An Object Passed On and On...

(Almost....)

Inscription from My Grandmother to My Mother

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem is just a little bit of free verse about an object - a poem book that lives in my family. Yesterday my friend Brett Vogelsinger shared this photo and question on Twitter.

Well, I DID remember! My mother had this book when I was a child, and I remember reading it over and over again, just loving the images and words. As it happens, last night I visited my mom and found the copy. 

A Family Favorite

(The spots on on the cover were likely made by me!)

Photo by Amy LV

My mom's mom (my grandmother) had given the book to my own mother as a gift, and she had made notes on the pages of some of her favorite poems. My grandma and mom were both teachers, and this was a teacher-to-teacher present given early in my mom's teaching career. Below you can see my grandma as a young woman. She always loved poetry, and both she and her father - my great grandfather John Conolly - wrote poems.

Florence (Dorrie) Conolly Dreyer as a Young Woman

Notes from Grandma

Photo by Amy LV

I feel lucky that my grandmother wrote in this book and lucky that my mom has kept it. Even though Grandma has been gone from a long time, through these notes and favorite poems, she speaks to us again. 

Do you have an object in your home that brings to mind someone important to you? While one person might look at a particular object and not see anything special, objects do hold and hide stories and connections. Sometimes we just need to sit with something, hold it, think about it, and listen. Writing can be slow that way. Slow is good.

I have happy news! After a long hiatus, there is a post at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks. Stephanie Affinito has shared her wonderful 'One Little Thing' notebook which has already inspired me to begin one of my own. Visit the post and comment by February 2 for a chance to win a copy of Ralph Fletcher's A WRITER'S NOTEBOOK.

Kathryn is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup...all the way from Australia...at Kathryn Apel. Visit her post for a couple of poems and a short clip describing one of her author visits to the US. We invite everybody to join in each Friday as we share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship. Check out my left sidebar to learn where to find this poetry goodness each week of the year.

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If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Free Verse & Cutting Unnecessary Words

Scene from a Bookshelf

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Like last week, this week I find myself writing from an object, this time with a bit more imagination.  Lying by our heater, warming my feet, I looked up and saw the below painting that our daughter Hope did in school when she was in eighth grade.  She had brought objects from home and painted: a vase that her Aunt Heather made, a poofy orange bandana, a ball, a box, and the orange wooden horse that my Great Aunt Kay gave to my mom many years ago when I was just a little girl. You can see mousie tracks too, from where a mouse lent a paw to the painting as it dried in school overnight.

Looking at the painting, I fell in love with the painting again, and too, with the orange horse.  I took it down from its shelf and held it in my hands, remembering how I would take it down from Mom's china cabinet where it lived with fancy porcelain eggs and crystal bowls and delicate figurines.

I thought about how the horse had belonged to Great Aunt Kay, to Mom, to me, and how our chidlren love it and maybe how someday their own children will too.  I imagined what the horse thought about watching generations of humans growing up around him.

And I wrote.  I began to write in rhyme, but then I decided to instead push myself to write in free verse, to just capture this brief snapshot of the horse.  A simple snapshot was my goal.

My first drafts had more words.  Take a look at this below draft, and find the words that do not appear in my final poem.  You will notice that the final line breaks are different too.

Poemdraft

Photo by Amy LV

Revision can mean cutting words  Streamling.  Here are the words you see in the handwritten draft above that do not appear in my final poem.

"The" has disappeared from my final lin line 1.  I have learned from Lee Bennett Hopkins to cut any "the" I can.

"Only" has disappeared from my final.  I realized that "six" implied young, and "only" was not necessary.

"Outside" does not appear in my final.  "Real grass" is always outside, and so "outside" was a filler word.

Try rereading your own writing for extra words.  Feel comfy with cutting.  It may feel difficult to you at first, but the elegance of your writing will shine best with fewer, not more words.

And look around your house for old objects with stories.  I find so many ideas this way!

At my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, I welcome educator and author Tanny McGregor.  Her notebooks just blew me away, and I welcome you to come take a peek.  You can also discover who won this month's giveaway of the great Peter Catalanotto's books.

Tara is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at A Teaching Life.  All are invited to come, read poems, find new friends, and hang out in our weekly poetry clubhouse.

Please leave a comment if you wish.

Picnic Basket - Poem #24 for April 2014 Poetry Project

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Learn about this, my April 2014 Poetry Project, HERE!

