
________________________________________

Understand my older daughter (turning 11 this week) hates writing. She physically hates writing (because she says no matter how hard she tries, it's always messy) and she intellectually hates writing (because she has so much difficulty spelling).

In the back seat of the van, she looked up at the gray clouds yesterday and said, "The clouds look pregnant today." I almost whirled around in shock, but since I was driving, thought better of it.

"Erika!" I exclaimed. "What did you say?"

"Never mind," she said. I don't know if she thought she was in trouble or not.

"No really, tell me. Please?"

"I said the clouds looked pregnant."

"Oh my gosh, Erika, that's an amazing simile for a poem!"

"Well actually, I heard it from my Eragon CD." She is fond of listening to stories on CD before bedtime.

"Find some paper back there! Write a poem about it!" (Geek mom was all excited.)

So she did. She did it willingly. She was really into it.

Her first draft was wordier than this final piece (without a doubt, my child). It had parts that were too prosaic. She repeated "heavy load" too many times. I wanted her to use her own words.

Parking and walking in for our appointment I told her, "Now it's time to edit the poem. We can do that on the way home."

Big sigh. "I HATE editing!"

"Why?"

"The worst part of editing? You have to go through and fix all your spelling and..."

"No," I told her. "It's creative writing. It's not that kind of editing. First, we go through and get rid of all the unnecessary words. Then we go through and make sure each word is the right one to say what you want to say. You use similes and metaphors like you did." She was picking up little rocks she had spotted en route to the front door. She loves rocks. "Are you listening?"

"Yes," she said. "You said we are going to go through and fix the words."

Kids are listening even when you think they aren't.

Once back in the van, I told her to pick it back up. She kind of sighed, but she did it. "This is going to be easy," I said. "Let's go line by line."

She read each line to me. I pointed out where she had repeated words, and I asked her to write another descriptive word in its place. It was painful recall for her, but she did it. "Wonderful!" I told her, each time she picked new words.

I explained what it means to not need a word and why. We axed the words she decided she didn't need. There were parts she refused to ax (she has artistic integrity, after all), but she crossed out a lot.

"Erika, that is so awesome! I'm going to put it on my blog!"

She beamed. Nothing like an audience as a reward for hard writing work.

By the time I reached the poem this morning, I could see her struggles with spelling and her downward slope of writing. The paper had no lines, and she had problems with her pen. If I could scan the original, I would. (Stupid scanner isn't working.) I removed only one word that didn't make sense (an extraneous "but). You have to understand what went into this poem.

The writing process, in action, in the imagination of my girl who is usually more literal--how awesome to see live and up close!

She's definitely getting older, my dear child steeped in Eragon.

Fabulous Photos by Alex

Alex is only nine. She just might have a future in photography!

Thoughts on Art: Alexandra's Santa and Erika's Horse

I feel like I cheated somehow. I used this new program my husband gave me on my birthday, which I finally installed on Christmas, three months after receiving the software.

The lovely edges and frame were not part of the original work. Of course, the girls could have mounted their coloring on black paper and just ripped the edges or used a gold frame. So maybe I'm over-reacting here in wanting to get this biographically correct, a raw representation of their product right now at age nine and ten.

That's a kind of obsession of mine...wanting to be biographically accurate. The obsession doesn't apply to my own art, poetry or fiction because those genres are not really "all me" or my life. I edit and edit and edit. Sure, there are auto-biographical parts, and you can deconstruct in whatever way you wish. But as we know from studying authors' lives, that's usually a waste of time. Poetry and fiction take on lives of their own.

Art does, too, but I want my children's art to be unedited. They work in first drafts. I want to remember that free-flow of ideas, the way they throw things down and are not afraid to call it art just because the details are missing. Sometimes, it's not their best work because they are tired or are under time constraints. I save only a few of those. But when they really try and have the right energy, that's when we get the best of their youthful minds.

The most interesting children's art says something about their thought process, and even in their first writing, I see extended metaphors and pertinent emotion. The characters in their stories mimic what is in their minds, as do the pictures they draw, paint and color. Not all the pictures they have drawn have been so pleasantly filled with kind men bearing gifts or horses running free in the wind. We learn a lot about children through their art, and it's not always what we want to learn.

I've always believed that expression is the best way to make sure children (and adults, for that matter) rid themselves of demons, celebrate the joy in their souls, explore imaginations, and share themselves with the world. I'm glad they have art and music programs and would like them to have even more. I give them art whenever I can....through projects and visits to museums as time allows. I am hoping time will allow this week, during the break. Maybe tomorrow will be a good day. Today, they want to spend time with their Christmas gifts. I can't blame them.

Art, creative writing and music provide so many skills that ordinary academic classes cannot: they develop coordination, senses of color and sound, vocabulary, math and spacial skills; understanding of both smaller parts and wholeness and how these all fit together. Dedicated art and music teachers are extraordinary people. The girls have had some excellent ones. Too bad these speciality teachers don't get paid enough. And it's even worse how often they are undermined, somehow deemed less equal partners in children's education. This is the plague of "specialty" teachers (and most educators) in general. 'It takes a CREATIVE village.'

I really didn't mean to get so philosophical here. Doing so is the antithesis of the child's mind which is a more concrete reflection of ideas and understanding. So I will shut up now and let their art speak for itself.

Here's me....."shutting up." LOL.

What We Did on the Snow Day

...an original poem typed up and emailed on an icy morning while off from school.... Understand how slowly she types and the concentration it requires to get the full effect of these efforts. Erika wrote this completely on the computer, and we edited together.


Snow
by Erika Mooney

Snow is extremely cold.
It can be packed and thrown.
It also could be a snowman.
Snow can cancel school!
Snowflakes are in many shapes and sizes.
Snow, snow, snow, I just love snow.
DO YOU LOVE SNOW????????

...an original piece typed and emailed (an arduous task), Alexandra had worked on this at school. The piece describes our...um...plump cat, Fiona. Thank you to Alexandra's fabulous teachers for bringing out the best in her writing!
My Fat Cat

My cat is huge. Dad just thinks that my cat fat, but she is not fat. So we put her on a diet and she lost two pounds, but she is still fat. My Mom just likes to pick her up and make her run, but she’s still fat. Erika thinks she needs good food, but she's still fat. I think she is cute, and she will be my cat forever even if she’s fat.

The End.
by Alex

Dragon, Salad Head and Sailing

Erika's Dragon and Alexandra's "Salad Head."

Erika's Dragon took shape en route to home. It's a monster of her own creation, something she said would "be the scariest thing ever." Alexandra said, "You wouldn't want it in your room."

Alexandra's "Salad Head" is made up of fruits

and vegetables. See if you can identify which part is which!

Alexandra has also been doing a bit of painting with me. Here we see her sailboat.

Here is Alexandra's World.

Erika's Elicat is a crossbreed of an Eagle and a cat. It can climb or fly, and it obviously prefers trees.