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Russell J Fee
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  • Oak Park, IL
  • United States
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Russ Fee's "A Dash of Expectation: Poems of the Classroom", draws you into the humorous and human drama of the elementary-school classroom. These accessible poems put you at a front-row desk or into the heart of a teacher.
May 31
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Are you an Author, Reader, Publisher, Editor, Agent or Other?
Author
Do You Have A Website?
http://www.russellfee.com/
About Me:
Russell J Fee is the author of A Dash of Expectation: Poems of the Classroom. He is a former civil rights attorney who now teaches elementary school in the Chicago area. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, where he majored in English. His poems have appeared in journals such as Barnwood Poetry Magazine, Potato Hill Poetry and Wild River Review. He has three grown children and lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with his wife Joan, a university professor.
Favorite Books:
The Rumpole Series by John Mortimer
The poetry books of Billy Collins
Favorite Bookstores on land or cyberspace
Barbara's Bookstore, Oak Park, Illinois
SynergEbooks ePublishing House and Bookstore

A Dash of Ecpectation: Poems of the Classroom


“In A Dash of Expectation, Fee has packaged a keen set of observations into a great read. He gives readers a practical, moving, and seriously funny glimpse into what it’s like to go back into the classroom as a substitute teacher. Never mind pastoral images of the sweet and obedient: the students in his poems are real. That’s what makes them—and Fee’s poetry—so transcendent. Instead of languishing above a clean desk, hands clasped and crayons stored neatly in cigar boxes, they are appropriately unruly and chaotic, competitive and needy, and self-absorbed as only grade-schoolers are allowed to be. Somehow, someway, Fee has managed to not only pinpoint, but play up the most powerful and universal details of being a school kid—the kind that successfully transports us back to our own experience. Don’t miss it!”

Jill Sherer Murray, author of “Diary of a Writer in Mid-Life Crisis”

Excerpts from the Book


Eighth-Grade Boys

Reach out, and like the

newly molted crayfish in the room’s
aquarium, they scuttle away in their
suddenly too-big bodies, raw

behind claws displayed in attitudes
of threat and challenge.

Some girls are thrilled by this.


A Found Poem
From the Top Ten things learned in 2K

Number one
I lernd
to praktes
speling


The Sonogram

The polls she takes are inconclusive.
the boys voting for a boy and the girls
voting for a girl.

She then resorts to paper fortune tellers,
snapping them open and closed in a mantra
designed to snatch from the ether the secret
of the baby’s sex.

Will it be a new brother?
Will it be a new siter?

The odds prove 50:50.

Thursday she leaves early from school
to be with her mother at the doctor’s.

With science comes certainty.
“We will know tomorrow,”
she tells us.

Friday morning she slinks into class,
tapes a picture to the chalkboard, and
slumps down into her desk.

We all gather round the grainy black and gray photo.

There, like the image in the sweep
of a radar screen are two legs
crossed in perfect modesty.


Don’t Tread on Us

They teach you
in the schools of education to
reach the individual.

You’re armed with Bloom’s Taxonomy and
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences to fire
off lesson plans targeting
every single student.

You’re trained to see all classrooms as
multicultural cocoons of individual pupae.
No child is to be left behind.

Now walk through the portal of
a fifth-grade classroom.

Inside are staring, hungry eyes.
Not the trusting orbs of the blind hatchling,
but the narrow focus of the wolf pack.


Available from SynergEbooks.com at: http://www.synergebooks.com/ebook_dashofexpectation.html
and
Amazon.com (Kindle Edition) at: http://www.amazon.com/Dash-Expectation-Poems-Classroom/dp/B0026FCKPA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241903251&sr=8-1

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MORGAN'S OWN BLOGSPOT

Come on Over

I'm over at a few other blogs today. If you get a chance, come on over to see the Christmas Decorations at http://acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/

At http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/  the topic is Spoiled Milk. Ever sit down to read a good book and been disappointed?

If you haven't yet, check out the post below about the Paper War.

Thanks,
Morgan Mandel

Paper War

I've been waging a war on paper the last few days. So far, paper is winning. The more I clean up, the more of it I find. The problem is, for much of it, I feel an obligation to do a thorough examination and decide whether or not it's worth keeping.

The mailperson is my enemy. He, sometimes she, keeps leaving more paper in my mail box. I'm not talking about my Christmas cards, which I cherish, but all the other stuff dropped off for me to sort out. At times it's torture to come home and see the new pile the DH has set on the kitchen table.

I've discovered tons of magazines over a year old. They were trying to hide in a magazine holder on the side of the couch, but not doing a good job of it, since they were spilling over. Of course, I decided to check the headings on the covers to see if some of the information inside might prove valuable. Wouldn't you know it, I was right. Many articles seemed to good to give up.

I've already mentioned here before about how I also have a compulsion to print out emails that seem important to me. The result is I have lots of important pieces of paper. When there's an abundance, which is the most important? And, where's the one I really need? It is a quandary.

What about you? Is paper your enemy? Are you also waging a war against it? Who is winning?

Library Displays - See Make Mine Mystery Monday

Have you tried a library display? If you want to see mine, come on over to Make Mine Mystery on Monday.

Thanks,
Morgan

Christmas Card Blues Is Up at Un:Bound Today

Hi Gang,
 I've written a short Christmas story which is being featured at Un:Bound today.
You may be able to relate to some of it.

I'd appreciate your going over to look and leave a comment.
Thanks,
Morgan

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