Picnic Basket

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem is a mask poem, written in the voice of an object or person.  Each day of this month, I have decided whether to write TO an object, ABOUT an object or AS an object speaking.  It is fun to mix it up, and in writing a collection of poems, it is important to mix it up too: stances, rhymes and meters, topics.

Below in today's draft (I wrote this poem this morning, not the day before as I have done the rest of this month) you can see how I began by first looking back at the poemobjects from all month, tallying the types of objects I've already written about.  As the month winds down, it feels important to create a balance of objects: toys, housewares, clothing, and more.

You can see that I went back and forth a few times about the word "gazing" in line 7. This is because "gazes" appears in another poem this month.  I find myself realizing over and over that I do have favorite words, but in a collection I don't want to overuse any words, even favorites.  For now, I'm keeping "gazing" because it is really the word most used when discussing stars.

You may have noticed that in the move to today's typed version, the last few lines are spaced out like steps.  This was not something I thought about when writing longhand, but somehow in typing new ideas for line breaks often appear.  

I suggest trying this out for yourself.  Do lots of revision on one of your poems in longhand, reading it aloud to yourself, crossing out unnecessary words, trying out new lines.  Get it just how you like it.  Work hard; be ruthless.  Then, type the poem.  As you type, consider other possibilities for line breaks.  You may surprise yourself.  (If you are an older student and do not type well, I highly recommend learning to type quickly and mindlessly.  This allows you to think about your WRITING and not your TYPING.)

Picnic Basket - Draft Page Spread #1 

Photo by Amy LV

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day!  Which poem do you have in your pocket?  I am carrying Notice by Steve Kowit (in honor of a friend's husband who died this week) for my grownup friends ,and for my child friends I am carrying Shell by Myra Cohn Livingston.

(This morning, to my science teacher husband, I gave many copies of Wendell Berry's The Peace of Wild Things and to our children I gave There is a Land by Leland B. Jacobs!)

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Hat - Poem #21 for April 2014 Poetry Project

LIVE!

Learn about this, my April 2014 Poetry Project, HERE!

Hat

Photo by Amy LV

Students - I want to hug the hat atop this post.  It is one of my favorite photos of the whole month so far, likely because it makes me think about my husband's grandfather, a man I adored.  Grandpa VanDerwater wore a small blue summer hat (which Mark now sometimes wears), and so I have a soft spot for small blue mens' hats.

I considered the idea of this poem for a while.  For a time (in my head only and earlier yesterday), this poem was going to be about the wise hat of the thrift store, to whom other objects go for advice.  But upon further consideration, I didn't want the wise object to be a man's hat - why wouldn't it be a woman's hat? - so I got back to the drawing board.

That's when Joe appeared.

Why?  Well, I think he came from one of my old favorite David McCord (I adore David McCord) poems, "Joe" - a poem about a squirrel that frequently visits a bird feeder.  And of course I know a couple of special Joes with whom we spent Easter.  And Joe is just such a friendly and solid name. The hat FELT like a Joe hat.

Today's poem is written in quatrains, or four line, rhymed stanzas.  Usually, I rhyme only the second and fourth lines of quatrains (sometimes the first and third too, but often not), so this was especially fun and challenging.

You can see below where I listed rhyming words to help me find four decent ones per each of the four stanzas.  If I was not able to find four rhymes that made sense (tip, because...), then I simply chose another word and rewrote.

Hat - Draft Page Spread #1 

Photo by Amy LV

Once again, my final revisions last night came after recording.  It seemed all good to me, but when I recorded, the second stanza was simply off.  Time to rewrite again.

Writers like rewriting.  Rewriting is fun and fascinating.  Oh, and infuriating. And wonderful. 

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Locket - Poems about Objects

Remembering

by Amy LV

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

Students - Today's poem is, once again, simply about an object.  I adore lockets.  They go along with all kinds of old mysterious things that give me dreams and wonders: graveyards, old buttons, bones, books that smell good, shells, bottles in interesting shapes...  I've admired the rhyme locket/pocket for some time, and today it rose in my mind as I sat at my desk, looking at all of its cubbyholes.  Writing in my notebook, I jotted,

Click to enlarge the image.

Then, the poem just started showing up on the page, line by line.  You will see that I ended up shortening the line breaks when I moved to typing the poem.  This switch from handwritten first drafts to typed later drafts is very useful for me.

Click to enlarge the image.

Pay close attention the objects that inspire you.  There are poems and stories in things.

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