Time for a Poem

When a whole bunch of people tell you You Need to Read This, I've learned to listen.

That's why I put my librarian skills to work to find Kathi Appelt's poem,
ODE TO MY SOUTHERN DRAWL.

It's in a book, POETRY AFTER LUNCH, that I borrowed from the library.
I've now renewed it the maximum time. It needs to go back.

I'll share just a little bit of the Southern Drawl poem here. I love it.

Here in the south
we treat words like wine
letting them rest in our mouths
until they are ripe and
have soaked into the sides of our cheeks.
And sometimes they get so warm,
we have to cool them
off with iced tea
or Coca Cola

You can find other poems by Kathi on the Poetry Starter page on her website. Like this one about tomato sandwiches and FIGS. (You never saw that coming, did you. But you know I'm going to love a poem that even mentions figs.)
Here's the link to Tomato Sandwich, and some great ideas about teaching and using poetry in the classroom:
http://www.kathiappelt.com/poetry/ps1.html


PS: I have a really terrible, but readable, scan of the entire ODE TO MY SOUTHERN DRAWL poem which I'll send anybody who leaves me a comment and lets me know where to send it.