Hey hey hey!

Last week we announced that our Shakespeare web site was available for free for a limited time. We have extended this free trial period and want you to check it out!

But hurry! This offer will definitely expire tomorrow afternoon!

Don't worry though, if you or your teacher subscribe to READ, you will still have full access to our Shakespeare electronic issue, as well as our electronic issues for Poe, Canterbury Tales, Monsters, and Student Writing Showcase I and II.

If you have any questions about how to access these fun, interactive sites, email us at read @ weeklyreader . com (no spaces).

Be cool, baby. Click on Will. Solid.

In honor of his birthday, READ's interactive electronic Shakespeare issue is now open to everyone!

Check it out by clicking the Shakespeare head below.

But visit him soon because on Monday, this site is going back behind the subscriber-only curtain (if you or your teacher already subscribe to READ, you will continue to have access).

The Macbeth rap we posted yesterday is on our site as well as an interview with Shakespeare, an interactive timeline of his life, and much more!

Enjoy! And don't forget to check out all the other cool Shakespeare stuff we posted here yesterday!

Oh look at that! Poe took his friend Will out for his birthday. How nice!

That's right, everyone's favorite Bard turns 445 today! Hooray! Happy birthday, old friend! How should we celebrate?

Well, we can listen to READ's associate editor, Audra Pace, give a dramatic performance of a monologue from A Comedy Of Errors.

Well, we can talk like Shakespeare for a spell.

We can watch this very cool iambic pentameter scene from the movie, Renaissance Man. Bop bada bop bada bop bop bop bop! 

We can go crazy with Hamlet.

Or, we can watch this super awesome Macbeth rap! Enjoy!

 

To learn more about READ's electronic issues, email us at read @ weeklyreader . com (no spaces).

Happy Earth Day People. Let's celebrate it with some great poems about nature. Four poems for your enjoyment below. Our featured authors include Edna St.Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, and a personal favorite of mine from JamesWright. Enjoy. And please feel free to post your favorite nature poem in the comments. If you recycle nothing else today, at least revisit some great tree-huggin' literature.

 

A Blessing     
by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

 

NATURE, the gentlest mother,
by Emily Dickinson

NATURE, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest,--
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon,--
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky,

With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.

 

The Daffodils
by William Wordsworth

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.
  

The Leaf and the Tree
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

When will you learn, myself, to be
a dying leaf on a living tree?
Budding, swelling, growing strong,
Wearing green, but not for long,
Drawing sustenance from air,
That other leaves, and you not there,
May bud, and at the autumn's call
Wearing russet, ready to fall?
Has not this trunk a deed to do
Unguessed by small and tremulous you?
Shall not these branches in the end
To wisdom and the truth ascend?
And the great lightning plunging by
Look sidewise with a golden eye
To glimpse a tree so tall and proud
It sheds its leaves upon a cloud?

Here, I think, is the heart's grief:
The tree, no mightier than the leaf,
Makes firm its root and spreads it crown
And stands; but in the end comes down.
That airy top no boy could climb
Is trodden in a little time
By cattle on their way to drink.
The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think,
That hears the wind and waits its turn,
Have taught it all a tree can learn.
Time can make soft that iron wood.
The tallest trunk that ever stood,
In time, without a dream to keep,
Crawls in beside the root to sleep.

 

On page 2 of our most recent Poetry issue of READ, we mentioned that we would post Robert Frost's poem, Birches, here on our blog on April 17, 2009. Holy cow would you look at that! We made it! Cheers.

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 
     - Robert Frost

 

Today, Kim Paras, Weekly Reader's Manager of Copy Editing, muses on why she loves libraries.

My public library recently put a stack of forms on the counter that read "I love my library because ..." Beneath that opener was a bunch of blank lines.

Cool! The nerd in me was eager to tell my librarian why I loved coming to the library, why I visited so often, and why I would sometimes spend hours upstairs-"Where did that tall girl with the glasses go?"–only to reemerge with no books in hand.

Why do I love the library? For starters, I love to read! And to be surrounded by shelves and shelves of books? Oh gosh, just give me access to food and lock me in--seriously, I won’t mind. Sometimes I go to the library knowing exactly what I want. "It's Halloween and I'm in the mood for Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None." At other times I enter thinking I know what I want--"It's time to tackle Chekhov"--but then I leave the library with something entirely different under my arm, say, The Reader. "I must read the book before seeing the movie!"

When I was little and my mom would take me to the library, I would feel as if I'd entered a different world. I would begin wandering down the aisles, carefully slipping books from their shelves and reading the back covers, and everything outside--school, homework, even other people--would be forgotten. The library has the same effect on me today. The first thing that strikes me when I walk through the doors of the library is the quiet. Perhaps it is stating the obvious for me to point out that the library is quiet, but when you're there, no one has to shuss you. You just know, you know? You walk inside and you have taken a trip to, well, wherever you wish. You can lose yourself in novels, mysteries, biographies, history, poetry, plays, or nothing but dictionaries. And that doesn't begin to cover everything. No wonder some people actually get lost in the library.

