South Carolina Education Directory
	Click Here to See More

Online Lemonade

Doris A. Ezell
Chester Middle School
Chester, SC

As spring's carefree nature joined forces with my vagabond heart, poetry pulled even my fingers as I struggled to peck out two of its units online. (And "struggle" it was! Sometimes my partially paralyzed left hand can really get cute and perform some outrageous antics: The fingers might rush into an obstinate brown ball and flat out refuse to yield capital letters, exclamation points, dashes, or whatever two hands could do on the keyboard. Minimal keyboarding skills also slowed my typing pace. Somehow the "d" would be in place for one word but not for another; at other times letters switched places with other letters or simply left the keyboard entirely.)

Almost frustrated, I departed the library as disheartened as a rainy gray morning.

"Why did I put those poems online?" I wondered out loud. "Nobody'll read them in the first place. and besides, they rhyme! Bread Loafers like non-rhyme . . ."

That day, concern about the significance of the Bread Net poetry "hung around" like lemons in a basket, nonchalantly waiting to become lemonade.

And like the refreshing sting of lemonade sliding down to my stomach, my psyche reacted the same way when I plugged into BREAD NET the next day, on April 16, 1996!

I was totally, yet happily stunned to find the following message from Carol Zuccaro in Vermont:

From: Carol Zuccaro
Subject: Lemonade!
To: BLRTN
Doris Ezell
TO: Doris Ezell

FROM: Mrs. Zuccaro's 2nd period sophomores
April 16, 1996
SUBJECT: We love your poems!

Dear Doris: I loved your two poems, "March Stunts" and "April Awakening." I especially love the sensual imagery in "March Stunts." We've had snow in Vermont every day for the past week, and today we have much-needed rain, but no green yet, so your poems have given us hope and a glimpse of the future.

I shared your poems with my sophomores because we are doing a poetry unit right now, and they, too, loved them. They had lots of comments and questions, so I asked them to write them down for you. I know you're busy, but if have time, is there any chance you could reply to these kids? They would love hearing from a real poet! Love, Carol

Here are their comments/questions:

Andy R: What inspires your beautiful writing?

Jeff L: Are all of your poems about spring?

Sung-Chang P.: "March Stunts" is really beautiful. In this poem spring is like a person who brings a lot of happiness, brightness and blitheness and that person is female.

Bridget B: I like the last stanza in "April Awakening" because it really came across strong. Today so many people take mother earth for granted, and they don't realize how important the earth really is.

We had established a common interest—poetry. These young minds posed questions that made me analyze my own works. For instance, Sung-Change interpreted "March Stunts" in a fresh, novel way, seeing spring's nature as happy, bright, and blithe and musing even that the season's gender is female. How could she (the student) discern theses elements so effectively, guessing to the letter the poem's deeper hidden message?

Bridget had universalized the last stanza, making it probe a concern of humanity: Its shallow regard for the earth.

Andy wondered about my inspiration, and Jeff, if all of my poems were about spring.

Community! Spontaneous, all working toward a commonality, collective, individual. Mrs. Zuccaro's students thought about my poetry, connected with me—with my thinking.

To maintain that "cooperative vein," I answered them, summoning a snail to deliver responses.

4-22-96
Dear Carol and new poetry pals,

Really, I'm still bubbling over your online responses: The depth of your inquiries shows that you students are the brightest of glowing stars and that you're taught by a sun-beaming teacher.

Most of my early poetry rhymes. Before Bread Loaf, I shuttered at the thought to writing any other way . . . now I am really attempting to pull up my life/heritage through verse.

When I was a teenager, a devastating freak of nature happened: a blood vessel burst in my brain—causing many severe abnormalities to occur. (The rap found in A Teacher Testifies tells that story.) I could no longer use my fingers on the left hand, thus shattering my dream to become a concert pianist.

My face was badly disfigured, so the desire to perhaps someday attend modeling school vanished. I prayed for another talent. God heard me and answered: intensified love of spoken and written language peaked in poetry writing and oral delivery of the poems—in a "wild" scenario. (Note: For months I sounded quite like a wounded animal; my words came out as grunts, to be gentle in description. The electrically-charged-poem reading came later, much later, and is currently used as a teaching technique for listening and writing enrichment.)

