Water - Writing about Mysteries

Pour It!

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Last week I received a comment from a teacher who told me her students particularly liked this poem about how I see science as like writing, breaking out the light inside of us.  Her words made me want to revisit some more old poems, ones that have never been on this site.  Rummaging around in my files, I found this one about water.  The poem had been getting dusty and lonely as I wrote it in 2002 and had never shared it with anyone.  I did make a change to it today, adding line breaks.  Before it was all in one stanza, but now it is has four stanzas.  Did you notice that the first and last stanzas are the same? Yes! It is a circular poem.

What is mysterious to you?  The things we find amazing and mysterious are often fantastic writing topics.  I  have always thought it's neat that a water can be solid, liquid, or gas...so I celebrate that idea here!

Here are a few more of my poems about water: Over Sixty Percent, The Water Tower, my boots love, Tide Pool.

And here is a great book of concrete poems about water by Joan Bransfield Graham - SPLISH SPLASH.

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In happy news, my first copy of FOREST HAS A SONG arrived last week. Here I am, holding it.  (Can you tell that I am tickled?)

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To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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Dollhouse - Play is Real

A Peek Into Our Dollhouse

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Did you ever have a day when you sat down to write and had no idea what to write?  I sure have.  Sometimes it feels so scary, as if there are no ideas left in the world...or as if all of the good ones have been used by someone else.  But you know what?  This is never true.  Poet Maya Angelou said, "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."   And this is completely true.  Creativity is like love.

So, even when that "I don't know what to write" feeling sets in, I write.  Today I looked around and just picked something I saw - the little girls in bed in our dollhouse.  This dollhouse is so big that it cannot fit through most doorways in our home, so it will forever live in the living room, even when our children are all grown up.  If you were to visit us, you could play with it!

Can you see that this whole poem is written in quatrains?  Almost.  One part is not.  Why do you think I made that decision?

I am tickled that Nicole Gulotta has chosen my poem "Apple Pockets" for her guest post over at Jama's Alphabet Soup.  She has paired the poem with a delicious-looking recipe for apple muffins which I plan to make this weekend...yum!

This week's Poetry Friday roundup is over at Tabatha's place, The Opposite of Indifference. Along with a lovely poem and this week's poem menu, Tabatha is planting seeds for Poetry Month, such a welcome winter idea!

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To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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A Poem for the Birds

Celebrate with Seedy Fare!

by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - We have bird feeders outside many of our windows, and my husband Mark keeps them full of bird goodies!  This means that our family gets to see little chickadees, cardinals, woodpeckers, and all sorts of other birds flying around as we read, do dishes, or just walk from room to room.  As I type this, my two daughters are standing behind my shoulders, peering out at the feeder in front of this window.  "Is that a female goldfinch?  It looks like there are two of those!  See the yellow on her chest?"

The way you live influences the things you write about. The more interesting things you do, the more interesting things you have to write about!

Today's poem has many things in common with a sonnet.  It has fourteen lines in iambic pentameter (daDA daDA daDA daDA daDA) with the even lines rhyming.  Then, at the end, the final couplet rhymes too.  My poem does not rhyme every alternate line, though, so it's not a true sonnet.  I enjoy playing with form; it feels like solving a puzzle when you try to find just the right place for just the right word.

Today we are home from school for Dr. Martin Luther King Day, a day celebrating a great man who bravely stood up for his beliefs and the rights of others.  You can read a poem I wrote in Dr. King's honor here.

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To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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Time - A Poem about Longing

Counting

by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Today's offering is a small poem that sprung from words I overheard a child say recently.  "I love my real dad....I haven't seen him in a half-a-month and three months."  

We all have longings: to see people, to go places, to find things, to be understood.  Hellos and goodbyes are a big part of life, and sometimes it helps us inside to write about them.  If you feel a longing, writing about it may help you understand it better or it might just feel good to put it into words.  I do that often, and sometimes, like today, I even write about others' longings.

