Showing posts with label Repetition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Repetition. Show all posts

Thursday, January 29, 2026

Repeat What Matters to You

Happy Poetry Friday! The roundup is here today.

Heart in Snow
Photo by Amy LV



Students - Today's poem is about something I have been thinking about lately: ways to be good. And I wrote about it in the form of a triolet. I write many triolets here, and I've shared the following words about them in this space before as well:

triolet is one of my favorite forms. I enjoy the rolling repetition and the way a writer can emphasize an idea simply by repeating it according to the form's rules. You will notice that lines 1, 4, and 7 match, as do lines 2 and 8.  If you look carefully, you will also notice that the rhyme scheme is: ABaAabAB. If you read it aloud and listen verrrry closely, you may notice that the poem is written in iambic pentameter, ten syllables per line with the accents reading daDUM, daDUM, daDUM, daDUM, daDUM.

The main thoughts that matter to me in today's poem are:
1. One can be one's best self in many different ways.
2. True goodness will not always be celebrated.

I think that this may be the first time that I have broken up the lines of a triolet as I usually keep them all in one eight-line stanza. I made today's line breaks, as one does, to emphasize the meaning of the lines I wish to stand out:
There are so many ways one can be good.
One cannot judge what matters by confetti.

When you write this week, you may consider repeating a line, either in your poems or in your prose. Repetition helps a reader focus, even when the reader doesn't realize it, and a writer can use repetition in different ways. Pay close attention to your reading to notice how your favorite writers use repetition to make something clear: a word, a phrase, a symbol, an action. Why might these repeat? Try what you admire.

Each Poetry Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community. I'm hosting today, and if you have a link to leave, I welcome you to do so below. Whether you leave a link or not, you are most welcome to click around and explore for inspiration and goodness.

I wish you warmth and peace this week.

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.

Friday, October 3, 2025

Take Photos! Repeat End Words!

(This is the first morning of Fall 2025 where I am writing by the heater....brrr!)

Bumblebee Bottom Sticking Out of a Dahlia
Photo by Amy LV

Students - Yes, it's true! Some bees - bumblebees certainly - do sleep in flowers! And this summer I found many adoze as I did my morning garden rounds. They are adorable all tucked into their petal beds. I have fallen in love with this image and this knowledge that bees sometimes sleep in flowers. I carry it with me every day now.

With this thought and photo in mind, today I wrote my first tritina, a new form to me - with much gratitude to "The Poetry Princesses," a group of poet friends who share different forms and ideas for writing. They shared this form last week, and I was so enchanted by their poems last week on Poetry Friday, I wanted to have a go at a tritina myself.

Here is an explanation of the tritina from Tamar Yoselff at Poetry School - The American poet Marie Ponsot invented the tritina, which she describes as the square root of the sestina. Instead of six repeated words, you choose three, which appear at the end of each line in the following sequence: 123, 312, 231; there is a final line, which acts as the envoi, which features all three words in the order they appeared in the first stanza. So the poem is structured as three tercets and one single line in conclusion.

Tritina Draft, October 3, 2025
Photo by Amy LV

You can see in my draft above how I listed words I might choose as end-line words at the top and then wrote the numbers along the left hand side of the draft to help me stay in order for this form. Forms can be very helpful to me as a writer. Rather than finding them restrictive, I find they can be freeing, helping me to find new ideas as I wrestle with word orders and syllables. I do not believe that one must always or ever write in forms, but sometimes...it does help and push me to do so.

This week, I have two different recommendations for you. The first suggestion is to take photos - either with a camera or with your mind (like Cam Jansen in the CAM JANSEN books). Use your photos to inspire your writing. Or if you prefer, write inspired by photographs taken by others. I welcome you to work with any of the photos here at The Poem Farm, for example. The second suggestion is to try playing around with the ends of your poem lines. You need not write a whole tritina, but perhaps you will choose one important word and repeat it at the ends of a couple lines of your poem. Repetition is a powerful force. When it is used well, we readers love it and are drawn to it as bees to pollen.

