Showing posts with label Quatrain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quatrain. Show all posts

Saturday, April 27, 2024

ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW 27

 Happy National Poetry Month!

(For new poetry writing videos, see the COAXING POEMS tab above.)

 

Hello Poetry Friends! If you visited earlier this month, you may have noticed a change my National Poetry Month project title. For my National Poetry Month Project this year, I had originally planned to study crows and share a new crow poem each day of April with the number lines in each poem corresponding to the date. The plan was to write 1-line poem on April 1...and go all the way up to a 30-line poem on April 30. For a variety of personal and poetic reasons, I have changed the project. The poems have lengthened to 15 lines...and now they decrease from 15 back down to 1. Hence the new name: ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW. 

To do so, simply:

1. Choose a subject that you would like to stick with for 30 days. You might choose something you know lots about...or like me, you might choose something you will read and learn about throughout April.

3. Write a new poem for each day of April 2024, corresponding the number of lines in your poem to the date. For example, the poem for April 1 will have 1 line. The poem for April 14 will have 14 lines. The poem for April 30 will have 30 lines. OR....invent your own idea! And if you start later in April, just play around however you wish.

4. Teachers and writers, if you wish to share any ONE MORE LINE... subjects or poems, please email them to me or tag me @amylvpoemfarm. I would love to see what your students write and to know that we are growing these lines...and our understandings of different subjects...together.

Twenty-Seven Crows, Four Lines
Photo by Amy LV



Students - And time goes on, and Crow molts each summer getting new feathers and still looking young. I found myself wondering if birds age obviously and learned that people cannot usually know if a bird is aging

Today's little poem is simply one quatrain, one four line poem that tips its hat to many years of Crow's life.

Thank you for joining me for ONE LINE CROW...

To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's happenings. Happy National Poetry Month!

xo,

Amy

ps - If you are interested in learning about any of my previous 13 National Poetry Month projects, you may do so here.

Please share a comment below if you wish.
Know that your comment will only appear after I approve it.
If you are under 13 years old, please only comment 
with a parent or as part of a group with your teacher.

Thursday, April 11, 2024

ONE MORE LINE CROW - Day 11

Happy National Poetry Month!

  (For new poetry writing videos, see the COAXING POEMS tab above.)


This month I am studying crows, sharing a new crow poem each day of April. The number of lines in each poem will correspond to the date, with a 1-line poem on April 1...and a 30-line poem on April 30. If you'd like to play along, simply choose a topic that you'd like to explore for 30 days. It might be a subject that you already know a lot about or perhaps you'll explore something new.

I invite you to join me in this project! 

To do so, simply:

1. Choose a subject that you would like to stick with for 30 days. You might choose something you know lots about...or like me, you might choose something you will read and learn about throughout April.

3. Write a new poem for each day of April 2024, corresponding the number of lines in your poem to the date. For example, the poem for April 1 will have 1 line. The poem for April 14 will have 14 lines. The poem for April 30 will have 30 lines. OR....invent your own idea! And if you start later in April, just play around however you wish.

4. Teachers and writers, if you wish to share any ONE MORE LINE... subjects or poems, please email them to me or tag me @amylvpoemfarm. I would love to see what your students write and to know that we are growing these lines...and our understandings of different subjects...together.

Eleven Crows, Eleven Lines
Photo by Amy LV



Students - Today's eleven line poem borrows from the roundel form, but it is not actually a roundel. It does have eleven lines. The first and last stanzas are quatrains (four lines). The second stanza is a tercet (three lines). The beginning of the first line does repeat as both the fourth and eleventh line. But I did not follow the roundel rhyme scheme; my poem does not rhyme at all.

This said, I relearned something today. As writers, we can take a form invented by someone else and borrow parts of this form for our own poems without completely following every rule of the form. I like the way that this first part of my first line returns, and I have never done just that just that way before. Nor have I ever intentionally written an eleven line poem with two four line stanzas and a three line stanza between them. Thank you, roundel, for the lesson and the learning.

As for crow roosts, they are incredible and huge, up to two million crows. Scientists believe that crows roost together in winter for warmth, to protect each other from predators, and to share information about food sources and news, and possibly to find mates. 

In writing poems about crows, one challenge I face is choosing which facts to include. A poem can give information, yes...but I do not want my poems to feel like scientific articles. This is a balance. When I imagine this crow collection as a book, I imagine nonfiction notes around the pages, in the way that Nicola Davies includes nonfiction notes in her narrative nonfiction books ONE TINY TURTLE and BAT LOVES THE NIGHT.

A special note to Ms. Corbett's students who asked, "What are these small toy crows sitting on in all of these photographs?" It is a funny answer. Yes, they look like they are sitting on a tortilla or a round loaf of bread...but in fact, they are sitting on the stone mushroom statue in our yard. I took a photograph of all 30 crows and then subtracted one at a time to take all of the photographs for this month.

Mushroom Statue
Photo by Amy LV

Thank you for joining me for ONE LINE CROW...

To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's happenings. Happy National Poetry Month!

xo,

Amy

ps - If you are interested in learning about any of my previous 13 National Poetry Month projects, you may do so here.

Please share a comment below if you wish.
Know that your comment will only appear after I approve it.
If you are under 13 years old, please only comment 
with a parent or as part of a group with your teacher.

Friday, August 4, 2023

Find Words for a Feeling

Sage 12 Years Ago
Photo by Amy LV

Sage Last Month
(See the white fur heart on her head?)
Photo by Michael V.



Students - On Tuesday, we said goodbye to Sage, our soft, joyful, and funny half Border Collie/half Great Pyrenees friend of twelve years. We met her in the sheep barn of the Wyoming County Fair long ago, and she brightened our days with her love and her antics ever since.

The feeling in this poem is not one I alone feel. Often when we lose a loved one - human or animal - we find ourselves wishing for that person or animal, for company, for comfort, for solace. but we must find this company, comfort, and solace in other ways and places. Carrying grief can be like carrying a backpack full of heavy, cold stones, and sometimes writing and art can help.

Writing-wise, just two notes on this poem:

Line 4 could easily have been combined with line 3. I chose to separate them in order to create space, to give a reader time to process why the girl could not bury her face in her dog's soft ears today. The realization of not being able to so deserves a line of its own.

And the title. I could only have written this title after writing the whole poem. Know that you need not choose a title first. You may wish to, but be open to title revisions after your poem is complete. The title may sneak up on you.

Here is a 2014 poem I wrote about Sage all about how she had so much fur that when you brushed her, it felt like you could make a new dog!

Fly high, Softie Ears Sage. May you join all of the loved humans and pets that have gone before you. And may we meet again.

Mary Lee is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup today at A(nother Year of Reading) with a gorgeous poem about natural neighbors and an in-process embroidery piece. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

xo,

Amy

Please share a comment below if you wish.
Know that your comment will only appear after I approve it.
If you are under 13 years old, please only comment 
with a parent or as part of a group with your teacher.