You'll notice that this poem is written in tercets - lines of three - except for the ending. Originally, I drafted the poem in all one stanza, but then I decided to break it up to offer more pauses and more silence for the reader.  The middle four stanzas each end with a paratheses line because those lines feel like little hugs to me; they show how the child feels close to the father.

Why is that last line all by itself?  It's the most important one.

This week I am excited to be hosting teacher and notebook keeper Amy Zimmer Merrill over at Sharing Our Notebooks.  If you love notebooks and reading about them, you will enjoy her post very much!  And maybe you'll be the one to win a mini collage journal made my Amy herself!.

Violet is hosting today's poetry buffet over at Violet Nesdoly/poems.  Visiting her blog today will welcome you to the world of Poetry Friday poems and quotes, articles, and bits of inspiration, all across the kidlitosphere!

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To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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The New Dog - Tracing a Poem Idea

Almost Sisters

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - One of my favorite things to do (as some of you know) is to trace back where a poem came from.  Today's verse came from a few places:

1.  I was rereading my notebook in the quiet of the house this morning - the only one awake - and I came across this entry from last month.

2.  Yesterday, Henry showed us all how adorable Sage and Cali looked snuggling on the rug, and I took the photograph atop today's post.

3.  I received an e-mail from a friend today who referred to his local weather as "scorching."

There you have it:

Notebook Entry + Photograph + E-mail = Silly Poem

Can you make up an equation to show where one of your poems came from?

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To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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Some Things Never Change

Building Building

by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - I got the idea for today's poem from an assignment!  Sometimes here in the blogosphere, people share ideas of things to try.  This week at Connecting the Dots, David Harrison  guests who propose writing things-to-try.  Well, earlier this week, J. Patrick Lewis introduced the idea of "careerhymes."  To write one, you simply think of a career and write a light poem about it, including the name of the job in the first line of your poem.  There are many examples over at Connecting the Dots, including one I wrote about a dog walker.  But after reading so many and looking at the piles of snow around here, I wanted to write another.

Do you ever think about what grownups used to be like?  That's what was fun for me with this poem.  First, I wrote the first stanza...but then, I just needed to keep going.  The idea of a snow plow driver as a young boy got into my head, and I imagined him building, building, even then.

I am very very happy to welcome Amy Zimmer Merrill to Sharing Our Notebooks this week.  If you love notebooks...you will adore her post and lovely giveaway.  Please share this one with your notebook-keeping students.  It's always inspiring to peek into the notebooks of others, and Amy makes me want to grab my glue stick and go to town!

Happy happy birthday to No Water River!  Renee is celebrating her glorious blog's birthday today as hostess of Poetry Friday!  Head on over to see some funny bloopers, catch her spirited joy, and visit all of this week's poetic offerings.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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Lucky Pebble - Narrative Poems

It Stayed!
by Amy LV

 

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Today's poem is a narrative poem, and it's based on a true story that happened to someone I've never met.  People who write are always on the lookout for stories, and last summer when I was teaching a workshop, a teacher told me about a girl in her class who had a collection of lucky stones. This young girl knew her stones were lucky because each one had ridden home on the bumper of her car, and each one had made it all the way home...just like the pebble in today's poem.  When I heard that story, I thought, "Someday I am going to write about this."  Someday came last night.

Listen for stories, not just your own stories...but stories you hear others tell. Any story can make a good poem, and understanding others' stories helps us stretch ourselves and understand how we are all alike, even when we're different.

I adore the way that every object holds at least one story: the story of how you got it, the story of how you lost and found it, the story of how it was made, the story of "one time" with it, the story of how it got a little bit broken, the story of how you came to care about it.  This week, think about your favorite objects. Consider making a list of them, either with little sketches or simply a word list. Then, whenever you feel stuck, you'll have many many little stories to return to.

Did you notice how today's poem has two longer stanzas and one very tiny one-line stanza?  I did this on purpose.  I wanted to make a clear definition between the speaker's hope (that the pebble would stay) and the reality (just how it did stay).  In order to indicate that a reader should really pause mid-poem (listen to the recording), I left lots of space around those three words, "And it did."  This is how writers help readers know how to read their poems, by breaking up words and putting lots of space around them.