As for these photographs, a couple of years ago, when our children moved away, I decided I needed to take care of something and would learn to garden a little bit. These flowers are part of my learning - they are dahlias. Here is another bee - all pollen dusted - snoozing away in his own dahlia. (I am writing "him" and "his" as according to my research, it is most often the male bumblebees that sleep in flowers.)

Pollen Dusted Sleeping Bee in a Dahlia
Photo by Amy LV

And here is a ladybug resting in the day.

Little Ladybug Napping
Photo by Amy LV

Tomorrow I look so forward to reading and maybe writing with the children who visit me at Meg's Alice, Ever After Books in Buffalo, NY. This is the most delightful bookshop, and if you are ever in Western New York, I highly recommend a visit! Tomorrow I will be there from 10:30am - 11:30am and welcome you.

This week, Matt is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup over at Radio, Rhythm, & Rhyme with some celebratory news and two poems by two different poets from his anthology A UNIVERSE OF RAINBOWS: MULTICOLORED POEMS FROM A MULTICOLORED WORLD. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

Sleep well, my friends, as well and as cozy as you can. I wish I could grow you each a big flower bed!

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.

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

HELLO MY NAME IS - Day 16

Happy National Poetry Month!

(Feel free to search for poems in the sidebar or watch videos in the tab above.)


Hello, Poetry Friends! This month I am sharing poems written in the voice of Little Red Riding Hood, and I invite you to join me in writing in the voice of someone else too. You might choose a fairy tale character or a book character or a person from history or anyone else real or imagined. These are your poems, so you make the decisions. Each April day, I will share my poem and a little bit about writing poetry. Mostly, we’ll just be writing in short lines with good words and not worrying about rhyming. Meaning first. Our focus this month will be adopting the perspective of another…for 30 days. I invite you to join me in this project! To do so, simply:

1. Choose a character from fiction or history or somewhere else in the world of space and time, and commit to writing a daily poem in this person's voice for the 30 days of April 2025. You might even choose an animal.

2. Write a new poem for each day of April. Feel free to print and find inspiration from this idea sheet that I will be writing from all month long.


Teachers, if you wish to share any HELLO MY NAME IS... subjects or poems, please email them to me at the contact button above. I would love to read what your students write and learn from how they approach their own projects.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD'S POEMS SO FAR

Students - Today's how-to poem poured out of me. In my own life, I am thinking about building community and how sometimes just sharing food with neighbors and friends and even strangers (firefighters, teachers, librarians, police, nurses and doctors and med techs, suffering people) can make the world better. Nan knows this. Her instructions for baking pie weave back and forth from the technical steps of baking to more heart-full thoughts about love and care for others.

As I wrote, something interesting happened that happens on a somewhat frequent basis. I noticed that the poem I was writing matched the sound and repetition-feel of another poem. I paused mid-line to figure out which one.

Today's poem matches much of the meter of "Fort" from my book WITH MY HANDS: POEMS ABOUT MAKING THINGS. The reason for this is that last week I was fortunate to spend several days in Ohio schools, and I read "Fort" aloud a few times. Poem meters get into one's bloodstream like that. So let me recommend something to you. Find a poem that you like to read aloud. Read it aloud a few times a day, every day, for a week. Keep writing during this time. You may notice that the meter of the poem you have been reading seeps into your own writing. And if it doesn't, it may do so someday in the future when you don't even notice.

Poem "Fort" from Amy LV's book, WITH MY HANDS
Published by Clarion Books, 2018

Remember Nan's advice. Bake. Make things. Sing with joy as you do so. Share the works of your hands with the world. It matters. It really does. Your song is contagious, even when you don't realize it.

Thank you for joining me on this sixteenth day of HELLO MY NAME IS...

To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's Kidlitosphere poetry happenings. And if you are interested in learning about or writing from any of my previous 14 National Poetry Month projects, you can find them here. Happy National Poetry Month!

xo,

Amy

AmyPlease 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.

Saturday, April 5, 2025

HELLO MY NAME IS - Day 5

    Happy National Poetry Month!

(Feel free to search for poems in the sidebar or watch videos in the tab above.)


