Soccer and Poetry

Opening Days:  Sports Poems by Lee Bennett Hopkins is another of my favorite books.  Something about the poetry, the artwork, the thrill of reading, the sport... draws me in!  I love reading these poems with students and listening to them read aloud with prosody... the tone, the emphasis on certain vowels, the pitch, the syllable length!  And we worry about fluency... all we have to do is practice with a poem or two! 

     One of my favorite poems is "Soccer" and that's where I will be today, watching my daughter play.  She loves the game and she plays with such grace with her gazelle-like legs.  Watching her play is like reading a poem by Lee Bennett Hopkins... she punctuates with her toes, kicks each side kick with execution, stops on a dime, such precision in the scores!  She plays with athletic prosody (I made that up).  Watching your children on the field is a wonderful treat!

     But as I type this (on Friday night), I look over and see a reader lying on the couch.  The television's off.  The house is quiet.  And we are both at work... reader and writer... enjoying the pleasure of the sport! 

 

Soccer

Twenty-two

prayers

on

reverent grass.

kick

and

dribble

trap

and

pass--

sprint

and

run

tackle 

and 

fall--

all

for

the

love

of

the

sacred

ball.

This is a picture of her in action, by the way!