Give Some Free Advice...in a Poem

Students - Today I enjoyed writing another poem about the moon. Irene, as you will see below, is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup and invited us all to write moon poems. Writing is funny - sometimes I love choosing my own subject, and sometimes I love being assigned a topic to write about. If you're ever not sure what to write, try asking someone to give you an assignment. You can even give yourself an assignment by filling a jar or bowl with little slips of paper, each with a different writng topic. When uncertain, choose a slip!

Sometimes I do lay awake at night, thinking all kinds of thoughts. Today's poem is a reminder to me - and to all - that Old Moon will always listen. How lovely to imagine our thoughts as future moonlight. This is also an advice poem, offering advice for what to do when one cannot sleep. Might you offer advice for something you have experienced or even simply imagined?

One last thing to think about: as you write, read your poem aloud. Often, to write a new line, I read aloud what I have written so far. Then...the next line almost writes itself.

Irene is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup today at Live Your Poem with a moon celebration to welcome her forthcoming book THE MUSEUM ON THE MOON: THE CURIOUS OBJECTS ON THE LUNAR SURFACE. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

May your wishes all turn to moonlight on this eve of a new July.

xo,

Amy

ps - Did you notice that today's poem is all one sentence. Go back and look. It is!

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Keep a Word List: A Word List is Your Friend

Wolf's Moon

by Amy LV

(I will add the audio recording later today...having troubles at the moment.)

Students - Today's poem grew from an exercise I learned in a Highlights Foundation Workshop with the wonderful poet Rebecca Kai Dotlich in 2001.  She told our class that she had learned it from the wonderful poet Myra Cohn Livingston.  Today I will share it with you.

In the back of my notebook, I always keep a list of words that I love.  It grows because I add to it regularly and also because I share word lists in workshops and we share our words with each other...because words are free and we can all swap and share our faves!

At our workshop in Honesdale, Pennsylvania many years ago, Rebecca asked us to each list some words we loved - words we loved for the meaning, the sound, anything.

Then we went around the circle, each reading a few of our words out loud.  If anyone liked a word on someone else's list, that person could add it to his or her own list.

After this, we took a few minutes to draw lines between our words, as you see below (this is my current notebook).  We drew lines without thinking carefully about the connections.  We drew lines to surprise ourselves with connections.

From Amy LV's Summer 2016 Notebook

Click to Enlarge these Pages

Then, we went off to write, either from one word on our list...or from one pair.  See, the beauty of the random line drawing is that often we make new connections that we would never make in any other way, connections that surprise and delight us.  

Can you find where I paired WOLF and WISH in the word list above?  Well, that's what I decided to write about one day this summer...and you can see the beginnings of a poem below in that same notebook.

From Amy LV's Summer 2016 Notebook

Click to Enlarge this Page

Sometimes, all a writer needs is a way to get started...a window to climb into the writing.  Word lists are whimsical and magical windows.  Each word is a portal to a new place, and when you start pairing the words...well...anything can happen!  You might want to give this a try, and if you do, I'd love to see some student poems grown from simple word lists.

I just held a giveaway over at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks.  Congratulations to Julieanne, winner of HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY by Orson Scott Card! I am so grateful to Alexandra Zurbrick for her post, and excited about our next writer - Kiesha Shepard from Whispers from the Ridge.

While I am here on Saturday today instead of on Friday this week, know that this week's Poetry Friday roundup is over with Penny at a penny and her jots. Please stop on over to find out what's happening poetry-wise all around the kidlitosphere this week.

And next week...Poetry Friday is at my place!  Come on over!

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.

Warm Drink - Breathlessness & Wonder

A Cup of Moon

by Amy LV

 

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

Students - Today's poem came from some play in my notebook.  I love the look of sunlight and moonbeams, the feel of how light through a window can change a whole room.  Yesterday, January 1st, our living room was full of sunlight made even brighter by twinkling piles of snow outside.  When I began writing in my little book last night, light filled my mind. I imagined a few things: braiding my hair with moonbeams, listening to the moon share a New Year's resolution, and finally drinking moonlight from a cup.  

You'll notice that this poem includes the word and over and over again, something I usually try to avoid.  Why did I include it so many times here? Well, for the same reason that this poem is just one long sentence...I wanted to have a feeling of breathlessness.  Wouldn't you feel breathless if you drank a cup of moonlight?  What other imaginary impossibilities might make you want to talk so quickly that you'd forget to speak with punctuation?