Hello, Poetry Friends! This month I am sharing poems written in the voice of Little Red Riding Hood, and I invite you to join me in writing in the voice of someone else too. You might choose a fairy tale character or a book character or a person from history or anyone else real or imagined. These are your poems, so you make the decisions. Each April day, I will share my poem and a little bit about writing poetry. Mostly, we’ll just be writing in short lines with good words and not worrying about rhyming. Meaning first. Our focus this month will be adopting the perspective of another…for 30 days. I invite you to join me in this project! To do so, simply:

1. Choose a character from fiction or history or somewhere else in the world of space and time, and commit to writing a daily poem in this person's voice for the 30 days of April 2025. You might even choose an animal.

2. Write a new poem for each day of April. Feel free to print and find inspiration from this idea sheet that I will be writing from all month long.


Teachers, if you wish to share any HELLO MY NAME IS... subjects or poems, please email them to me at the contact button above. I would love to read what your students write and learn from how they approach their own projects.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD'S POEMS SO FAR

And now for today!


Students - Today's poem is a triolet, an eight line poem with lines one, four, and seven repeating and lines two and eight repeating. Lines one, four, and seven also rhyme with line three and five, and lines two and eight also rhyme with line six. Each line of this poem has eight syllables...and as it happens,
so does the title, which also is part of the rhyme. (The title part is not usual for a triolet. I am just feeling especially playful today.) This poem form is one of my favorites, and if you wish to read more of my triolets, just search "triolet" in the search bar on the left.

If you would like to play with the triolet form, you need not rhyme and repeat in all of the ways. Perhaps decide to write an eight line poem that simply repeats lines two and six. Or choose two pairs of rhymes to thread through your poem. It can help to begin a poem with a wee bit of a plan, though I certainly do not always do this at all. And of course, often a plan must go by the wayside for a fresh new idea that just appears like a shooting star.

I look forward to spending today at the Burchfield Penny Art Center's Family Day where six local authors will read their books and children will be invited to participate in a variety of art activities.

Thank you for joining me on this fifth day of HELLO MY NAME IS...

To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's Kidlitosphere poetry happenings. And if you are interested in learning about or writing from any of my previous 14 National Poetry Month projects, you can find them here. Happy National Poetry Month!

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.

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

HELLO MY NAME IS - Day 2

 Happy National Poetry Month!

(Feel free to search for poems in the sidebar or watch videos in the tab above.)


Hello, Poetry Friends! This month I am sharing poems written in the voice of Little Red Riding Hood, and I invite you to join me in writing in the voice of someone else too. You might choose a fairy tale character or a book character or a person from history or anyone else real or imagined. These are your poems, so you make the decisions. Each April day, I will share my poem and a little bit about writing poetry. Mostly, we’ll just be writing in short lines with good words and not worrying about rhyming. Meaning first. Our focus this month will be adopting the perspective of another…for 30 days. I invite you to join me in this project! To do so, simply:

1. Choose a character from fiction or history or somewhere else in the world of space and time, and commit to writing a daily poem in this person's voice for the 30 days of April 2025. You might even choose an animal.

2. Write a new poem for each day of April. Feel free to print and find inspiration from this idea sheet that I will be writing from all month long.


Teachers, if you wish to share any HELLO MY NAME IS... subjects or poems, please email them to me at the contact button above. I would love to read what your students write and learn from how they approach their own projects.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD'S POEMS SO FAR

And now for today!

Students - Today as LRRH, I chose to play with repetition. And too, I decided to share Little Red's real name. As I am pretending to be Lou, I am thinking about how she might choose to start her own new poetry collection, and sharing her real name felt right. I did think hard about her name as I wanted it to mean something. I looked up words that mean all kinds of things and decided on Warrior Wolf Woods because these three words make me easily think of LRRH (Lou).

Do feel free to use the grid as I am doing...in the same order, or in a different order, or not at all! Each of us are the experts on our own writing, so I encourage you to play and have fun pretending, just as I am.

Thank you for joining me for Day 2 of HELLO MY NAME IS...

To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's Kidlitosphere poetry happenings. And if you are interested in learning about or writing from any of my previous 14 National Poetry Month projects, you can find them here. Happy National Poetry Month!

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.

