MyPoWriYe #82 - Summer Morning

First I would like to say hello to any classrooms of students who are following along here. Yesterday I received a lovely e-mail from fourth grade teacher Kristie Miner from the Whitney Point Central School District in Whitney Point, NY.  She said, "I start out every morning by projecting your daily poem on our Smart Board, and then when we gather, students volunteer to read it aloud...it's inspiring us to embrace poetry, both as readers and writers."

Students in Miss Miner's class:  I will now think about you each midnight as I sit at our table with little pads of paper and a black pen!  Thank you for reading; you are why I'm here.

Now, about today's poem.  This past Friday, we went to a bonfire at our friends' home.  In the yard, attached ever-so-intricately to the chains of a swing, glistened a perfect spiderweb.  Once again, I fell in love.  (I always fall in love with spiderwebs, don't you?)  It had to be a poem. 

Students - you may have noticed that today is Monday, but I saw the web on Friday.  That's because sometimes it takes a few days for something to work its way into a poem or a piece of writing.  The idea and the words have to settle inside you a little bit.  

Yesterday these words settled in as our family watched a Buffalo Bisons game in downtown Buffalo, NY.  As is the case lately, I had a little pad of paper on my lap and just jotted words as they came into mind.  Mostly I watched the game, but the whole first stanza came while washing my hands in the bathroom.  

So much of writing is getting (and trusting) an idea, and this is something we can do all of the time.   Watching a game, playing piano, eating our least favorite meal, hugging our cat...as we do these things, we can think, "Hmmmm...what could I write/paint/draw/sing/make out of this?"  Creativity.  

Today put yourself on lookout.  Not for what you'll write today, but for what you'll write tomorrow or the next day or the next day.  And tomorrow, tell your friends in class what you have been noticing in the world, what just might be good ideas for writing or other arts.

If you, too, love wet spiderwebs and would like to learn to photograph them well, this Digital Photography School site will give you 11 tips for How to Photograph a Spider's Web.

Teachers - Professor Sylvia Vardell, over at Poetry for Children, has a wonderful post up this week titled "The Poetry of Science".  Here you will find book recommendations and fabulous ideas for marrying science with poetry, two disciplines that require both curiosity, close observation, and attention to detail.  

This summer I will continue to write poems and offer ideas and book recommendations to student (and adult) poets.  If any teacher-readers would like a poetry-bookmark with the  The Poem Farm's address for your students, please send me an e-mail to amy at amylv dot com.  I will send a printable page with three bookmarks to your inbox.

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My Poem Writing Year # 66 - Bookmarks

We're a house of readers, and over the past few years I've discovered some surprising bookmarks tucked in partially-read books around this house.  Even 3-D objects end up in books around here: pencils, rocks, Legos, teeny stuffed animals...nothing is safe.

Our children have received, beaded, purchased, origami-ed, and drawn all styles of gorgeous bookmarks, but we still end up with odd objects nestled between pages 51 and 52.  Perhaps there's just something organic about real things in our books that we like.

Students - Ideas for poems can come from unusual places, even from the strange habits of you, your family, and your friends.  This idea of stuff-stuck-in-books is simply something small that I noticed today, but the idea took off.

If you would like a paper bookmark of this bookmark poem, please leave a message in the comments or e-mail me at amy at amylv dot com, and I will be happy to send it to you as an attachment file.

(Please click on COMMENTS below to share a thought.)