I wish we could meet and have fun with poetry; unfortunately, that is simply a wish, a dream, and a hope.

So, here goes the answers you want to know.

Andy R: Thanks for your comment. I am inspired by life's treasures: Man, woman, birth, death, and infinity. As I believe everything is "golden," power to write (poetry)comes from everything I experience!

Jeff L: Many of my poems are based on spring (and the other three seasons); they span broader aspects of life in general. The poem "His Candle Still Glows" celebrates the life of a dear friend's father who battled cancer for years, for example. (Included in A Teacher Testifies by Doris A. Ezell) The poetry in my chapbook Beyond Superlatives: Encounters in Indonesia chronicles those 'wild thang' interludes that happened during that 37-day, 1994 Fulbright Hays curriculum development project in Indonesia. I hope this gives you a general answer. Thanks.

Sung-Chang P: Thanks for your comment. Actually, yes, I wrote "Spring Stunts," then titled "Poem for Dee, Who is Just Like Spring," for my youngest daughter's birthday. She's bubbly, and I wanted the poem to celebrate her "life" that "comes back" to life during spring.

Bridget: I wholeheartedly agree with you, my dear!

Carol's students, the four mentioned plus the rest, had mirrored my perspective concerning poetry, basically presented in the following extrapolation:

Poetry, like the Oxford, England sky, possesses a wide spectrum of creative talent: First Lady of language; a goddess who sneaks around watching the folly of humans and listening to their varied noises: howls, coos, screeches, shrieks, whimpers, gurgling; who skitters away on a moonbeam to flirt with her favorite god; a chisel that slowly chips away at the bland, hard-boiled shell called the mundane to expose a marvel that merely, clearly, and dearly deepens: windfall that changes the whole azure into a seventh grader's multiple personality where cloud puffs play peek-a-boo with sunbeams one moment; the next, a purple bulbous giant who promises the end of the world if one simply looks his way; a harp whose silver strings are plucked by Puck, Red Riding Hood, and Utangha who lives in Uganda.

I figured that these writing students, with their poets' minds, eyes, ears, and hearts, wondered as I did what separates prose from poetry if they're both storytellers who utilize word power, mesmerizing the ordinary so much it turns to art. Certainly prose has its place in the literary arena and thrills many an adolescent's fancy. If, however, a brief comparison between the two genres may be offered, the following interplay might be used: prose says a lot, poetry tells a little; prose permeates, poetry hints; prose works, poetry slides and struts and dances; prose probes, poetry suggests; prose speaks, poetry sings; prose looks, poetry gazes; prose explains, poetry baffles; prose shines, poetry sparkles; prose sews an open seam, poultry crochets a daughter's dream; prose builds a house and designs its framework, but poetry decorates the structure and dresses the rooms in exquisite furniture and garnishes with rare ornaments all spaces until the common flat adopts a castle's royal aura.

Poetry exudes an adolescent's hormone-wrapped presence, scratched-knee wounded one instant, the great pretender who never cries because he or she never has to the next—always a challenge, ever a reverie recalled before kings married queens.

From the online messages, I could only surmise that these poetic geniuses thought precisely as I did, as members of a community must and should do. In light of this notion, we all had to be thinking the same identical ideas concerning the genre.

Strumming, humming the stuff of life, poetry watched Creation at the start of time and wove its first lyrics. It skipped along beside the great author observing light and her playmates. As if deciding that first day in some far away epoch that a rattled, would-be poetess plus her new pals in poetry would meet without face-to-face contact through a spontaneous twist of fate; more questions and comments appeared on the computer screen—reaffirming the actuality that I might have a little writing ability.

Emily Whitehill:

I enjoyed "April Awakening" greatly. You turned the changes of spring into a kind of fantasy world. For example the stanza that says, "Meadows—rain kissed; wide, and plush/wear such a regal green." When I read this, I pictured a little mouse with a crown on walking around a plush green carpet, trying to find a wife. What other kinds of poems do you write? Are they all about nature, or do you write about other things?

