It's Wood Stacking Time! - Poem #229

View of Our Porch

Photo by Amy LV

Some chores are more rewarding than others.  Stacking wood is great.  It's an outside chore, and this makes it lovely.  Too, wood is beautiful to touch and makes a pretty sound when it clanks against other logs. When you stack wood, you can see your progress and imagine the snuggly winter days ahead, your warm feet held up to a bright wood fire.

This poem is another concrete poem, though it didn't plan to be one when I began writing.  Once it was finished, that little concrete poem song rose in my mind, This is a concrete poem!  Move the lines around!  So I did.  Can you figure out how to read it?  (Hint - how do you stack wood?)

Students - we all have things we must do, and today's poem grew from an autumn chore around our home.  Homework, chores, pet care...all of these are necessities.  Perhaps you have a chore or responsibility which might get you going on a poem.  Think about Shel Silverstein's "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout" - that poem came from a chore too!

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What Patterns Do You See? Poem #228

Quilt from Prairie Piecegoods in Florence, Nebraska

Photo by Amy LV

Last week I taught a workshop in Omaha, Nebraska, quite far from home.  I've been there before, but on the way from the airport to the hotel, the car got lost.  (It was was trying to think of poem ideas.)  Anyway, I decided not to stop for directions until a most interesting shop presented itself...and in the small town of Florence, Nebraska, Prairie Piecegoods appeared.  This enchanting store is a cross between the Olesons' shop from the LITTLE HOUSE books and a museum, and I could not get enough.

New Favorite Shop

Photo by Amy LV

 Inside Prairie Piecegoods, Florence, NE

Photo by Amy LV

Owner Connie Rose (who could not have a prettier name) allowed me to take all kinds of photographs from spool jars to buttons to fabric bolts.  What did I buy?  Some underwear buttons, a blue mason jar, and some popping corn...still on the ear.  Connie wrapped these wares into a brand new potato bag, and I was off toward Omaha.  I will post more of these photos someday.

Students - I remember patterns from the old linoleum floor in my childhood kitchen, our blue floral couch, my pink rose wallpaper.  I remember the pattern on a sweater Aunt Kay knitted for me, my first button-to-the-side plaid blouse, our old purple chair.  My husband and I have talked about tracing patterns with our eyes over and over until they became ingrained in us.  Do you do this?  What do you see?  Today's poem, "Everywhere Patterns", came from simply this - what I see.  Oftentimes we are so used to our daily lives that we might not realize what we see.  Yet these objects, these patterns and bowls and blankets, these windowsills and lilac bushes and skyscrapers full of windows are worthy, indeed, of writing.

Here is a gorgeous book by Cynthia Rylant about seeing.

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As a student at Geneseo, I remember my friend and roomie, Stacey Buck, sharing that her favorite poem was "Patterns" by Amy Lowell.   I have thought of this so many times since those college years.

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Poetry Friday & #227 - A Dictionary Poem

Dictionary Forest Hike

by Amy LV

This is poem #24 in a Friday series of poems about poems.

Students - it is an interesting exercise to try to write many poems about one topic, and I have done this for the past 24 Fridays - poems about poems.  If you don't want to repeat yourself over and over again (poetry is great, poetry is great, poetry is great), you must discover new ways to hold an idea up to the light.  This poem is about a half-real/half-imaginary place.  For some time I have been longing to write a poem about the dictionary as a place to hang out, and this poem grew from that long-time-longing.  Here is where a writer's notebook comes in handy; each little scribbling waits patiently, hoping to be snapped up by a project.

Another funny thing about this poem is that I really wanted to include all eight parts of speech.  I learned from Donna Hooker-Topping and Sandra Josephs Hoffman's GETTING GRAMMAR that you can easily remember the parts of speech if you can recall the name IVAN CAPP (interjection, verb, adverb, noun, conjunction, adjective, pronoun, preposition).  This book has is stuffed-full with fun and easy-to-play grammar games and tips for remembering grammar rules.  Writing this poem, I actually jotted the names IVAN CAPP on my paper to be sure that I included all eight parts of speech!

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Next week, I look forward to spending Poetry Friday at NCTE in Orlando, Florida.  Most exciting will be the Friday session about poetry and blogging featuring poetry bloggers Sylvia Vardell of Poetry for Children, Tricia Stohr-Hunt of The Miss Rumphius Effect, and Elaine Magliaro of Wild Rose Reader.  Sylvia, Tricia, and Elaine have been featuring Lee Bennett Hopkins, Marilyn Singer, Pat Mora, and Jame Richards, poet members of the panel, for the past week and will continue to do so.  If you are attending NCTE, you can find details about this session here.

Two Fridays from now (the Friday after Thanksgiving), we welcome literacy specialist Amy Zimmer Merrill from Calvin Coolidge Elementary in Binghamton, NY for another Poetry Peek!  If you are a teacher or librarian or homeschooling parent willing to share a bit of how you enjoy poetry with children, please drop me a note.  I'd love to feature you on such a Peek too!  See the right hand sidebar for previous Peeks, full of favorite ways to dish up bowls of poems.

Teachers and Parents - the holidays are sneaking up, and I must refer you to MotherReader's list of 105 Ways to Give a Book.  It is a fabulous list, and after today, I will leave the link in my right hand column list of parenting links.  Thank you, Pam!

You can find today's Poetry Friday roundup with Terry over at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub.  Mosey on over there to see what's happening poetry-wise in the blogosphere, and know that you are all welcome to participate in Poetry Friday at any time.  You can find a link with all of the details here and also in the right hand column.

