April | 2013 | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for April, 2013

Layer upon Layer

Posted in Poetry, tagged Cathy Mills, ekphrasis, National Poetry Month on April 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

E is for Ekphrasis. This is one of my favorite styles of poetry. I like to use art for inspiration. If you’ve followed my blog, you know this and have seen many poems I’ve written to go with art.

Today is April 7th, and I’m only on the 5th letter of the alphabet. I’ve had to give myself permission to not fulfill my own assignment. This next week is state testing. I may be a little grumpy, so I am going to write what I want to write. The students will not be coming to my class, so our daily poetry exercise is suspended until next week. We will take up where we left off.

My friend, fellow teacher and artist, Cathy Mills sent me images of some of her paintings. Today I am writing to another in her series of Stories. This one I wanted to play with the visual as well as the words, so I captured it as an image.

“Layer upon Layer” by Cathy Mills

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Poetry Forms are Hard!

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged ABCs of poetry, double dactyl, poetry forms, teaching writing on April 5, 2013| 7 Comments »

I know this is an ugly picture. This is my journal page after struggling all day long with the double dactyl form. Ugh! I almost gave up. It was like a puzzle or a really hard math problem. Although, had it been a really hard math problem, I would have given up hours ago. I shared this process with my students. They could see me struggling. I would call them to attention and test it out, then shake my head, “No, not yet.”

The double dactyl form has so many requirements. I used to think rhyming was hard, but rhythm is harder. A dactyl is a long, short, short syllable pattern. Then there’s this rule that the second stanza has to have a double dactyl word. And who has ever heard of a spondee?

Most of the examples I read had a person’s name for the second line. I decided to use a book character and who better than the tragic character of Miggery Sow from The Tale of Despereaux? I found out by reading my poem aloud to my last group of students that you can’t quite “get it” if you haven’t read the book. I have to credit my fifth grade boys with the last line. High fives all around when they came up with that one.

My students are writing poetry like mad over at our kidblog. Please check them out and leave a comment or two. They love comments.

Now for my attempt to capture Miggery Sow in double dactyl.

Higgledy Piggledy
Miggery Sow was a
young girl who longed to be
princess like Pea.

Handful of cigarettes
perfidiously swapped;
Birthday wave brings forth a
queen wannabe.

Join Poetry Friday with Robyn Hood Black.

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Book Spine Cento

Posted in Poetry, tagged Book Spine Poetry, cento on April 3, 2013| 4 Comments »

We are all welcome here
under the sun,
escaping into the open.
First light,
A thousand mornings,
So quietly the earth…

Cento poetry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cento_%28poetry%29

For more Book Spine Poems, go to 100 Scope Notes Gallery.

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Bill’s Blues

Posted in Poetry, tagged blues poetry, National Poetry Month on April 2, 2013| 8 Comments »

Slice of Life Tuesday

B is for the blues. This form required some research on my part. I listened to “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson. I read about 12 bar blues and some poems of Langston Hughes. (The rhyming has gone to my head:) But all the while I was researching, my cat was crying outside the door.

Bill and Buzz are outside cats. They have been living outside for almost a year now, but they still think they can come inside, especially Bill. He’s the most affectionate and wants to rub and be rubbed. So Bill became the subject of my blues poem.

I patterned the poem after an AABa pattern from the 12 Bar Blues pattern. The first and second line repeat. The third line is a response, not rhyming. Then line 4 rhymes with 1. I struggled with this for a while. I hope my students don’t have too much trouble with this form. They will be posting their blues poems today at their kidblog (Slice of Life Challenge) which will remain open until the end of the school year.

Tomcat Bill comes to sing the blues.
My grey cat Bill sings blues.
Whether winter or spring, that cat will sing.
Crying in high-pitched mews.

Meow, Me-oo, let me come in.
Meow, Me-oo, let me in.
Cat food’s on the windowsill; your song’s too shrill.
Who knows where you’ve been.

Come on, Mama, don’t you hear.
Mama, don’t you hear.
I want to get the lovin’, some simple human cuddlin’
Open the door, let me near.

Stop your whining at the door.
Cat, stop your whining at the door.
Go climb a tree, nip at a flea
I don’t want to hear you no more.

Greg has a poem a day “3o Days, 30 Poets” on his site GottaBook.

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Bluebonnet Acrostic

Posted in Poetry, tagged acrostic poetry, bluebonnets, National Poetry Month, Texas on April 1, 2013| 3 Comments »

Happy National Poetry Month! I have set a goal to write a poem a day for this month. I will also be featuring classroom poets and other fun poetry happenings. I’ll be part of the Progressive Poem, so hit the link on the sidebar to see how the collaborative poem is progressing. Greg at GottaBook is posting a poem a day. Today is a delightful spring poem from Mary Lee Hahn.

As we drove home from Austin yesterday, Easter Day, I enjoyed the blankets of bluebonnets that line the highway between Austin and Bastrop. An acrostic poem is one in which the lines begin with the letters that spell a word, usually the theme of the poem.

Blanket of blue
lines the highway
under a cloudy Texas sky.
Every pod pops
blue topped with promise
of more blossoms
nudging up, nodding to the day,
nestled with fiery Indian paintbrush,
elegantly announcing
the arrival of spring.

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