Books Can Inspire Poems

Books in My Brain

by Amy LV

Today I am thinking about the books that make me me. We each have books that change us and that help us think and feel and grow in new ways. Remembering such books can take us on journeys of joy and discovery. 

To write this poem, I first drew and listed some books that have made a difference in my life. Then I wrote a little bit and decided to write about Charlotte. I have written about her before, in my poem Stories from my book READ! READ! READ! with Ryan O'Rourke.

You know what the funny thing is? I did not even remember that I had written about Charlotte in this book until AFTER I wrote today's poem. I certainly have learned many things from this wee, wise spider.

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From READ! READ! READ!

by Amy LV and Ryan O'Rourke

We are lucky enough to have some young writers exploring this idea of writing-from-books with us today. Welcome to Mrs. Iwanicki's third grade writers from Seymour School in East Granby, CT! They are my #KidsNeedMentors class, and they generously shared these poems so that we can all enjoy their words.

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Thank you very much to these thoughtful young readers and writers. I imagine that many of you are thinking about books that have changed you...and you, too, might choose to write notebook entries and perhaps even poems about these books and characters.

Liz is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Elizabeth Steinglass with a delightful reading of her wonderful book SOCCERVERSE. Teachers, this video will be up for two weeks with permission of Boyds Mills and Kane, so don't miss!

As for Poetry Friday, we invite everybody to join in each Friday as we share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship. Check out my left sidebar to learn where to find this poetry goodness each week of the year.

Happy, Healthy May! 

Please share a comment below if you wish.day 

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Happy Book Birthday to READ! READ! READ!

My Family's Deacon's Bench

Photo by Amy LV

Students - When I was a little girl, my mom would regularly take my sister Heidi and me to the Vestal Public Library. We loved selecting our own books, and sometimes we even checked out sculptures, displaying them in our home for a week or two. (I distinctly remember the bunny sculpture...we checked it out several times.)  Sometimes Mom would go to the library without us, to refresh our book stock, and when she did, she'd pile up our books - one pile for Heidi, one pile for me - on this bench which lived in our front hall.

Today's book birthday celebration poem is about an object.  We are always surrounded by objects - inside and outside.  If you ever feel stuck for a writing idea, just pick one of those objects you see - I do this often. Follow your mind. If you wait, something will always show up on your page.

This bench you see above now lives in our home in Holland, NY.  I giggled as I filled it with my copies of my new book with talented illustrator Ryan O'Rourke for today's birthday of READ! READ! READ!  Back when I was a girl, I never would have imagined that this dream would come true, that I would write a book that lived on library shelves.  I never imagined that I'd have the opportunity to dedicate a book to a son, the little brother of our home...

Dedication Page of READ! READ! READ!

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Yes, children turn into grown-ups...and I did too.  And it's true that we never know what the days and years will bring. Yet I have learned this - if we hang on dearly to what we love doing and making, we learn about ourselves, and sometimes we have chances to share what we learn. I feel lucky to share these poems, to have been part of a team with amazing editor Rebecca Davis, fabulous illustrator Ryan O'Rourke, and all of the completely wonderful people at Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press.  Thank you to my best-ever agent Elizabeth Harding at Curtis Brown Ltd.  Thank you, all! 

To read more about our new book, please visit these bloggers who have posted about READ! READ! READ!  Much gratitude, friends, for these kind posts.

Tara Smith at a Teaching Life

Irene Latham at Live Your Poem

Linda Baie at TeacherDance

Lorraine Magee at Miss Magee's Reads

Boyds Mills Press (donating books) and I (signing and shipping books) are holding a giveaway for this book, joyfully illustrated by Ryan O'Rourke. This giveaway runs through tomorrow, September 20, and there will be five winners of one signed book each.  You may enter HERE.

Thank you so much for stopping by to celebrate with me...today and on all of the days that we share poems together.  I am very grateful for you, my poemfriends, and never more than on a day of celebration.

xo,
Amy

Amazing Book Cookie by MamaSeuffertSweets

Photo by Amy LV

Please share a comment below if you wish.

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Day 26 - National Poetry Month 2015 - Sing That Poem!

Happy National Poetry Month!

Welcome to Day 26 of this Year's Poem Farm Project!

Find the Complete April 2015 Poem and Song List Here

First, I would like to welcome all old and new friends to The Poem Farm this April. Spring is a busy time on all farms, and this one is no exception.  Each April, many poets and bloggers take on special poetry projects, and I'm doing so too.  You can learn all about Sing That Poem! and how to play on my April 1st post, where you will also find the list of the whole month's poems and tunes as I write and share them.  If you'd like to print out a matching game page for yourself, you can find one here, and during April 2015, you'll be able to see the song list right over there in the left hand sidebar.

