Daniels’ poems make holy ordinary moments. They are snapshots of everyday life--brushing your teeth at the sink with your sister, a pair of workboots left to dry in the sun, reading in bed with your littles close--written in beautiful, simple language, and they reveal a hidden beauty that is there simply if you pay attention.

Lead your students in an exercise that will help them pay attention to something ordinary and paint a still life in words:

Choose an inanimate object in your bedroom or home that has some significance behind it: that pair of shoes you always reach for, the old hoodie, the stuffed animal you can’t bear to pack away.

Make a two column chart in your notebook. In the left-hand column, describe what you see in plain language. Like a painter, look closely, making your way around the entire object, seeing it from multiple angles. What’s there that you’ve haven’t noticed before, even though you’ve likely looked at it thousands of times? A tiny rip at the seem, some dried chocolate smeared by little hands?

In the right column, make a list of “deeper meanings”: think about what this object means to you, where you’ve used it, or worn it, memories associated with it, etc.

Use Jim Daniels’ poem to think about how you might pair each description with a deeper meaning. Play around with interesting and unexpected similes and metaphors that breathe life and story into this inanimate object.

Consider borrowing Daniels’ syntax in the last three lines: A ____________ reveals a ________, a __________, the ______________ to tie it all together.

Offer the option of bringing in a picture of the object and pairing it with the typed poem for a beautiful still life gallery walk in your classroom.

Further Reading




Allison Marchetti is co-author with Rebekah O’Dell of WRITING WITH MENTORS and BEYOND LITERARY ANALYSIS (Heineman). She is the co-founder of Moving Writers, a blog for secondary writing teachers. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.

Begin by giving students a copy of the poem and let them read along as they listen to Mary Oliver read it. I like to take my students outside for this activity, so I use my cell phone to share the audio. Ask your students to mark the phrases or lines that strike them in any way while they read the poem. After students have read the poem and listened to Oliver read it, have a brief discussion. I always point out to students that “The Summer Day” sounds like a prayer to me, and this makes sense because Oliver frequently talked about how the forest was her church. Ask students what their “church” might be. Where do they feel spiritual? Where do they feel safe and at peace?

After a brief discussion, give students a few minutes to write. Ask them to let the sights and sounds of the outdoors guide their writing as they try to answer the question “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I don’t give my students too many guidelines here as I just want them to write. Their response can be in prose or poetry form, and if they really get stuck I encourage them to sketch.

You could easily extend this activity into a full lesson by having students choose something outside (a tree, a blade of grass, a bird, a bug, etc) and center their response around it like Oliver centers her poem around the grasshopper. They could spend 10-15 minutes making observations about what they see, hear, smell, feel and (maybe?) taste while observing their species of choice. Oliver’s poem can serve as a mentor for their response to the question in her final line.

For more on Mary Oliver, check out this excellent New Yorker piece: Mary Oliver Helped Us Stay Amazed

For a brief Go Poems idea for Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" click here.

Further reading: