My Friend Yvonne's Cat...Casey
Photo by Yvonne Sciolino
Students - Last week I had the good fortune to visit five schools in Northern New Jersey. During a talk at Central School in Glen Rock, NJ, I mentioned how my cat likes to sit on notebooks and computer keyboards, always wanting to be close to writing. Many students raised their hands sharing that their cats also do this, and so I pulled out my notebook and wrote:
Those four words simmered there for a little while in my notebook, and then this week my friend Yvonne shared a photograph of her cat Casey working away at a laptop. See? It's a cat thing. Cats DO like to write. Ah HA!
Keeping a notebook, just jotting down the flotsam and jetsam of life is a magical way to capture wayward writing ideas. Snips of chat, wisps of wonder...slap them all down on the page. We never know when such bits will come in handy. The mind is a strange place, with thoughts-like-leaves blowing around here and there. A notebook helps us corral them, tame them, give them form.
Today's poem is written in rhyming couplets, but stanza four is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out onto four lines instead of two. I could have kept it two lines, but I wanted more of a listy feeling in that section of the poem, so dividing each line into two felt right.
In Sharing Our Notebooks (my other blog) news, congratulations to Brenda Harsham, winner of Kiesha Shepard's generous giveaway of a copy of Mary Oliver's book EVIDENCE. Please don't miss Kiesha's wonderful notebook post, and Brenda...please drop me an e-mail to amy@amylv.com with your snail mail address, and I will share it with Kiesha.
Violet is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at her online home, Violet Nesdoly / poems. Don't miss the poems, the friends, the book recommendations, the surprises. All are welcome. Always!
Notebook Jot - Central School, September 28, 2016
Photo by Amy LV
Those four words simmered there for a little while in my notebook, and then this week my friend Yvonne shared a photograph of her cat Casey working away at a laptop. See? It's a cat thing. Cats DO like to write. Ah HA!
Keeping a notebook, just jotting down the flotsam and jetsam of life is a magical way to capture wayward writing ideas. Snips of chat, wisps of wonder...slap them all down on the page. We never know when such bits will come in handy. The mind is a strange place, with thoughts-like-leaves blowing around here and there. A notebook helps us corral them, tame them, give them form.
Today's poem is written in rhyming couplets, but stanza four is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out onto four lines instead of two. I could have kept it two lines, but I wanted more of a listy feeling in that section of the poem, so dividing each line into two felt right.
In Sharing Our Notebooks (my other blog) news, congratulations to Brenda Harsham, winner of Kiesha Shepard's generous giveaway of a copy of Mary Oliver's book EVIDENCE. Please don't miss Kiesha's wonderful notebook post, and Brenda...please drop me an e-mail to amy@amylv.com with your snail mail address, and I will share it with Kiesha.
Violet is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at her online home, Violet Nesdoly / poems. Don't miss the poems, the friends, the book recommendations, the surprises. All are welcome. Always!
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