Coaxing Poems 1: We Are Libraries

Greetings, Poetry Friends! 

It has been almost four years since I have shared a video series, and with this new year, it feels like time again. I welcome you to ten little Friday visits we'll call Coaxing Poems. This week and next we will focus mostly on discovering ideas for poems, inside the libraries that are us. As the weeks roll on, we will talk a bit about possibilities for setting up poems and sculpting language like clay.

Below this video visit, you will find the poems I share within it.

This poem about my Great Aunt Kay came to me when I held my palms up toward the sky and let my inner invisible librarian place a topic in my hands.

An Aunt Kay Sweater

Drawing by Amy LV

And this poem idea, about a cloud friend, arrived the same way!

New Cloud Friend

Drawing by Amy LV

Students - You will notice that these poems do not rhyme - none of the poems I will share during Coaxing Poems will rhyme. But notice the short lines. Notice the words. Notice the space. Pay attention to what is description and what is feeling. Feel free to try out what you notice, breaking up your own lines to slow a reader down, repeating words, and helping your readers sense...and feel...your words.

Marcie is hosting this week's Poetry Friday over at Marcie Flinchum Atkins with her 2024 word and plans for great adventures in the year ahead. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

Have fun in the stacks of your inner library, coaxers!

xo,

Amy

ps - Educator Friends, I am trying to think of a way to celebrate this series when it is complete. If you have any ideas for this, please let me know in the comments. Thank you!

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Suitcase - Poem #11 for April 2014 Poetry Project

LIVE!

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

Suitcase

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today my writing squeeezed into a small amount of time at the end of the day.  It was a busy and lovely day, and at the end of it...I was ready to sleep!  But no, it is Poetry Month, so write I did.  Instead of turning to my paper notebook last night, though, I thought in my head for a bit and then played with LiveTyping as you can see below.  I am sharing two of the "enlivenings" - the two I thought would be the most interesting to watch.

Can you see how I wrote the last line of the poem before the rest of it. I just liked that idea of the suitcase loving visiting Grandma more than visiting any other place in the world.  And so I just kept working and working the lines. 

You can see below how I decided that the poem should be in the past tense. When a writer decides on the tense of a poem, it's usually a good thing to keep that tense the same all of the way through.  I started with present tense but switched to past tense when I realized that this suitcase was not living with the same family anymore.

You might want to try LiveTyping yourself.  It's free and easy and lets you look back at your own process in an interesting way.  While I usually do not write on the computer, I do sometimes, and I like looking back at this.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to have author and librarian Vida Zuljevic sharing a Poetry Peek at The Poem Farm!  Please stop by there to read all about the many wonderful ways she celebrates poetry with students.  You will be delighted by her students' poems, and I know that they would love to read your comments too.

The winners of last Saturday's book giveaway are:

FOREST HAS A SONG - Bridget Wilson

THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR SCIENCE - Leigh Ann Eck

Winners - please send me an e-mail to amy at amylv dot com with your address, and I will mail your books sometime this month!  Stay tuned for the exact same giveaway tomorrow and every Saturday of April 2014.

Blog birthday girl Michelle is hosting today's Poetry Friday party over at Today's Little Ditty! Enjoy the festivities during this second beautiful week of National Poetry Month!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Tucked Twinkie and Writing Endings

Snack Time!

Photo by Amy LV

Students - I think the idea for poem came from this week's Chevy's Super Bowl commercial. Funny how one little thing sticks in one's mind, isn't it? In the first couple of drafts of "Tucked Twinkie," the ending lines rhymed right along with the rest. But when I asked my children to read the poem aloud, each looked at me and said, "I don't get it." If someone says "I don't get it," after reading your writing, it's a sign that you need to revise.

So I did.

I went back to the Twinkie-writing-drawing-board, and I played around a bit more until I came up with this abrupt ending. And it made my daughter Georgia crack up. So I kept it. Sometimes keeping a rhyme pattern going, lulling the reader along, and then dropping her on the floor makes for a good surprise ending. Please let me know if you give this a try as I would love to read your work.

Speaking of Twinkies, Hostess has filed for Chapter 11, and so soon the Twinkies will disappear. Here are a few ways you can enjoy the last boxes that may ever exist. For the truly strange among you, consider making a Twinkie Weiner Sandwich. If you would like to make your own Twinkies, check out this recipe at Top Secret Recipes. Or if you would like to make an organic, vegan version of Twinkies, visit instructables. If you just want to deep fry some Twinkies, check out food.com to learn how. We may actually do this on Saturday, and I'll keep you posted if we do.

Perhaps you are not very interested in EATING Twinkies. In that case, you might wish to check out some science experiments involving Twinkies from npr. Or maybe you'd just like to hear opera singer Hai-Ting Chinn doing her part to help Hostess by singing all of the ingredients in a Twinkie.

Would you call this a found poem?

Teachers and grown up friends - it is time to register for Spark 15, a wonderful opportunity for artists, musicians, and writers to swap work and inspire. This will be my fourth year participating, and I encourage you to consider joining the free artistic fun! Later this year, I plan to help Amy Souza and Jamie Palmer begin a small version of Spark for Kids.

And in case you, too, thought that Twinkies will last forever...you find out their real shelf life here at Snopes.

'Like' The Poem Farm Facebook Page for regular updates of all things poetry!

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Goodbye to Christmas Trees

 

Ewes Taste Christmas - 2012

Photo by Amy LV

Students - it's that time of year when Christmas trees line the roadsides. When I was a girl, this was always a tough week. I'd want to keep the tree up for as many weeks as we could, and I fantasized about it becoming a Valentine Tree and a St. Patrick's Day Tree, and an Easter Tree. But one day or another, the needles would begin to fall, and out it would go...down the concrete steps, down the driveway, straight to the curb. And there it would lie, and there I would stand, kissing the tips of its needles and saying, "Goodbye."

If you have read this blog for a while, you know that I have a soft spot for inanimate objects. I feel what I imagine they feel. You can see this in Pumpkin and Christmas Tree Lot too. Today's poem is about imagining the feelings of something else, and it's about goodbyes. So if you ever imagine what something else is thinking, or if you have a certain type of goodbye that is tough for you, that might be a good place to begin today's writing. Too, this is a poem written TO something, to a Christmas tree. Such a poem is called a poem of address. Is there anything you want to talk to? If so, then go ahead and address it in a poem!

You may notice that the first line of both the first and third stanzas match the song, "O Christmas Tree." This was a fun way for me to begin, by jumping into the words of a familiar song from the season.

Back in my girlhood days, I was comforted to know that our small town of Vestal, NY recycled old Christmas trees as mulch for town parks. Today I am comforted to know that our Icelandic sheep happily munch our old tree right up!

If you haven't yet peeked into how third grade teacher Mary Bieger uses writer's notebooks and seen Arya's entries...there's a new notebook up at Sharing Our Notebooks, my blog devoted to writer's notebooks.

Joann is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Teaching Authors. Have a great time in the garden of poetry!

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