Breathlessness and wonder are two storehouses from which you can welcome many many poems.  And this year, in 2013, I wish you much of both...lots of breathlessness and many winks of wonder.

This year I resolve to write more poems...but I have not yet decided how many of them will show up here on The Poem Farm.  Part of my resolution includes working to submit more manuscripts with the hope they will turn into real paper books.  This may mean that I will post a bit less...it may not.  

Don't miss the CYBILS POETRY BOOK FINALISTS and the POETRY NERDIES for 2012!  The beginning of a new year is a fantastic time to catch up on poem books...

Happy 2013!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

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

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Blue Moon - A Goodbye/Hello Poem

Blue Moon

by Amy LV

 

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

Students - Astronaut Neil Armstrong died this week.  Because I was born in 1970, I do not remember watching Neil walking on the moon (he was the first person to ever do this!) but I have thought about him a lot, especially this week as I listened to npr and looked up at the sky.  A private man, Neil Armstrong did something that only 12 people have ever done.

Last night was a blue moon, the second full moon in August.  And in Western New York, it was a stunner, perfectly bright and clear. So beautiful that our children told me stories they've learned in school of "the rabbit in the moon" and "the grandmother in the moon."  Thinking about Neil's death and this month's blue moon, I began wondering if the moon chose to honor Neil's memory, to welcome Neil with a second full appearance this August.

Today's poem grew from a blending of current events and natural events and my questions.  It is also a poem of goodbye.  People often write poems to honor another's memory; this is one way to heal.

Thank you to my daughter Georgia, for it is she who said, "I love it when the moon looks like a dime!"

To read all about Apollo 11, check out NASA's wonderful student features.  To learn more, check out this NASA page.  If you would like to learn more about blue moons, check out Info. Please.  And I love to listen to Nanci Griffith singing Once in a Very Blue Moon.

Many congratulations to Theresa (Looking for the Write Words)....winner of last week's giveaway of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY (see sidebar)! Today is my last giveaway of this new book.  To win, please just leave a comment on today's post, and one commenter - to be announced next Friday - will receive a copy of this new anthology.

In other Poetry Friday news, you can now apply to become a Poetry Friday Ambassador.  This sounds like a lot of fun to me, and there is more information here!

Over at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, I welcome author Peter Salomon and congratulate him on his forthcoming book, HENRY FRANKS. Stop by and read about his first notebooks and enter yourself in the giveaway of his new book, coming out next week!

Sylvia is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Poetry for Children. May your weekend and school year be full of poetry.  Beginning on Monday, I will be back and posting here 3x/week.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

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

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A Lovely Lunar Eclipse with Poem #266

Draft

by Amy LV

Last night was a total lunar eclipse, coinciding with the solstice this year.  According to the NASA Eclipse Website, "The entire event is/was visible from North America and Western South America."

SpaceWeather.com writes, "Is this rare?  It is indeed, according to Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory, who inspected a list of eclipses going back 2000 years.  'Since year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is December 21, 1638, says Chester. 'Fortunately, we won't have to wait 372 years for the next one...that will be on December 21, 2094.'"

To better understand this phenomenon, I asked my patient science teacher husband to demonstrate a lunar eclipse with common household objects.  With a green yarn ball (Earth), a white sock (moon) and a floor lamp (sun), he showed me how it works.  The combination of this with Fred Espenak's article, "Lunar Eclipses for Beginners" helped me to understand how lunar eclipses differ from solar eclipses.  I printed this out, underlining passages and jotting notes to help me remember and make sense of these movements.  To see some wonderful animations of sky-happenings, check out Shadow & Substance.

Students - on the draft above, you will see a few things which helped me write this poem.  The alphabet in the upper right hand corner always helps me find rhyming words which make sense together.  You can see some of those in the lower left hand corner.  This time I needed a little drawing too, to help me remember the positions of each player in this night sky drama.

Of course my revisions included my husband Mark.  I asked him, "Would you please read this to see if I got the science right?"

I hope that some of you got to see the eclipse last night.  (It was too cloudy here to see much.)  If you missed it this time, take a peek at the NASA Eclipse Website and mark down the date for the next eclipse where you live.  

For a beautiful 2010 poetry book about the sky, don't miss SKY MAGIC, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Mariusz Stawarski.

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Happy eclipse!  Happy solstice!

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