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Try a Piece of a Triolet

Patterns and Travels
Photo by Amy LV



Students - I feel fortunate to once again share a musical version of my poem by my friend Gart Westerhout, a professor, composer, pianist, singer, and director of a musical theater in Japan. We met through the internet, through poetry and music, and while I always have concerns about the internet, finding good and talented friends in this way brings me joy. Thank you, Gart!

Yesterday I was driving home from the credit union over the snowy Western New York 
hills and had this thought, I want to write another triolet! And so last night, I did so. Isn't it neat how
our brains can just make decisions and then follow through? And the more little things we learn, the 
more ideas we give our brains to chew on and try out. Today's poem is about a friend, a friend from a 
faraway place. Many of us have and love such friends.

triolet is, indeed, one of my favorite forms. I enjoy the rolling repetition and the way a writer can emphasize an idea simply by repeating it according to the form's rules. You will notice that lines 1, 4, and 7 match, as do lines 2 and 8.  If you look carefully, you will also notice that the rhyme scheme is: ABaAabAB. If you read it aloud and listen verrrry closely, you may notice that the poem is written in iambic pentameter, ten syllables per line with the accents reading daDUM, daDUM, daDUM, daDUM, daDUM.

Now, while this can be a lot to keep track of (it helps me to reread and look at another triolet I've written as I write: This Beet IIWintertimes, Triolet for a Stone), it's also interesting to simply experiment with one technique from a particular form. Maybe write a poem about a friend you have or can imagine. Maybe try any one of these crafting techniques:

  • writing an 8-line poem
  • repeating a line two or three times
  • keeping the same number of syllables in each line
  • making your first two lines match your last two
Experimenting with forms gives us new ways to play with old ideas.

Next Monday! You are all invited to join many of the children's poetry community in celebrating a new Candlewick poetry anthology by Irene Latham and Charles Waters - IF I COULD CHOOSE A BEST DAY: POEMS OF POSSIBILITY. Register your class here at The Writing Barn to hear many poets (including me) read their IF poems aloud.

Thank you to Denise for hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Dare to Care. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

I wish you friends from near and far, friends you understand and love and who understand and love you right back. May you be such a friend to yourself.

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.

Friday, October 18, 2024

Writing Our Surroundings

Time for Inside Fires
Photo by Amy LV



Students - The weather is getting much colder here in Western New York where I live, and because we are having new siding put on our house, I needed to bring all of last year's leftover firewood inside. Yes, I could have piled it out under a tarp, but why do so when it will just need to come in soon anyway? And truth be told, it is cozy living among the stacks of wood. I feel like a little mouse in a storybook.

So now, surrounded by wood, I cannot help but think about wood and then trees and then forests and then questions. Today's poem came from all of this - my right-now surroundings. When you sit down to write you might choose to look around and ask, "What am I surrounded by at this very minute?" Some days for me the answer may be as simple as "messes and cat fur," and some days it might be "cookies and candles." Anything nearby or around us can offer us thoughts and questions, and in this way too, I am thinking about what I wish to surround myself with. One cannot choose everything...but one can choose some of our surroundings.

You may have noticed that this poem has a repeating line - all of this firewood. I invite you to play with repeating one line throughout a poem or a story that you write. And too, if you're not sure how to end a piece of writing, this may be because you are wondering something. If so, just end with a question as I have done today. Writing strategies and techniques belong to all of us, and we can all learn from each other. 

Matt is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme with all kinds of good publishing news. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

I wish you good and warm and kind surroundings. And I wish you small ways to create these for others too...

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.

Friday, September 20, 2024

Look Around & Choose an Object

Garden Watering Time
Video by Amy LV



Hello Friends! First I would like to thank the community of Ripley Central School (Grades K-6), in New York State, for spending Wednesday with me. It was such a treat to begin these autumn days with thoughtful writers and teachers. I look forward to our future time together, and today's poem came from something I shared in our upper grade assemblies.

One of the most meaningful, interesting, and important parts of being a writer, whether we share our writing or not, is deciding what to write about...choosing an idea. And sometimes we can fall into the trap of believing that we need to have a GOOD idea, an IMPORTANT idea, a SPECIAL idea. But we do not need this at all. We just need to begin writing.

