New Year's Resolutions - Imaginary Conversations

Sage

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Happy New Year! Yesterday afternoon, as I walked our dogs Cali and Sage, I asked them what their New Year's Resolutions were.  They didn't answer, but later, as I wrote in my notebook (I am doing lots of that lately), they did answer.  And their answer became today's small poem.

Many poems grow from words we hear others say or from conversations we have, but we can also imagine conversations and play with ideas about what might be or could be said.  Try playing around with "what might have been said" or "what could be said" sometime in your own notebook.  You can words from people and animals you know or from historical figures or inanimate objects...anyone or anything at all.  What might have been said?  What could be said?

Today's poem is not full of full rhymes, but there are some similar sounds that hold the lines together.  Can you find them?

You can read two other New Year poems in The Poem Farm archives.  Find New Year's Eve from 2014 and January 1 from 2011.  It's amazing how the years keep on rolling by, isn't it?

Over at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, I am pleased to share that we have two winners for Tanny McGregor's generous giveaway. In 2016, I hope to feature more student notebooks in addition to these wonderful adult notebooks, so please, teachers and students, drop me a line if you're interested in sharing!  I will make it easy for you to do so.

In other celebratory news, my first nonfiction book, EVERY DAY BIRDS, illustrated by Dylan Metrano and published by Scholastic, joins library and bookstore shelves next month!  I could not feel more grateful.  If you are a blogger who is interested in reviewing this book, please send me an e-mail, and I will have one sent to you.

Mary Lee is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at A Year of Reading. Visit her place for a beautiful, wise poem, and enjoy the poetry bounty!  How lucky we are to have this community.

Many New Year blessings and joys to all of you!  Happy 2016!  I thank you for visiting.

xo, Amy

Please share a comment below if you wish.

A Bit of Personification on New Year's Eve

Old Year Lodge

by Amy LV

Students - Happy Almost New Year!  One of my 2015 resolutions is to spend more time writing in my notebook, finding new friends such as these old years in their number sweaters.  You'll see that today's poem turns years into people.  And while we all know that years are not people, as I wrote this poem...they became people. In poetry, this is called personification - giving something that is not human the qualities of a human.  Years do not wear sweaters.  Yet here they do.  Such is the magic of poetry.  You can make it so.

Today's poem is in free verse.  As I always say, writing in free verse causes me to read and reread over and over, listening for sound and rhythms that are not metrically regular, but still work for a reader's ear.

I am very grateful for this past year: for the healing of friends, for the healing of hearts in my life.  I am thankful for new friends young and old and for the many books and meals I have been lucky enough to take in over the past twelve months. I am grateful for family, for my health and for having been a living, breathing human in this year of 2014.  

I wish you and yours a year full of goodness, light, and warm enchantment.  May this woolen number of 2015 bring you joy.

Please share a comment below if you wish.