Search Results

Beginner's Mind From Shipyard to Harvard Yard: Embracing Endless Possibilities by M. B. McLatchey Winner of the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award "Rippling with wisdom and creative genius." - Readers' Favorite ® 5 - Stars “IT’S WONDERFUL TO HAVE A BEGINNER’S MIND.” – Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple "Anyone who has been influenced by a beloved teacher will savor this work; educators will especially appreciate it." - Library Journal "Would the bad children please raise their hands?" Discover why that statement and so many more from Beginner's Mind will have you either smiling or crying. For parents of young children, their teachers, homeschooling parents, teachers in training, and all adults interested in discovering a more loving way for children to blossom in school, Beginner's Mind is the how-to book we have been waiting for – a book that describes teaching the way we so passionately want it for our children. Told through the eyes of a very observant ten-year-old who, in real life, did go from shipyard town to Harvard University, Beginner's Mind gently answers the question, How do we want teachers to teach, inspire, and guide our children? Teacher comments: "A must-read for every parent and teacher.” – Kevin McIntosh, Class Dismissed "Read this book and re-open your mind.” – Robert Fleck, PhD, Art History as Science History "Beginner’s Mind has galvanized my teaching. ” – Frankie Rollins, The Grief Manuscript "The perfect gift for every teacher, from every loving parent." - Reader's Favorite More Info: Video Trailer for Beginner's Mind Of Poets & Poetry: Prerelease Book Interview Readers' Favorite 2021 Five-Star Reviews Beginner's Mind in the Classroom A Poem by the Author - "Beginner's Mind" About the Author ERAU Industry Day Poster Praise by Teachers for Beginner’s Mind : “Quirky, wise, fierce, impossibly creative, Miss D is the fourth-grade teacher we all wish we had. Risk-taking and grace-under-pressure are among the lessons she teaches her students in a hardscrabble shipyard town, sometimes at great cost. M.B. McLatchey has repaid the gift in full, adding Miss D to that pantheon of teachers we never forget, who change our lives forever – for the better. A must-read for every parent and teacher.” — Kevin McIntosh, Class Dismissed “Einstein said he loved talking to young children because they hadn’t yet been brainwashed by education. In the sciences, it is so important to look at nature with an open mind, without preconceived notions and biases. M.B. McLatchey captures all of this in Beginner’s Mind , revealing its secrets to the reader through the innocent eyes of a remarkable fourth grader. Read this book and re-open your mind.” — Robert Fleck, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Art History as Science History from the Paleolithic to the Present “M.B. McLatchey’s readers encounter a visionary in this memoir about her fourth-grade classroom, a place where the dictionary becomes a ‘Sanctuary,’ where students leave space at the top of their papers for Big Ideas, and where the Busy People’s constant motion isn’t considered a nuisance but made useful instead. The teacher, Miss D, insists that her students learn to trust themselves in a world where authority offers little room for singularity. ‘Don’t look back,’ she urges us, because every day is another chance to choose how you want to live your life. Beginner’s Mind has galvanized my teaching.” — Frankie Rollins, The Grief Manuscript “This is the work of an original, smart, and talented writer. She has a great storehouse of knowledge and a penetrating understanding of many subjects, including human beings. It is wonderful to read someone who knows a capella, Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei, as well as Carol Channing and Hepburn (and knows the difference). When has a school room been given such vivid enunciation – the dioramas, shoe boxes, sticker-stars, and clay figure, the comfort of “half-truths” for other children, but not for Miss D’s. With a “sideways glance,” they took it all in, and were forgiving, like Miss D (whose door says welcome, an endless acquittal). It is difficult to see any of us “condemned,” and yet, there are standards. Standards! I can’t go on admiring line after line, when I am only on the first two pages in my commentary (and my language is so stupid and pale in comparison), but that’s what this essay does to me; it says look, see, remember. Word for word, sentence by sentence, I am enthralled. Thank God for Miss D, and for being reminded that at least one or two of my own teachers were, if not her equals, close sisters. While the writer appears like a new comet on my horizon, I am wild to know what this writer will do next. Meanwhile, she will be “graded,” though A+ hardly describes my admiration.” — Emily Herring Wilson, Judge, Penelope Niven Award in Creative Nonfiction The Center for Women Writers, Salem College "McLatchey pens a love letter to her fourth grade teacher, Katherine Arthur Dunning, an extraordinarily gifted and unconventional educator who for years taught in the public schools of North Weymouth, MA . The "beginner's mind" of the book's title describes the innocence and curiosity of young children, which Dunning (whom McLatchey refers to as "Miss D") sought to cultivate. The author vividly describes her dynamic fourth grade classroom, where Miss D focused on big ideas, eliminated labels such as "good" and "bad" to describe students, designated the dictionary as a "sanctuary," and helped hyperkinetic students channel their energy through additional tasks. Interspersed throughout are brief letters from Miss D to the author, charting their enduring relationship over decades. VERDICT Anyone who has been influenced by a beloved teacher will savor this work; educators will especially appreciate it." —Elizabeth Connor, Daniel Lib., The Citadel, Military College of South Carolina, Charleston Library Journal Where to Order: Regal House Publishing Amazon Barnes & Noble Book details: Publisher : Regal House Publishing Language : English Paperback : 230 pages I SBN-10 : 1646030680 ISBN-13 : 978-1646030682 Item Weight : 12.6 ounces Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.58 x 8.5 inches