Yesterday's poem was Life's Door.  Here is the tune that goes along with it, below. Did you figure it out?

And here, below, is today's poem.  Look at the song list in the sidebar or on your matching form to see if you can puzzle out which tune matches this one.

Slice of Bookshelf

Photo by Amy LV

Students - As you may have figured out, I adore books.  In fact, my next poetry collection is titled READ! READ! READ! and will be illustrated by Ryan O'Rourke and published by Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press in the fall of 2017.  

Today I was thinking once again about how many places a book can take a person.  I remembered hearing Gary Paulsen tell a crowd how books helped him through difficulties in his childhood, and I know how different and good I feel when I am in the middle of a great book.  So this poem is just one more celebration of books!  

What do you wish to celebrate today?

Below you can see how I worked on the meter of this poem.  Each dot represents an unstressed syllable, and each slash represents a stressed syllable.  The straight up line shows where lines 3 and 4 each end, and the arrow indicates go back to the beginning.  This may help you puzzle out which tune matches today's words.

Meter Play

by Amy LV

Speaking of books and bookstores, today I am happy to welcome young poet Ada Bastedo, who shared her baseball poem at last Thursday's annual poetry reading at Monkey See, Monkey Do Bookstore in Clarence, NY.  I am always grateful to be a part of this beautiful and cozy evening, and too, I am thankful that Ada offered to share her poem here.  In the spirit of baseball and good sportsmanship, enjoy!

Monkey See, Monkey Do Bookstore

Photo by Amy LV

The Baseball Rules

When you are in a ballgame,

You should make it a fair play 

All throughout the innings

Even when it's not going your way.

When your turn is called

And you are up to bat, 

And you miss three swings.

Please oh please don't throw your hat

For alone in the dugout 

You will have to sit,

So try not to be tempted,

please don't throw a fit.

Just look at pro ballplayers,

When three strikes call them out.

They don't throw a hissy fit

Or cry, or yell, or pout. 

For when the game is over

You may leave in glory or shame,

But you will always want to hear

Your game was so well played. 

by Ada Bastedo, age 9

Warm wishes to all in this last week of National Poetry Month!  

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Day 14 - National Poetry Month 2015 - Sing That Poem!

Happy National Poetry Month!

Welcome to Day 14 of this Year's Poem Farm Project!

Find the Complete April 2015 Poem and Song List Here

First, I would like to welcome all old and new friends to The Poem Farm this April. Spring is a busy time on all farms, and this one is no exception.  Each April, many poets and bloggers take on special poetry projects, and I'm doing so too.  You can learn all about Sing That Poem! and how to play on my April 1st post, where you will also find the list of the whole month's poems and tunes as I write and share them.  If you'd like to print out a matching game page for yourself, you can find one here, and during April 2015, you'll be able to see the song list right over there in the left hand sidebar.

Yesterday's poem was Painter.  Here is the tune that goes along with it, below. Did you figure it out?

This sound file has been removed as it hopes to appear

in my forthcoming book, WITH MY HANDS: POEMS ABOUT MAKING THINGS.  

I am sorry, and I will try to write a new one with the same meter for this spot.

xo, a.

Guess what?  Mrs. Holt's reading-loving students from Ladue Fifth Grade Center in St. Louis, MO figured it out, and they were kind enough to share their voices with us here today.  Right now, these students are studying poetry, writing their own poems, and enjoying many mentor texts to understand form and topic choice.  As to how they solved yesterday's tune-puzzle, Mrs. Holt writes, "We don't have any extraordinary tips for figuring out the song, but our strategy was to try out different rhythms from your list until we thought it made sense."  You can hear their voices below.

This sound file has been removed as it hopes to appear

in my forthcoming book, WITH MY HANDS: POEMS ABOUT MAKING THINGS.  

I am sorry, and I will try to write a new one with the same meter for this spot.

xo, a.

Thank you so much to these students for singing with me today.  I welcome any classes to do the same; simply send me your SoundCloud (easy free app) link in an e-mail, and I will include your voices here too.

And here, below, is today's poem.  Look at the song list in the sidebar or on your matching form to see if you can puzzle out which tune matches this one.

National Library Week Web Badge

from the American Library Association

Students - Happy National Library Week!  This is a special week to celebrate the wonder of free libraries, fabulous librarians, all of the good people who work in libraries and all of the resources we find there.  Today's poem is a poem to honoring libraries and librarians.  

There are times when it just feels right to write a poem for a special person or a special day.  You might think about those you love or about holidays that mean a lot to you or well, you might make up your own celebration, as the character does in I'M IN LOVE WITH CELEBRATIONS by Byrd Baylor.  It is a joy to celebrate others and things we care about through poetry.

