Friday, November 22, 2013

Black and White - Surprises and Love



My Lint Roller & Pants
Photo by Amy LV


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

Students - I am away in Boston, Massachusetts at a conference (NCTE), and so I am writing to you from a hotel room.  The lint brush you see above is the one I used to remove white dog hairs from all of my dress up clothes for the weekend.  I am a busy girl this weekend, and I was not sure to write about.  But when I got a few minutes to myself in the hotel room, I knew that I had to remove all of the (Sage and Cali) dog hair from my black clothes.  I even bought a new lint roller!

And therein lies the poem.  Dogs.  Dog hair.  White dog hair.  Black pants.  Lint roller. Memory of a wonderful book (THE LITTLE BIT SCARY PEOPLE by Emily Jenkins). Poem.

The joy of writing for me is once again this.  The surprise.



Two of Four Draft Pages for "Black and White"
Photo by Amy LV

Katya is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Write.Sketch. Repeat.  Visit her place to take a tour of all of the poetry joy in the Kidlitosphere today!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

9 comments:

  1. This poem makes me stop and think. I love the quote that everybody is somebody's child. When we teach, we need to keep this in the forefront of our minds and try to treat them all with the love a dog has for its boy.
    I hope you have a great time in Boston. Seems all my virtual friends are there.

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  2. Thanks for sharing your journal. It is nice to see that others scratch out and rearrange, change words and leave lots out in their final version of a poem.
    Hope you are enjoying Boston.

    Very touching poem. Excellent.

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  3. Have a blast at the conference, now that you're free of dog hair! I love seeing your notebook pages -- inspiring as usual, because you are real about your process.

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  4. I hope you have a wonderful time in Boston. Hopefully I will see you next year in D.C.?? I too have a white dog and have to use the lint roller when I wear black pants. :)

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  5. You made me cry.

    I'm sorry I missed seeing you in Boston. I ran down for a few hours on Friday night. I hope you enjoyed it all.

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  6. Love how your your lint roller turned into a poem!!

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  7. Hi Amy! You should know @superkiddos are reading your blog every day for poetry inspiration! We're not on Twitter as often this year (just because this class isn't so much into that), but we're doing a poetry unit right now. I think we listened to this poem five times yesterday just to understand how line breaks relate to rhythm! :) Thank you! You can email me at coverman@wawasee.k12.in.us or DM me on Twitter if you need to.

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  8. Every so often, Amy, you come up with something so powerful it stops me in my tracks. This is one of those times. Thank you.

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