Index Previous Next 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit The Rescue People use the word 'closure.' It's not about closure, it's more about justice. ― John Walsh, father to Adam Walsh. Today in the news: Miraculous Rescue An uncle drags a shark to shore to save his near-dead nephew. A bull of a shark, the arm that it tore from the boy when he waved for help fueled the beast's palate; its tail in the uncle's grip, a blur of blood claret and kelp; the husks from his palms, a grim and edible kale. I want a shark that I can wrestle and make it spit you out. To make it yearn for its strength, to thrash about as I nestle its nose in my grip. I want to turn you loose from a palpable place: a well, a shed, a jaw. I want the monster to face me and beg for the law. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit. Published in The Comstock Review , January 2008.

Award Winning Poetry - 2006 Winner of the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award Sanriku The game was not to look - but feel - the slow drag, the distant rise and fall, the quiet revolt of crests gaining an underworld; to know in our heels the moment of their advance: languid, insidious. "Sanriku!" one of us would call - a notice to the rest that it was imminent, and with one lift, a solidarity, we'd throw ourselves beachward, tossing and rolling in a curled force. Submerged, I would hear that call like water's moan, or like the heaving sobs of Asian fishermen, who felt too late the slip of plates, the buckling floor, the little missionary wave passing beneath their boats; who, steeped in so much grief, never knew the clarity that follows every quake -- when there, for just an instant, the contours of the seafloor below are mirrored in the water around our waists. Sanriku is a port in Japan that was destroyed by a tsunami in 1896. Fishermen 20 miles out to sea did not notice the wave pass under their boats because it only had the height at the time of about 15 inches. They were totally unprepared for the devastation that greeted them when they returned to the port of Sanriku - 28,000 people were killed and 170 miles of coastline were destroyed by the wave that had passed under them. Copyright © 2003 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Winner of the 2006 Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award. Published in Willow Springs 58, Fall 2006. Previous Next

Index Previous Next The Peculiar Truth Not much has happened since your last letter. I have read parts of it over again and to very close friends. They have felt obliged to say something as you have. They have been good friends. The postcard is to show you The sun-glazed coast of Salthill. But, of course, it is winter here too. I had not meant to carry on about the fog. Though it rubbed out the channel, probably it had no connection with our way of vanishing. Still, you must know how it is here; scraping beans up from Royal Worcester, how the table is set. My foreigner and I sit adjacent to each other swinging our forks, wishing for something spicy. Eventually we make apologies and slip through slender passageways to breathe easier, to feed on candy, to wrap our arms around ourselves the way this country does it. From my window and everyone else’s there is a beautiful garden which is not ours. From here I imagine you looking wiser than you are as if you knew this and that. . Copyright © 1978 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Grain , May 1985.

Index Previous Next Ocracoke With undying love, to my husband. ― Christmas 2013 In a letter to his wife, a Japanese poet said I will be back , and, I will cross channels and oceans, and islands, and rushing rivers. And for the rest of their years, his flannel shirt that she made her own, caught her tears as they might in a lover’s hold. What are our days , she asked, or distances, or years, if not one heartbeat measured out in country miles and tears between two coupled souls ? As once in Ocracoke, barrier island, barrier to all that does not hold against cruel winds and so, not love, which holds and takes its fortitude from simpler things: the open hand that follows cruel words; the kiss that aches to cool, like a shore bird, in wading water; the gestures of a land within a land. A dress that I saw in a shop in Ocracoke and I dreamed, as we ferried away, as a small girl dreams, of sea winds catching its hem in a gust of sea spray above my knees. And you wanted to please me, because, I would come to see, that is what lovers do. Let’s go back , you said. And I noticed the difference in miles for me and you: what for me was a glitch in our plans and a girlish want, was for you an open hand, a summer dress on a wooden hanger, ocean and sand that you would cross – again and again. No miles from lover’s want to lover’s gift, one sky from isle to isle. . Copyright © 2013 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Briar Cliff Review , Spring 2016.

Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Published in Metamorphoses, 2019 Prev 9 Next DELIRIUMS At first one hears the wings with their veiled whispers then the feathers obscured by pearls and satins Murmurs of silk mutineers in a whirring of desire verses, delights sonnets and deliriums of lilies shattered DELÍRIOS Primeiro escutam-se as asas no seu rumor velado depois as plumas turvas de pérolas e cetins Gemidos de seda amotinados num zunido de desejo estrofes, deleite sonetos e delírios de lírios estilhaçados Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey & Edite Cunha, with permission. All rights reserved. Published in Metamorphoses , Fall 2019. Copyright © 2017 Maria Teresa Horta, from her collection Poesis . Dom Quixote Publisher, Lisbon. Back to List

Index Previous Next The Missouri Review - Poem of the Week Full Disclosure World History. What the course title means: Whisperings in Xylography. Gambles and losses—like yearnings in braille— You will be asked to finger, sound out, unveil. No summit, no Zenith, no Alignment of planets guaranteed. Nothing in stone. You are Buying a home someone died in: Curie, Copernicus, El Cid. Chronicles disinterred: The wisdom of the renegade, the rebel kid. Days passed in a Provost’s calendar will be proof you endured. Endurance as in epic songs. Longings, self-makings, upendings. Finishings like beginnings, underdog odds. The heretic, the face of God. . Copyright © 2024 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Missouri Review , January 2025. Featured as Poem of the Week , Januarey 13, 2025.

Index Previous Next Snow Globe La Tour Eiffel. An April-snow like pollen covers a patch of stolid tulips. From the first platform, he leans over slick railings, leans as if in Keats’s scheme to drop and drop a red corsage to a woman below. I see it now: this is the one of 300 steel workers, who tumbled to his death clowning around. Her promise is to keep him from his fall by gazing back – his sentinel, his figurine against the filmy wash of elements against the fading colors in a dome. I shake it – not for snow – but to marvel at their hold. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Cider Press Review , Vol. 9, Spring 2008.

The Rape of Chryssipus 2007 Spoon River Poetry Review Editors' Prize I chose "The Rape of Chryssipus" among a remarkable field of finalists for three reasons. The poem displays both wildness and restraint, and arranges the tension between these impulses through the clean elegance of its prosody. It makes me think of Yeats's ambition to write a poem "as cold and passionate as the dawn." The poem also displays great breadth, making us feel both the particularity and the universality of the brutal acts it recounts. And finally, "The Rape of Chryssipus" recalls one of poetry's prime functions: to curse. Appalled by the occasion of the poem, I'm entranced by its ambition to transcend accusation. "The Rape of Chryssipus" is no less than a spell, calling upon elusive powers to enter the human world. -- Dr. Philip Brady, Judge 2007 Spoon River Poetry Review Editor's Prize The judge, Dr. Philip Brady , is the author of three books of poems and a memoir. He has received fellowships from Ohio and New York, and residencies at Yaddo, Hawthornden Castle, Fundacion Valparaiso, the Headlands Center, and Ragdale. He teaches at Youngstown State University, where he directs the Poetry Center and Etruscan Press. The Spoon River Poetry Review

Index Previous Next Ode for My Department Chair Who Left a Face Shield on My Desk For Sally Because all of this is seeing through complex prisms; seeds reconciling to stalks that lean grey-blue instead of the expected, upright green. Because the soil we trusted, turned, and patted on our knees became unresponsive, a sick child’s pale serene. Because birds and song became a dull-working machine. Because this exchange called teaching is more than granting access, pointing to open gates. Because Sophocles portrayed us as we ought to be; but Euripides portrayed us as we are: surprisingly unstayed and dying a happy death in front of them. Breath after breath. Because care in a time like this is not a stockpiling of perfect arguments, pleas and refrains as if part of a lesson plan – or worse, the cliché – something preordained . Because master and apprentice should look the same. Smithies hammering, melding, iron and steel. Because metals, once coupled with the right vistas and bent into shapes – a cruciform, time’s infinite wheel – were in a previous plague, thought to heal. . Copyright © 2020 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in NCTE's 2021 Fall issue of English Journal , National Council of Teachers of English

Amber Alert 2013 New South Writing Contest Winner “Amber Alert" is a poem that is so compressed it fools us into thinking it's only going to be about a road and a deer. The clean lines hold so much more – movement, murder, youth and sensual beauty stolen, worlds of boys and girls in collision, the hunter, the hunted, rituals, and poetry inside poetry – a "hunter's nectar." In the end, the poem offers a saving grace – “her heart.” -- Judge, Marilyn Kallet 2013 New South Writing Contest new south : Georgia State University's Journal of Art & Literature