We can begin by starting down one of many possible paths, but one of these paths is simply the path of observation. We look around. We look at one object. We write about this object. Now, you may be wondering, Just what might we write about any object? Well, we can write in any genre, and we might:

  • Describe the object with our senses
  • Compare the object with something else in the world
  • Tell about a personal memory related to this object
  • Teach something about this object
  • Share beliefs connected to this object
  • List words this object brings to our minds and write from these
  • Invent the beginning of a story inspired by this object
  • Begin a poem about this object

For me, the best part of writing is the surprise part. I like beginning NOT KNOWING what I will write, NOT having a great idea to begin, but rather, allowing an idea to show up on the page like a surprise guest.

As for my poem today, I was trying to think of a writing idea when I realized that I should water the garden. As I did so, I admired the sprinkler and so...the sprinkler became my main character of today.

This poem is short and it does not rhyme. However, it does use a lot of sound repetition, namely of the short i sound. The poem, including title, has 20 words, and 10 of them include the short i sound, my favorite sound in the English language.

I would love to read and share any poems you write from just looking around, choosing an object, and allowing the object to bring you to new places, thoughts, and wordplay.

Linda is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Teacher Dance. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

xo,

Amy

ps - For those of you who, like me, are fans of English Professor and Musician Gart Westerhout, he is back with another song version of one of my poems, "Summer Mystery," from two weeks ago. Hear him sing that poem about my generous neighbors 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, September 6, 2024

Repetition in a Summer Mystery

Hello Friends!

If you are just back to school, welcome back to school! I wish you and your new teacher and new friends a joyful and meaningful year ahead, and I look forward to writing together and perhaps meeting some of you and reading your work.

You will notice that The Poem Farm has a new search feature. Thank you so much to Marisa Saelzler who helped me so perfectly with this. You may search by topic, poetic technique, or type of poem. To learn more about this, click the FIND A POEM tab above.

A Visit from the Tomato Fairy
Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem is about a small, surprise event that happened just this week at The Poem Farm. I went to get my mail from the big blue mailbox, and the small newspaper box next to it held one big tomato, two small cherry tomatoes, and a few flowers. It seemed they may have been left the day before, and the whole scene in my newspaper box made me so happy. Right away I knew that I would write about the generosity of this mystery-giver.

As you write this week, you might wish to look out for kindnesses - surprise or not - or to remember past kindnesses you have given or received. Somehow just thinking and writing about such memories makes our todays better.

One thing you may notice about this poem is that I repeat a lot of words. This repetetion just seemed to happen on its own at first, but then, I so enjoyed the feeling of the poem's words rolling over on themselves that I just kept at it, repeating words on purpose. Which repeated words do you find?

If you want to try this with your own writing, just begin writing with an ear for repetition. You might begin a line with the last word of the line before. You might repeat a whole line or thread up words from earlier in your poem. There are many ways to repeat, and repetition adds a song-like quality to your poem. 

September 19, 2024 Update - My talented friend, English Professor and Musican Gart Westerhout is once again back with a song version of a poem. Please enjoy "Summer Mystery," sung by Gart. Thank you, friend!

Buffy is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Buffy Silverman with an early book celebration for her forthcoming beautiful STARLIGHT SYMPHONY and a poem about a walking stick. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

Happy Septembering!

xo,

Amy

ps - Yes...I did find out who the mystery tomato-giver was. It was two wonderful girls who live on our road...so many thank yous to them. The tomatoes were deee-licious!

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, April 19, 2024

ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW 19

  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. 

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 many 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 and decide if you would like to match your line breaks to the date in any way. You might correspond 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 30 will have 30 lines. You may wish to switch it up as I have, writing increasing-line poems from 1-15 lines for this first half of April and then decreasing-line poems for the second half of the month. OR....invent your own idea! 

4. Teachers and writers, if you wish to share any ONE MORE OR LESS 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.

Nineteen Crows, Twelve Lines
Photo by Amy LV



Students - Today's poem is a dozen lines long with the first four lines and the last four lines matching each other. Such a poem, with a repeating beginning and ending is called a circular poem. You end right where you began. Sometimes a poem is simple. This one is.

Thank you for joining me for ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW...

Heidi is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at my juicy little universe with thoughtful and inspiring Earth-celebratory poems by young people. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

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.