I get a daily poem from Jane Yolen every morning in the email.

This is a great way to start conversations with those who know the “Hans Christian Andersen of America” and know that Jane has just released her 365th book making it possible that a reader could read a different Jane Yolen title each day of a calendar year (there’s a future challenge in the making).

Readers of Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s Poems Are Teachers: How Studying Poetry Strengthen Writing in All Genres get to read Jane Yolen’s piece, “Nest” within the Writers Play with Language section of the book under the tab, Choose Striking Words.

When I read the invitation, Choose Striking Words, I thought of the anecdote that comes from James Castle’s extended family in the documentary, James Castle: Portrait of an Artist. The night that James Castle was born, it is said that lightning struck the old snag tree up the hill from the Castle home. All who were home went to the spring to gather buckets of water to put the fire out, including James’s mother who was in her seventh month of pregnancy.

 

James would be born later that night.

 

In Jane Yolen’s piece, the reader will see:

 

• A single stanza poem of twenty lines divided into three sentences.
• The controlled use of punctuation to aid in the maintenance and continuance of a line to completion.
• Internal rhyme with rhyming words sometimes juxtaposed for effect (fingers/lingers; smudge/nudge; sanctuary/unwary).
• Notable alliteration happening between lines.
• Elevated vocabulary demonstrating how a poet selects his, her, or their words carefully.

 

Here is Jane’s poem from Poems Are Teachers: 

 

“Nest”

Hidden on the top

of the green shade,

nest of twigs

and shadows,

smaller than any

of my fingers,

lingers the tiny nest.

Best I not open

the window,

or let the shade down,

or that smudge,

nudged by the breeze,

will be squeezed out of

sanctuary.

Egg-laden, unwary,

it will slide down

onto the deck,

unheard:

a wreckage

of unborn birds.

 

And now. . .our piece:

 

“The Night the Lightning Struck (the Old Snag Tree)”

 

Up on the hill

stood and old snag tree,

its twigs a twisted tangle,

dry, wind-rattled bones,

a lone sentry

on night watch.

In the dark,

a flash and a lash

strikes against the white

of the bare wood

stood steadfast,

upright,

alight, a torch-bearing sentinel.

The woman carrying water

in a bucket carries a child

in her belly; he has already

heard, from the womb,

the boom that will steal

his sound, and his skin

will feel the warmth

of fire before the sun rise:

the heart of an artist

quickened, like

lightning.