Emily Whitehill, I do write about other topics, yes. My range is wide. Many teacher poems I've done in the past and when I read them orally, I rap the words—I get WILD! You got the meaning to a tea cup.

In "April Awakening," I can see all the birds chirping and flying around. I can see all the colors of the butterflies. I can see the meadows turning green, maybe its just because I want it to look like spring is here. The imagery is great!

Jamie B, thank you for your generous comments. All of you wonderful young people are spoiling me tremendously. How am I to keep from glowing in the dark? "April Awakening" became a poetic thought way back in 1987. Over spring break that year, I had vowed to complete the Basic Skills writing folders. Well, the weather was simply scrumptious and spring things seemed to take over my better judgment to the point that all I could do was forget folders and compose poetry—which is exactly what I did. (Of course, a new deadline was set by my principal, rest his soul, who thought poetry was a waste.) Anyway, I know several wanted to know about this one in particular. Hope it's making sense...

Hey, this is Vermont, and up here this is mud season: there was even snow yesterday . . . different where you live. Where do you live?

Winter lasted quite a spell here too, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, so I know what you mean about mud...Chuck, why not write a poem about just that: mud season! You've got your focus . . . all you'd need is to feed the feelings—waiting for spring, the blahs in waiting, etc., and you could have a best seller! In fact, what a class assignment for "poets" in 10th grade working on a poetry unit. I'd love to read your work.

I packed the poem with the catchiest phrases I could think of in a tiny time frame. Someone was typing for me . . . rushed, you know, with no real reflection time. Plus the poem tries to show March as a magician who owns a top hat full of magic tricks.

Erin, since my motto is "The Whole World is a Poem Just Waiting to be Written," I observe everything with my heart , then send it on to be composed by my soul, and finally sift the product through my spirit to be shared with wonderful friends like you who love words, too. Poetry is my panacea.

Perhaps I do, Justin, spend time out of doors, just walking around, enabling me to "feel" the "poetic grind!" . . . experience grants much of my poetry's meat. We should write about who we are, sprinkled with an occasional lie to give the piece spice. You have so much to say as a teenager, and I really hope you're writing about your days—and nights.

Thanks, Jacob . . . I like to go for "obvious surprise" elements when I write poetry. To me, spring can be blustery and pushy in working its magic. Perhaps, it grabbed nature suddenly, waking all of its citizens though startling. Butterflies are like Christmas lights . . . their colors so brilliant they seem to be shimmering, flashing.

Is there a deeper meaning to three-leafed clover? Dillon E.

"Spun brick clouds to cotton candy." I liked . . . very much, you can picture the clouds well. You used imagery excellently. Jeff P.

I feel the first 2 lines of each poem is similar. Why? Abbey T.

I like the rhyming in "March Stunts," . . . its fourth stanza because everyone knows of Jack Frost. Shelly B.

These are from my sophomores:

You seem so outgoing in your poems. Why did you pick the springy theme?...because it's springy or...other reasons? What kind of environment do you work best in? Theresa N.

Doris, I really like your poems . . . so full of details . . . you can actually picture . . . blue sky, green grass, birds singing. If your poems are this good for spring, try the other seasons, too. How did you think about writing "April Awakenings"? Kelly T

Your nature poetry is very vivid. Does anything else inspire you as much? Harmony G.

I beckon for poetry to scratch the inner itch deep within my soul, soothing its sting without tearing a hole in the delicate, unassuming origin. Its melodic legacy composes the song that keeps seventh graders (and high schoolers whom I encounter—once—online) golden and the original dance which propels their dreams (and online questions and comments) into silver flight.

Carol: Doris, I have a few questions of my own. What books of poetry (or other genres) have you published...available in book stores, articles written about you . . . where? You are great! Your poems turned this rainy day into lemonade! Love, Carol.

Real community created, maintained, extended—through that poem wearing Easy Spirit walking shoes.

(After all, rain, in South Carolina, in Vermont, is liquid sunshine!).

Doris A. Ezell-Schmitz, a middle school and high school teacher for the past twenty-five years, is a seventh grade language arts teacher at Chester Middle School. She has published four books of poetry and several poems and articles in a wide variety of journals. Doris believes life is a poem waiting to be written.