A blog for the book IMPERFECT: a poetry anthology for middle schoolers about mistakes
How can we make the most of useful mistakes and do our best to fix the ones that need fixing? Poetry can help us figure it out.
Thursday, March 10, 2022
Brain Freeze
It's always nice if you can laugh about it afterwards!
On Walking Through the Front Door
A tanka poem today about furry friends who really don't care how imperfect you are!
"On Walking Through the Front Door"
those days when I scale
the highest peaks, your tail wags
and those days when I have
failed miserably and more
than once, your tail wags
© Carol Wilcox, 2019
Life as a Video Game
Life is a big and complex game. It’s the largest open world game known to date. We all begin with different starting stats and we’re placed into a wide range of environments that can either give us advantages or disadvantages...
Life is designed to continually throw difficult and unexpected problems at you. Life is a never-ending stream of problems that must be confronted, surmounted, and/or solved. If at any point, Life runs out of problems to give us, then as players, we will unconsciously invent problems for ourselves.
Players may respond to problems with either Solutions or Distractions...
Solutions are actions and pursuits that resolve a problem preventing it from continuing or happening again in the future. Distractions are actions or pursuits designed to either make the Player unaware of the problem’s existence or to dull the pain the problem may be causing...
The more each Solution or Distraction is used, the easier and more automatic it will be in the future. The more often you use a Solution or Distraction, the easier it will be to use again, to the point where it will eventually become unconscious and automatic. Once a Solution or Distraction is unconscious and automatic, it becomes a Habit.
A player, once they’ve found a Solution to a Level, must employ that Solution enough times to make it a Habit, thus mastering that level and allowing them to move on to the next Level...
Good luck Player One.
Perfection: Possible?
A poem written for Today's Little Ditty's June challenge:
Perfection
You might think that somebody knows
how to have highs without any lows
but everyone loses,
has bumps and has bruises --
that's just the way that it goes.
by Tabatha Yeatts
Hidden in the Seams
~Jerusalem Jackson Greer
Robyn Hood Black made a video to go with her IMPERFECT poem!
Word for someone who learns from mistakes
People suggested:
Scientist
Wise
Reconstructed
Self-reflective
Strategist
Mature person
Meliorist (someone who improves, makes things better)
Hindsighter
Life-long student
Learner
I especially like "strategist" and "learner," but my very favorite is this:
Butterhander, from the German verb handschmieren, i.e., you get burned, put butter on your hand, and move on.
Do you have any words you would add?
Thursday, February 24, 2022
Today's Quote: Virginia Satir
Text:
I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen, heard, understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and touch another person.
~ Virginia Satir
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Thursday, February 10, 2022
Today's Quote: William Shakespeare
Text:
Let not the man be trusted that hath no music in his soul.
~ Willam Shakespeare
Thursday, February 3, 2022
Today's Quote: Proverbial Wisdom
Text:
No one is rich enough to do without a neighbor.
~ Danish proverb
Thursday, January 27, 2022
Today's Quote: Gloria Steinem
Text:
The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.
~ Gloria Steinem
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Today's Quote: Kahlil Gibran
Text:
Kindness is like snow. It beautifies everything it covers.
~ Kahlil Gibran
Thursday, January 13, 2022
Today's Quote: Martin Luther King Jr.
Text:
We must work passionately and unrelentingly for the goal of freedom, but we must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle. We must never struggle with falsehood, hate, or malice.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.