The library also has that "library smell." Not a bad smell, mind you. Just a certain smell, the way school has a certain smell and the way a new car has a certain smell. And the library has its own sounds. Quiet, careful footsteps in the next aisle over. Creaking floors heard from rooms overhead.

For me, the library is an escape. When I'm in the library, 50 other people may be there too, but I feel like I'm alone, wandering the aisles, carefully slipping books from their shelves.

What do you love about the library?

Check this out! 

Leeawesome and her roommate were inspired to create this music video by the School Library Journal's Battle of the Kids' Books competition and High School Musical 3. 

Great job girls!

It's cold in New York this week. April promises a sea change and warm weather, but April fools. It's cold outside. Keeps raining. It's cold in the office and cold at night under the covers. I want to write about the spring, but it isn't spring really. I don't know what to write about. I don't even know what to blog about. National Poetry Month? If you have to ask about that, you'll never know. I might have a poem in my pocket, but I don't have inspiration.

Maybe I need to stretch and flex my literary muscles. A little exercise. Literary calisthenics. Back in school, my professors offered exercises to get out of a funk, a block, whatever. But now I have no professors, and I'm left to my own devices-- literary or otherwise. So, I've scoured the internet for a few good exercises to try. Hopefully, one will inspire me. And hopefully, one will inspire you too. If so, please send the fruits of your labor to word@weeklyreader.com. Title it "Student Writing Exercise." If you have an exercise of your own that you would like to share, attach it to the comments section. Enough winter laziness. Let's get writing.

From Poefrika:

Ten-Minute Creative Writing Exercise
If you think you don't have time to write, think again. See what you can produce with a simple set of writing prompts and ten minutes of your time with this creative writing exercise inspired by Rita Dove's exercise "Ten-Minute Spill."
Write for ten minutes, incorporating a common proverb, adage, or familiar phrase ("between the devil and the deep blue sea," "one foot in the grave," "a stitch in time saves nine," "the whole nine yards," "a needle in a haystack," etc.) that you have changed in some way, as well as five of the following words:

hill
apricot
fist
stone
bleat
cousin
turn
lick

Don’t worry about creating a story right now: just focus on following the parameters and writing for your ten minutes. Write down whatever comes into your head without worrying about whether it’s good or not. You might surprise yourself.

From author Aimee Bender's website:

Make a list of five areas about which you are an expert. Be honest. A true expert. Then, pick one and write a page of expertise, using vocabulary that may leave a reader out, vocabulary very particular to that particular area of knowledge. (It does not have to be "the floral industry"-- it can also be "ways to avoid saying hello" or "Dad's shoes". )
I think this is one way of interpreting what Flannery O'Connor means by "manners" and also what Junot Diaz means when he says it's okay (even good?) if a reader doesn't understand everything you say.

From the University of Iowa:

Think of a situation in which a long-held fear or anxiety that you have comes true (this should be a situation which could, but has not yet happened). Now, using the third-person mode of narration, write a scene – or a very short story – describing a fictional version of yourself dealing with the situation.

 

If those three ideas don't get you going, check out this AWESOME writer's hub titled Language is a Virus. This place is full of ideas, games, inspirations,  interviews and shrines to brilliant authors.

 

Good Luck!

You'll probably notice that there's no mention of potatoes in the following poetry. But you know where potatoes and poetry have recently intertwined? The Satire Issue of READ! That's right, our Lit Scene Investigation featured parodies of the following poems using potatoes as a theme. Sure these poems are examples of greatness in literature. But where do you put the ketchup?

This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Sonnet 18 Shall I Compare These to A Summer's Day
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
     So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

TO STELLA

by Plato

THOU gazest on the stars, my star!

Ah! would that I might be

Myself those skies with myriad eyes,

That I might gaze on thee.

In Issue 9, New York, New Life, we asked students to write to us about their neighborhoods. Here is one response.

When I was a little kid, about four, five, or six, I used to play Cops and Robbers with my brother and cousin, along with whoever wanted to play that day. I lived by West Side Middle School, in Branford Manor, to be exact. When I played, I always chose the robber team along with my brother and cousin. We were never the cops. We were only by ourselves against everyone in the neighborhood who played. I remember buying popsicles at the grocery store and having to wash my blueberry-stained lips.

When I was eleven, I went over to Branford Manor with my Mom to see her friend. I wandered off to our old apartment. While I was standing on my old step, I enjoyed a memory, one that I know will stay with me; the memory of Cops and Robbers. I spotted a few other children playing the game. I joined them and just left after about five minutes because it just wasn't the same. Everybody who played when I was younger no longer lived in that area.

   - Devon