Read More at IndieBound

You will notice that today's poem has a repeating stanza, or chorus.  This has been something new for me this month.  Usually in poetry, I do not include a repeating stanza.  But sometimes, in these poemsongs, I do.

Below, you will see a new book of poems about celebrations.  It was just born this National Poetry Month!  Happy birthday, book!  Congratulations again to Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, who brought together many many poets and put together this beautiful volume in both English and Spanish for all of us.

Read More at Pomelo Books

Photo by Amy LV

Now, go find a librarian to hug.  Say, "Happy Library Week!"  This is important.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Books - Poem #12 for April 2014 Poetry Project

LIVE!

Learn about this, my April 2014 Poetry Project, HERE!

Book Sign
Photo by Amy LV

Thrift Store Bookshelf
Photo by Amy LV

Students - Each day of this month, I sit to write, beginning by asking myself the same question - "Should I write from the clothing department?  The toy department?  Housewares?  Shoes?  Furniture?"  I look at my list of already-written poems and see where the collection feels like going.  

Then I try to find an open window of the waiting poem.  "What will let me in? Will I write AS the books, TO the books, ABOUT the books?"

I also think about tone.  "What feeling do I want the poem to have?"  This has been interesting throughout THRIFT STORE LIVE so far.  Many days I have felt a nostalgia for these objects, yet I do not want the collection to be a weepy and sad, so I consider how the tone is moving along.  If one poem is a little bit sad, the next one will not be sad.

Then, it's all about words and sounds, and the head scratching and muttering begins.

In the draft below, you can see that I scribbled in my notebook for only nineteen minutes last night before starting typing, but I type-revised for quite a while because once again, I needed a lot of time to work out the ending.

Endings matter.  How you say goodbye - to a friend, to your mom on the phone, to a reader of your poem - matters.

If you are working on a poem, think hard about the ending.  Do not be afraid to rewrite and rewrite.  Will you write a surprise ending?  A circular ending? A funny or emotional ending?  Try to end your poem a couple of different ways. Which way sounds best to you?

Books - Draft Page #1
Photo by Amy LV

What do I like best in today's verse?  I like the way "less than a" repeats three times to create some internal rhythm and sound.

Today, I offer a giveaway of two books here: one copy of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR SCIENCE compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong and one copy of my own FOREST HAS A SONG. Each Saturday of April, I will offer this same giveaway here, for eight books in all.  Thank you to Sylvia and Janet for your generosity.  Please leave a comment below, and I will draw two names next Thursday evening to be announced next Poetry Friday!

For last week's winners, check yesterday's post!

For a fabulous Poetry Peek chock full of ideas for sharing poetrylove with your students, don't miss Thursday's post with librarian Vida Zuljevic.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Poetry Friday & Book Relatives - #352

Great Grandma Connolly's Hand in 1936

Print by Great Aunt Edythe Toebe

This is poem #10 in my series about books and reading and words.  

Students - yesterday our family went to the library.  It had been too long since we had been there, our evenings poorly prioritized, our fines too great to imagine.  But today we were back, and what a treat it was.  Now there's a full striped bag of books calling out to us from the corner of our own little home library.  And once again, I find myself wondering about all of the other hands, other lives, other unknown book relatives who checked these books out before we did.

Do you ever write about your own mysteries and feelings?  Today's poem comes from that place in me, from a place of feeling that I know people from the past.  Such feelings may be quiet, and to hear them we must first quiet ourselves.

The picture above is of my mother's mother's mother's hand.  It is an ink print, made by my Great Aunt Tom (Edythe.)  In the 1930s, Aunt Tom would print the palms of friends and family and then write notes about the different hand lines, predicting the future.  Once Aunt Tom told me that she stopped doing this because "so many things kept coming true."

If you live in the WNY area, there are two great events this weekend to know about.  One is the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair (free) which we plan to attend.  The other is a Roycroft class titled Integrating Book Arts in the Classroom, all about making books.

National Poetry Month is only two weeks away, and this means that there are only 13 days left of My Poem Writing Year.  With no plan for the next chapter, I am open to suggestions!

Andromeda has today's Poetry Friday roundup over at a wrung sponge.  Enjoy wandering through poems and thoughts and book reviews and celebrations as you visit this week's poetry neighborhood.

 

(Please click on POST A COMMENT below to share a thought.)

PF & Poem #290 - Is Your Body in a Book?

This is poem #2 in my Friday series of poems about books and reading and words.  I have posted other reading poems, but they emerged before this new series. 

Students - the idea for this poem came from just thinking about reading and expressions around reading.  So often people say, "You have your nose in a book!"  I just took it one step further, imagining every part of a person disappearing inside a book.

