First Flight - From My New Book!

Barred Owl, 2011

by Hope LV

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

Students - Today's poem is from my new book, FOREST HAS A SONG, illustrated by Robbin Gourley and to be published by Clarion next month.  You probably already noticed that this poem goes back-and-forth in a conversation between a mother and baby owl.  My own parents are very encouraging, and they always told me that I could do anything.  Maybe this is why I wrote about an encouraging Mommy owl.

Structure-wise, this poem is written in rhyming couplets (two lines at a time), each with one child line and one mom line.  One line only is not written in conversation, and that's stanza 4.  Why not?  Well, it's all sound effects!  Or as we say in poetry-land, it's onomatopoeia.

This owl verse also uses a technique called personification which is when a writer gives a non-human characteristics that are human.  You can see how this little owl has feelings just like a nervous-child might feel, just like I have felt before.

If you're about to sit down to write, you might wish to try thinking about a real feeling that you have had in your life.  Maybe a surprised or excited feeling.  Of course you can write about your feeling as it is...or maybe you will want to imagine what kind of animal might feel that same feeling and when.  Either way gives you a secret passage into a poem of your own.

I wrote FOREST HAS A SONG, including this poem several years ago, and it is very exciting (and hard to believe) that my book will be out next month.  To keep track of news on the book, I have created a little home just for it here.

When you write often, you come to realize which subjects you tend to write about over and over again.  Right now I am realizing that I do like writing about owls.  Here are two more owl poems: Owl and Cat, Why? (Could this poem be about the same owl as the one in "First Flight"?)

Please share a comment below if you wish.

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

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!