The next time I see you with a  new poem will be on Friday as The Poem Farm will now feature new poems only on Mondays and Fridays.  I'll be finding other ways to dip into the archives here as I tuck five new poems each week into my pink binder.  Two for The Poem Farm, five for the binder...each week.

I hope that you are having fun with your own Poetry New Year's Resolutions!

This week I welcome Reading Specialist Amy Zimmer Merrill to Sharing Our Notebooks.  Don't miss her beautiful collage journals or the chance to win one.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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I Understand - a Villanelle

Chester

Photo by Honour V.

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Click on the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - I have set myself a Poetry New Year's Resolution!  I'll be writing a poem every day of this year, and I will share some of them here.  This will give me an opportunity to explore many different forms and deepen my skill as a writer.  Sometimes we all get into ruts, and I do that with sound.  I like and often write in certain meters, so experimenting with new ones will help me grow.

Do you have a New Year's Resolution for writing?  It's not too late!

Today's poem is a villanelle, a form you may remember from V is for Vulture of my Dictionary Hike last April.  This is quite a complicated form, 19 lines with 5 tercets and 1 quatrain.  You'll notice that there are two repeating lines, and they repeat in a very particular order.  There are only 2 ending rhymes, and those, too, are in special places.  You can see exactly how this whole form works at poets.org or at the Poetry and Prose Writers' Blog.  There are many other places to look as well, but these two helped me yesterday.

Villanelles do not have a particular meter, but I chose to write in imabic pentameter (daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM).  Next time I'll try something different, but since I wrote a sonnet on Monday, I was in the groove of that meter!

Below you can see the beginning drafting work of today's villanelle.  I followed the advice I read and began with a theme - becoming different animals and understanding all creatures, a theme I return to often.  Then I wrote out the form to help me, like a skeleton.

When I awoke this morning, after this post had been up for 5 hours, I read today's offering at The Writer's Almanac, also about the connection of creatures.  Today's poem at The Writer's Almanac is "The Fish" by Billy Collins.

I took these process photos at a ski lodge while writing during my children's ski club afternoon.  You can see how I left blanks for needed lines and how I wrote dots and letters to help me know which lines and rhymes were needed where.

Notebook and Paper with Villanelle Draft

Photo by Amy LV

Computer Villanelle Draft

Photo by Amy LV

If you would like to read lots and lots of villanelles (I just might), here is a whole book about them.

Available through Amazon

Thank you to Matt Forrest Esenwine over at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme for hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup, the first of this new beautiful year.  Be sure to stop by and celebrate 2013 with poems!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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Warm Drink - Breathlessness & Wonder

A Cup of Moon

by Amy LV

 

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Today's poem came from some play in my notebook.  I love the look of sunlight and moonbeams, the feel of how light through a window can change a whole room.  Yesterday, January 1st, our living room was full of sunlight made even brighter by twinkling piles of snow outside.  When I began writing in my little book last night, light filled my mind. I imagined a few things: braiding my hair with moonbeams, listening to the moon share a New Year's resolution, and finally drinking moonlight from a cup.  

You'll notice that this poem includes the word and over and over again, something I usually try to avoid.  Why did I include it so many times here? Well, for the same reason that this poem is just one long sentence...I wanted to have a feeling of breathlessness.  Wouldn't you feel breathless if you drank a cup of moonlight?  What other imaginary impossibilities might make you want to talk so quickly that you'd forget to speak with punctuation?

Breathlessness and wonder are two storehouses from which you can welcome many many poems.  And this year, in 2013, I wish you much of both...lots of breathlessness and many winks of wonder.

This year I resolve to write more poems...but I have not yet decided how many of them will show up here on The Poem Farm.  Part of my resolution includes working to submit more manuscripts with the hope they will turn into real paper books.  This may mean that I will post a bit less...it may not.  

Don't miss the CYBILS POETRY BOOK FINALISTS and the POETRY NERDIES for 2012!  The beginning of a new year is a fantastic time to catch up on poem books...

Happy 2013!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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