Poetry Friday round-up is with Tara at Going to Walden.
Taylor Mali developed an innovative set of dice called Metaphor Dice. I have a set that one of my student groups plays with daily. They’ve made it into a sort of game to end each class session. Each of us grabs a set of three dice, white, red, and blue. Roll. Read the resulting metaphor and talk about how it could work. Some of them are challenging to find a real connection. But sometimes you get something intriguing, like “Time is an impossible super hero.”
We also start each notebook writing session with a quote. This week one of our quotes was “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.” Then I rolled an odd combination: My heart is a well-worn wonder.
These types of activities work well to turn off your critical mind and turn on that right-brain creative soul inside. This is the poem that came out on the page:
A well-worn wonder like a beaten path
as in
we’ve been this way before
My heart keeps time
with the meditation tone
like a natural wonder,
a miracle of breath
& air
& blood
pumping
beating
living
waking up!
The poem was shaping up to look like a skinny. I double-checked the rules for a skinny poem. “A Skinny is a short poem form that consists of eleven lines. The first and eleventh lines can be any length (although shorter lines are favored). The eleventh and last line must be repeated using the same words from the first and opening line (however, they can be rearranged). The second, sixth, and tenth lines must be identical. All the lines in this form, except for the first and last lines, must be comprised of ONLY one word. The Skinny was created by Truth Thomas in the Tony Medina Poetry Workshop at Howard University in 2005.” The Skinny Poetry Journal
My heart is a well-worn wonder like a beaten path
as in
we’ve been
here
before
as in
natural
miracle
of breath
as in
a well-worn path of my beating heart is a wonder.
–Margaret Simon
What do you think? Version one or two?
Try a skinny with the phrase “Time is an impossible super hero.”
Matt Renwick is the winner of my extra A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver.
Leigh Anne Eck tried the prompt and posted here.
Reflections on the Teche 