Joan Bransfield Graham

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Author and poet Joan Bransfield Graham has been widely published in anthologies, textbooks, and magazines. She earned a degree in Elementary Education from Rowan University and has studied art at University of San Francisco, writing at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and poetry at University of California Los Angeles. Graham's most recent book for children, The Poem That Will Not End: Fun with Poetic Forms and Voices (2014), is a NCTE Notable Poetry Book, winner of the Myra Cohn Livingston Poetry Award, and recipient of a Eureka! Silver Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. Her books Splish Splash (1994) and Flicker Flash (1999)—concrete poems about water and light—inspire students to write their own poetry. Both books were School Library Journal Best Books of the Year and NCTE Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts, among other honors. A former teacher, Graham has given hundreds of presentations at schools, libraries, and conferences worldwide. She lives in California. Source

Nature Knows Its Math

Divide

the year

into seasons,

four,

subtract

the snow then

add

some more

green,

a bud,

a breeze,

a whispering

behind

the trees,

and here

beneath the

rain-scrubbed

sky

orange poppies

multiply.

Published:

1997

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2024

Themes:

Nature

Literary Devices:

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds that takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other within a line; usually refers to the repetition of internal vowel sounds in words that do not end the same.

Extended Metaphor

a metaphor that extends through several lines or even an entire poem

Internal Rhyme

A rhyme involving a word in the middle of a line and another at the end of the line or in the middle of the next.