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To You on Veterans Day - Poem #226

 Small Flag in Wales, NY

Photo by Amy LV

Students - it is clear to see that I wrote this poem in honor of an important day.  Each life is sprinkled with holidays for all as well as private family celebrations, and such special days deserve poems.  For this one, my biggest challenge was striking a serious and grateful tone without sounding sad or sappy.

Yesterday morning at Wales Primary, I had the opportunity to chat with a custodian and teacher in the hallway before the children arrived.  The school custodian held a perfectly- folded flag in his arms, and he gently held it against his chest as we talked.  Our words turned to a young local man, killed this week in Afghanistan, and to the sacrifices our veterans make each day, each hour.  As that gentleman walked outside to raise the school flag to half-mast, we all began our day with honor in our hearts.

Today is Veterans Day.  But Veterans serve all year.  We may not know who they are because they don't wear uniforms and medals when they come home and return to teaching, delivery, medical, construction, and all other jobs.  If you know that someone is a veteran, though, my friend and soldier-mother Lynda says that it means so much when we say, "Thank you for your service."

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Let a Poem Rise...Break & Enjoy Poem #225

Dough in Morning

Photo by Amy LV

 Bread at Night

Photo by Amy LV

 

Yesterday we didn't have many groceries in the house, and I did not want to go shopping.  So...I made one of my favorite breads, the Easy, No-Knead Crusty Bread that I happily discovered in MOTHER EARTH NEWS two years ago, the bread that changed our lives.  With a cast iron dutch oven, three cups of flour, water, a package of yeast, and a pinch of salt, you have everything you need.  It rises all day long, so if you mix it in the morning, it bakes at night.  Delightful!  This bread is so perfect that we once gave the recipe to a friend as a wedding gift along with a Martha Stewart dutch oven.

Students - this is a how-to poem.  It teaches the reader a little bit about bread baking, and so it's really a nonfiction poem.  The idea came from something I do, something I know about.  What did you just do?  What do you know?  What might you teach someone else?  Our own knowledge bases can be joyful jumping-off points for writing.

I did have to do a wee bit of research into yeast in order to write this poem.  I didn't know that yeast are really fungi or how they die, so I went snooping around online to find all kinds of facts at KnowsWhy, Wikipedia,  and WiseGEEK.  Not until I began writing did I realize that this poem would follow the actual time line of dough to bread.

Here is a great book about baking bread, one I've had for a while.  This book has a wonderful website dedicated to all kinds of information about bread: games, recipes, activities, a DVD clip, you name it.

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Now I am off to eat some bread with butter.  And maybe honey. 

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Devour. Voracious. Eat Poem #224!

Wordivore

by Amy LV

Well, yesterday reinforced something I have often spoken about.  When you write all the time, ideas find you.  They know you're waiting for them.  Just like a monarch finds a milkweed, a snowball finds a sister...a poem finds someone willing to write it down.  Yesterday, brushing my teeth, I just began playing with the words carnivore, herbivore, omnivore.  My mind tickled those words all day long, so when evening came...the poem was plain fun to write.  Later, tucking my children into bed, Hope said, "Mom, you're a loveivore!"  Yep.

Students - Originally I didn't plan to make up all of these silly words.  But somehow that suffix, vore, just took over the whole darn poem!  Prefixes and suffixes and root words are so interesting...I will definitely be writing more poems like this.  If you try it, please let me know.

On another note, I have new technology fun to share.  The Poem Farm is now playing with QR codes, something I learned about last night from Franki Sibberson at A Year of Reading, who points the way to Jeff Utecht's blog, The Thinking Stick.  "What is a QR code?" you ask.  Well, I didn't know until yesterday either.  But it's a little code you can zap with your telephone or computer and be instantly transported to a bit of information.  If you have someone with a smart phone nearby, zap this with the barcode scanner (just like checking prices), and you will find one of my older posts, a list poem called "Favorite Words".  Whoa.  Weird world, isn't it?

I would love to get these little Poem Farm QR codes out into the world.  The one in the upper right hand corner is a general Poem Farm code, and if you are willing digitally share it or print it out and share it in some paper-way...I would be very grateful!  It's fun to imagine sneaking poems into different parts of the country and world.  Please do tell me if you are willing to be part of this craziness so that I can thank you properly - amy at amylv dot com.

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First Autumnwinter Snow - Poem #223

First Dusting - November 6, 2010

Photo by Amy LV

Poem Drafts for "Overnight"

by Amy LV

It snowed here yesterday!  Our family woke to fristyfrost on the grass and powdered sugar on the rooftops.  Henry and Georgia went out and danced, and Henry threw the first snowball of this season.  A tiny one, right at our front door!  All was melted and gone within a few hours, but we know it will be back soon...for good.

Students - If you look above, you can see the handwritten drafts for today's poem.  We were on a long car trip yesterday, and I scribbled as Mark drove (much safer than scribbling as I drove!)  "Overnight" began as a one stanza poem, but as I read it over and over again, I realized that it needed something more.  You might have noticed that the last two lines of the first stanza are the same as the first two lines of the second stanza.  Why?  I just liked them and wanted to say them over again.  Reading and rereading, I still liked hearing them next to each other.  I feel like they give the poem a kind of marveling feeling, just like we had when we awoke one day ago.

After writing this poem, I dug back in to play with the sounds, to see if I could play with alliteration, or repeating of initial sounds.  For example, the third line originally read, "snuggled in the pines", but it now reads "snuggled in spruces".  "In darkness as I dreamed" (line 5) was originally "in the dark as I slept". 

Teachers - if your students have written a whole lot of poems, you might challenge them to dip in again and play with the words of one or two lines, examining each word closely and asking, "Might I choose a different word, a word with sounds to match the beginning sounds I have already used?"

You might also notice all kinds of little jottings on the side of this poem.  That's a habit - jottings and alphabets and numbers and word lists.  Everywhere.

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