Woolen Mitten
Photo (and Mitten) by Amy LV
(Sound Cloud is giving me troubles...audio to follow)
Students - I am not sure if this poem is finished yet, but I still wanted to share it with you. I often struggle to know when a poem is finished, and again this week I thought of this quote:
"A poem is never finished, only abandoned." - Paul Valery
It is difficult to know when a poem is ready to share, and this one may still be at my workbench, but I do like the idea. It came to me as I was driving somewhere earlier this week. I started to think about looking for mittens, how difficult it is to find a match sometimes. And then I thought about how good friends are like that too; soul mates a gift.
What I like most about this poem is how the whole text is about one thing - finding mittens - and then, at the end, it turns. At the end, a reader might realize that the mitten-finding part is really a metaphor, or a comparison, to finding a friend. There should be a bit of a feeling of surprise here, and surprise always makes me happy when I read a poem. I like thinking about all of my mitten-friends too....
You may wish to consider this in a poem you are writing. Are you surprising yourself or your reader? Might you wish to? How?
This poem is a free verse poem with no special meter or rhyme. I read it many times to myself to see if it sounded right to my ear, and I made many many changes.
This week I am so happy to have artist and writer Kateri Ewing at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks. Please swing by her post to be inspired by Kateri's art notebooks. You may win two notebooks if I draw your commenting name!
Teachers and Parents - If you share my concerns about what is currently happening in education, you might be interested in a copy of Barry Lane's new CD - MORE THAN A NUMBER. This CD is full of Barry's songs such as: "I Write the Tests", and "Superficialunrealisticrigorisatrocious" written by Paul Hankins and Barry. I wrote the lyrics to "More Than a Number," and I'm selling the CD's for $10 to benefit the Opt Out movement. If you are interested in a CD, please private message me through The Poem Farm Facebook page or send me an e-mail (see contact button above).
Teachers and Parents - If you share my concerns about what is currently happening in education, you might be interested in a copy of Barry Lane's new CD - MORE THAN A NUMBER. This CD is full of Barry's songs such as: "I Write the Tests", and "Superficialunrealisticrigorisatrocious" written by Paul Hankins and Barry. I wrote the lyrics to "More Than a Number," and I'm selling the CD's for $10 to benefit the Opt Out movement. If you are interested in a CD, please private message me through The Poem Farm Facebook page or send me an e-mail (see contact button above).
Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes.
Visit Sharing Our Notebooks to peek in all kinds of notebooks.
