Sparkles Everywhere!
by Amy LV
Students - It's COLD here in Holland, NY this week, and the forest is aglow with chilly crystals. If you've never noticed, the world becomes more sparkly as it gets colder. So last night (8 degrees Fahrenheit) was simply glittering! If you look below at my draft for today's poem, you might notice the numbers 1 and 2 in the margins. This is because I switched the order of the stanzas after I wrote them! Then I switched a few lines! All of this as I flipped back and forth between my trusty rhyming dictionary and thesaurus. Writing is like that: back and forth, forth and back. The revising is as much fun (sometimes more!) than the writing.
Give it a try - switch a few things around in your own writing, and see what you think. Sometimes moving words around will surprise you in wonderful ways....
Poem Draft
(Please click on POST A COMMENT below to share a thought.)
love that 'moonglitter'- beautiful. And I enjoyed your showing of the way you messed about with your poem's lines, choosing what you thought was just right!
ReplyDeleteLove the illustration and the poem! I really like that you show your draft and talk about the changes.
ReplyDeleteI can just about hear the music that poem wants to be sung to!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the process, and the illustration. I, too, love the term moonglitter! Since I was a small child, I've called the sparkles on snow "diamonds" so this poem truly resonated with me.
I'm glad you joined the comment challenge so my evening could have some moonglitter in it!
Love this poem, and love your blog! I remember meeting you briefly at the 2010 KidLitCon in Minneapolis and being so impressed with your work. Glad to see you continuing, and can't wait to read more of your notebooks blog, too!
ReplyDeleteIt's been unseasonably and very weirdly warm in Minnesota, and I miss our moonglitter. Thankfully, we finally have a little bit of snow on the ground and some cold weather to look forward to this week.
Your notebook sharing is superb. Thank you for sharing your thinking of how you wrote your poem. Love it. So glad to be involved in the Comment Challenge. :)MaryHelen
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with the other commenters here--I love how you are showing your process as well as the finished product. ANd you are also showing that poetry isn't as scary as so many of us make it out to be!
ReplyDeleteAmy, I am with a student. Here are some of her thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI really liked your poem and how you got it from just walking outside. I had to write a passage about something in my house and edit it like you did. I corrected it the same way you did but I didn't have as many edits. My paragraph turned out a lot better after I checked it twice. I edited mine using relative clauses and adverbial clauses and COPS.
Thank you so much for your notes! Stacey - it's wonderful to hear from you and your student! This is a note to her: I would like to thank you for your thoughtful comments about process. One thing I've learned is that each writing change helps me deepen my understanding of the subject. And sometimes I get writing so quickly, I make spelling errors and miss punctuation! Sometimes I write something over and over and over, even over weeks! If you would ever like to share one of your poems here, I'd love to publish it on The Poem Farm. Maybe Stacey and you could even share a little bit! Poetry is a great friend and has helped me through all kinds of funny and sad times. Happy happy writing. May it be a friend to you too. Yours, Amy
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