BIO Fourth Grade 1963 Miss D 1963 Quincy Shipyard Fore River Bridge Goliath I grew up in a town where our parents were ship builders, bakers, waitresses, and cashiers, and where books found their right and proper place in the local library. Ours was an oral tradition, with the sounds and voices of elders and neighbors in inflections of Portuguese, Greek, Irish, and Italian – all of which I quickly learned to imitate. The result was a technical training that served a writer. I learned by ear the necessity for music in language, the power of truths told in nods and quiet breaths, and the critical importance of timing. And, I learned at my kitchen table that if you’re going to tell a story, it must be artful and it better be worth everyone’s time. At the age of ten, I met the woman who would become my lifetime mentor – Miss D, my fourth grade teacher. She would unleash my passion for literature and the arts and teach me how art connects us. A few years later, at the age of fourteen, I was awarded my first literary prize – 1st place in a poetry contest hosted by Boston’s Emerson College. In a packed campus theater, the contest judge, renowned poet Charles Simic, handed me a check for a hundred dollars and mumbled, “Good job, kid.” Even at that early age, I understood that writers thrive on affirmation – not because the ego needs it, but because it confirms that through our art, we connect. At that moment, my life as a writer was confirmed. My passion for languages and literature took me on a course of studies to some of the best colleges in the world. At each college, it would be the Poet in Residence that I would seek out. At Williams College, Lawrence Raab and Richard Wilbur taught me to unleash the mystery in poetry; at Brown university, Michael Harper tuned my ear for the music in poetry; at Goddard College, Alfred Corn and Michael Klein honed my technique in poetry; and at Harvard University, the Nobel-prize winning poet, Seamus Heaney mentored me in the mercy in poetry. I was immensely fortunate to share countless hours and discussions with Seamus (sometimes over a PBR and Powers) not only on the topic of how to write good poetry, but on how to be a good poet. “It takes a good person to be a good poet,” Seamus often said to me. I knew that this “goodness” was what Seamus himself strived for; it was a positioning of himself in service to the world that I continue to try to emulate in my work – empathy, authenticity, and self-effacement. It is Seamus and the mentors who preceded him that walk with me in my recognitions. My book with Regal House Publishing, Beginner’s Mind , examines a topic that I have made my life’s focus: namely, education. In a time when our schools are dogged by institutionalized goals for our children, this book gives us a classroom where personal growth and innovative thinking happens in unimaginable ways because of a remarkable fourth grade teacher. Though my soul naturally defaults to the poetic, I have chosen a prose format for this book to more directly reflect the classroom dynamics. Beginner’s Mind is a collage of teaching moments that forever changed a generation of ten-year-olds, and examines the question, “How do we want teachers to educate our children?” The answer is given to us through a series of classroom vignettes that put on display the possibilities before us when a teacher’s love is combined with the beginner’s mind. M.B. McLatchey holds her graduate degree in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, a Masters in Teaching from Brown University, the M.F.A. in writing from Goddard College, and a B.A. from Williams College. She has over thirty years of teaching and has been recognized by her university as Distinguished Teacher of the Year and as Distinguished Scholar. She was awarded Harvard University's coveted Danforth Prize in Teaching as well as the Harvard/Radcliffe Prize for Literary Scholarship, and she received the Elmer Smith Award for Excellence in Teaching from Brown University. M.B. has authored numerous literary reviews, compiled several text books for Humanities courses, and has contributed to many books on teaching. She has received national and international literary awards including the May Swenson Poetry Award for her debut poetry collection The Lame God published by Utah State University Press and the FLP national Women’s Voices Competition award for her book, Advantages of Believing . Her book Beginner's Mind was Winner of the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award from Salem College. Poetry awards include the American Poet Prize from the American Poetry Journal , the Editor’s Prize in Poetry from FOLIO literary journal, the Editor's Prize in Poetry from Spoon River Poetry Review , the Annie Finch Prize for Poetry, the Robert Frost Award in Poetry, the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award, the New South Writing Award from Georgia State University, the 46’er Prize from the Adirondack Review , and the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award. She has been featured in Verse Daily and by AWP as a “Writer in the Spotlight”. A Professor of Classics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, she served two terms as Florida’s Poet Laureate for Volusia County (2015-2025). She currently serves as lifetime Chancellor for Florida State Poets Association and as Arts & Wellness Ambassador for the Atlantic Center for the Arts. My Mentors... R. L. Stevenson 1850 - 1894 H. D. Thoreau 1817 - 1862 W. B. Yeats 1865 - 1939 John Keats 1795 - 1821 Dlyan Thomas 1914 - 1953 Yevtushenko 1932 - 2017 Richard Wilbur 1921 - 2017 Larry Raab 1946 - Michael Harper 1938 - 2016 Louise Gluck 1943 - Seamus Heaney 1939 - 2013 Elizabeth Bishop 1911 - 1979 Michael Klein 1958 - Alfred Corn 1943 -