After reading this poem, my husband said, "Oh, it's a bookmark talking...and it's a bookmark."  He's right!  If you'd like a pdf of this as a bookmark, please just send your e-mail address to amy at amylv dot com. 

This week, our daughter Georgia had a poem published over at Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter's creativity blog Spilling Ink, named after their fabulous book which is a Cybils nominee.  I recommended this writing book and shared Georgia's poem here last June, and if you scroll down to the bottom of this post at Spilling Ink, you can read "Why Write?" on Anne and Ellen's blog.  Congratulations, Georgia!

Teachers and Parents - be sure not to miss the Teacher's Kit section of the Spilling Ink blog.  Both tone and information are happy and healthy for all writers!  Too, please don't miss my right-hand sidebar with information about places where children can publish their work.  I highly recommend encouraging and helping children enter their writing into contests, magazines, and other sharing opportunities.  Many adult writers are able to trace their writing-love to a childhood memory of publication.

Laura is hosting today's Poetry Friday over at Writing the World for Kids.  Skip on over there for the complete roundup!

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

It's Reading Time for All of Us in Poem #279

Deep in Books

by Amy LV

Today's poem is dedicated to Mary Lee Hahn and Franki Sibberson over at A Year of Reading who celebrated their five year blog birthday yesterday!  A Year of Reading serves as daily inspiration for me as a writer, teacher, and parent.  Too, Mary Lee is a Poetry Friday mentor extraordinaire!  Happy birthday!

This holiday allowed for some all-family reading time at home.  And it always amazes me how a room can be completely quiet, full of people doing the same thing - reading - but how each reader has a completely different experience.  As I sit and read about knitting, Mark reads a mystery, Henry reads a Narnia book, Hope reads funny short stories, and Georgia reads a novel by Mildred D. Taylor.  On the outside, we look the same.  On the inside, we are living different lives.  How true this is for classrooms with time for independent reading.

Students - this poem is a contrast poem.  Something looks one way but is actually quite different.  Can you think of something that looks one way but actually is something else?  If so, this double-sidedness might make for a good poem.

The worlds/words lines at the end of this poem are certainly inspired by Geof Hewitt's brief and fabulous poem, "Typographical Errors", from the book I FEEL A LITTLE JUMPY AROUND YOU:  PAIRED POEMS BY MEN AND WOMEN edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and  Paul B. Janeczko.  I adore this book for upper grades and adults too.

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Teachers - Last Poetry Friday, fourth grade teacher Theresa Annello and her students visited to share their poetry calendars.  Don't miss this beautiful project and its included poetry links!

Also, yesterday I posted a collaborative New Year's poem started by Charles Ghigna and me.  We welcome you to stop by and add a few lines!

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

Warning - My Poem Writing Year #181

Go ahead.  Disagree.  You are welcome to do so.  You may disagree with any words that anyone writes anywhere.  If you live and read and write in a free country such as The United States, your right to freedom of expression allows me to say what I wish and you to do the same.  We may speak and write about what we experience, believe, and invent.  These freedoms are protected by the Amendment I in The Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.

Of course, freedom of speech is not an excuse to shoot our mouths off or hurt people with our words.  The other side of the freedom coin is responsibility, and in this blog I work to be responsible to my readers and to earn your trust.  This responsibility means that sometimes I must speak out about things I believe in.  And I believe in books.

September 25 - October 2, 2010 is Banned Books Week.  All over the US, schools, libraries, communities, and bookshops are speaking out for challenged books, for the right of authors to be read, regardless of their words.  There are people who work to have books taken off of shelves because they do not agree with the stories or words presented.  It is the right of these people to do so.  But it is my right to disagree with them.

Students - this post is about something I believe is important, something I would fight for - freedom of expression.  What would you fight for?  (I do not mean fighting with fists, but  standing up for something, working for a cause.)  These things you believe in will surely be powerful and rich writing ideas.

Teachers - if you would like to share a simple and sweet puppet video explaining the importance of ALL books, you can find one here at Banned Books Week Videos.  And if you would like to use today's poem in any public way by posting it on your blog or hanging it in your library, I welcome you to do so without permission (though I'd love to know!)

What can you do if you wish to defend the right of all books to live on library shelves?  You can do many things, but the best one is probably to read a banned book.  Of course, you may disagree with anything I say here.  You have the right to do so in the comments.

If you live in a country without freedom of speech, I pray that one day you will have this human right.

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After explaining Banned Books Week to my children (11, 10, and 8), I read them this book, AND TANGO MAKES THREE.  We all fell in love with its tender message of love and kindness.  My eyes teared up, both at the story and at the thought that anyone could reject such a truth and theme.

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