Showing posts with label Poems about Winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poems about Winter. Show all posts

Monday, January 21, 2013

A Poem for the Birds

Celebrate with Seedy Fare!
by Amy LV



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

Students - We have bird feeders outside many of our windows, and my husband Mark keeps them full of bird goodies!  This means that our family gets to see little chickadees, cardinals, woodpeckers, and all sorts of other birds flying around as we read, do dishes, or just walk from room to room.  As I type this, my two daughters are standing behind my shoulders, peering out at the feeder in front of this window.  "Is that a female goldfinch?  It looks like there are two of those!  See the yellow on her chest?"

The way you live influences the things you write about. The more interesting things you do, the more interesting things you have to write about!

Today's poem has many things in common with a sonnet.  It has fourteen lines in iambic pentameter (daDA daDA daDA daDA daDA) with the even lines rhyming.  Then, at the end, the final couplet rhymes too.  My poem does not rhyme every alternate line, though, so it's not a true sonnet.  I enjoy playing with form; it feels like solving a puzzle when you try to find just the right place for just the right word.

Today we are home from school for Dr. Martin Luther King Day, a day celebrating a great man who bravely stood up for his beliefs and the rights of others.  You can read a poem I wrote in Dr. King's honor here.

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Monday, January 16, 2012

Wintertime Treasure

Sparkles Everywhere!
by Amy LV


Students - It's COLD here in Holland, NY this week, and the forest is aglow with chilly crystals. If you've never noticed, the world becomes more sparkly as it gets colder. So last night (8 degrees Fahrenheit) was simply glittering! If you look below at my draft for today's poem, you might notice the numbers 1 and 2 in the margins. This is because I switched the order of the stanzas after I wrote them! Then I switched a few lines! All of this as I flipped back and forth between my trusty rhyming dictionary and thesaurus. Writing is like that: back and forth, forth and back. The revising is as much fun (sometimes more!) than the writing.

Give it a try - switch a few things around in your own writing, and see what you think.  Sometimes moving words around will surprise you in wonderful ways....

Poem Draft

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