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Name

Where are you from

Tell us a good or bad experience of your English or writing life.

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O’odham Dances is a lyrical film adaptation of Ofelia Zepeda’s poem portraying a Tohono O’odham ritual in which people join with not only the animals of the desert but all the important elements necessary for rain, including winds, clouds, and the heat off the desert. The film shows the dramatic transformation of the Sonoran Desert as night falls—the sun sets, the moon rises, and animals that have quieted their movements through the day’s intense heat come out in search of food and water. Desert images and sounds convey the powerful sense of place and sacred space that Zepeda’s poem evokes. Cinematography and editing by Jonathan VanBallenberghe / Co-directed and read by Ofelia Zepeda.

Produced for

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I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed-and gazed-but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth | Poetry Foundation

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It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky,

like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear.

And there, not the promised land, but barbwire and barbwire

with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk

after a bat said la sangre del saguaro nos seduce. Sometimes

I wake and my throat is dry, so I drive to botanical gardens

to search for red fruit clutched to saguaros, the ones at dusk

I threw rocks at for the sake of slashing hunger.

But I never find them here. These bats say speak English only.

Sometimes in my car, that viscous red syrup

clings to my throat, and it's a tender seed toward my survival:

I also scraped needles first, then carved those tall torsos

for water, then spotlights drove me and thirty others dashing

into palos verdes, green-striped trucks surrounded us,

our empty bottles rattled and our breath spoke with rust.

When the trucks left, a cold cell swallowed us.

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Saguaros by Javier Zamora | Poetry Magazine

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It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky,

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The basic structure of a tanka poem is 5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7. In other words, there are 5 syllables in line 1, 7 syllables in line 2, 5 syllables in line 3, and 7 syllables in lines 4 and 5. If you have ever written a haiku, you will notice that tanka is kind of like a longer version of haiku that gives you a little more room to tell a story. Here is one example of a tanka poem:

5. Crash at two A.M.
7 I opened my bedroom door 5 A white cat ran by
7 Startled by the clanging fall 7 Of the treat jar’s metal lid

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person of the playful star: tanka [i listen to songs]

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Person of the Playful Star: Tanka [I listen to songs]

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Person of the Playful Star: Tanka [I listen to songs] - I listen to songs

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Write from a place/ memory connected to a plant or region.

In the form of a Tanka.

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Tanka poems - Download as a PDF or view online for free

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Pin by Rhea Keneipp on bruh | Japanese quotes, Garden of words, Learn japanese words

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Oct 21, 2024 - This Pin was discovered by Rhea Keneipp. Discover (and save!) your own Pins on Pinterest