Poetry | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

Evening Light Triolet

Posted in Poetry, tagged National Poetry Month, triolet form, William Wordsworth on April 8, 2013| 5 Comments »

The triolet form works well when stealing lines from other poets because that perfect line repeats 3 times. I feel privileged to combine my own words with William Wordsworth. The light of this evening invited poetry. Shadows and light created quiet calm and a sacred time.

A line taken from It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

Evening Light Triolet

A beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet –
When light makes shadows of the trees;
A beauteous evening, calm and free.
Reflections long to sit with thee
and mellow our day with silence.
A beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet.

Setting sun elongates shadows and illuminates the grandmother oak.

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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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National Poetry Month

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, tagged kidlitosphere, National Poetry Month, teaching writing on March 29, 2013| 15 Comments »

Slice of Life Challenge Day 29

Passion is energy. It’s the power that comes from focusing on what really excites you. When we live with enthusiasm, we fully engage our brains and bodies in our activities, building new pathways that foster health and wellbeing. –Oprah and Deepak, 21 Day Meditation Challenge

I am looking forward to the month of April. Don’t you just love the sound of the word, “April?” I love poetry. Actually some people (namely my husband) think I am obsessed. I can’t help sharing this enthusiasm, passion, obsession with my students. And what better time to celebrate poetry than the month of April! National Poetry Month

Last year I decided to teach a poetry form for every letter of the alphabet. It was a challenge to find one to fit each letter. However, with state testing taking one week, and spring break another, we ran out of days before letters. I want to do this again. I have discovered so many new forms from the triolet to the rondelet, and even a clogyrnach. We will try ghazals and pantoums, sonnets, and ekphrasis. See an alphabetized list on Poets.org.

I plan to continue our Slice of Life blog page for posting poems each day. If you or your class would like to follow us, click here.

I will write alongside my students as I always do and share the results with you here on my blog. I have joined the kidlitosphere progressive poem. See the schedule in my sidebar.

Shh, don’t tell, but we plan to post poems all around the school, secret poems, so we can have everyone reading poems throughout their day.

I am still toying with ideas for a final product. Last year we transformed old books into our own poetry books using a technique called altered books.

Do you have any plans? ideas?

If you teach 7th-10th grade, your students can participate in the Dear Poet Project.

National Poetry Month

Poems will echo in the halls,
be pasted on walls,
carried in pockets,
and shared out loud.

Listen to the words
of Naomi Shihab Nye.
Rhyme silly with Shel Silverstein.
Rap with Nikki Giovanni
and imagine like Jane Yolen.

It’s a national phenomenon,
this month of poem fun.
Come on in!
The writing’s fine!

Join Mary Lee at A Year of Reading for more Poetry Friday

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Billboard Cento

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged billboards, cento on March 28, 2013| 10 Comments »

Slice of Life Challenge Day 28

We will be driving a long way today to visit my sister’s family and have a hippoty-hoppity Easter Day. So in honor of our long drive, I created a billboard cento. A cento is a poem formed entirely from verses from someone else. I started by taking pictures around town, but I expanded my collection with a Google image search. Here’s a link to a definition of cento. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cento_%28poetry%29

Prepare to be Inspired…

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Full Moon Rising

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged found poetry, full moon alert, nature, spring on March 27, 2013| 12 Comments »

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” —Walt Whitman

Slice of Life Challenge Day 27

Even here in the deep south, we’ve had a blast of winter wind. The temperature this morning was 36 degrees. I bundled up in my wool sweater that I’ve only worn twice since I bought it on sale after Christmas, wool socks, and a warm scarf, gloves, the works. Despite the cold, spring is here in full color. My satsuma tree is budding. This means in the fall we will have a full tree of delicious juicy citrus, my favorite fruit. We also have a grapefruit and a lemon budding.

Once a month I get a full moon alert from my friend, Possum. I love to peruse his email for found lines. This month was full of them. Here’s my found poem:

Full moon returns
in the company of ruby-throats.
The worm, sap, or Lenten full,
whatever you call it,
the full girl rises around 6 PM.

Dog whispers, hummers hide,
the woods fill us with wonder:
Spider eyes, lightning bugs,
carnivorous plants,
and an endless frog choir.

The dawn captures a line of ants
carrying only winged seeds
of swamp red maple,
mushroom eaters,
a site to see.

Swarm of honey bees safely hived
bring hope for a fruitful year.
Pollen blowing a dust storm,
new shoots, female flowers
ripen and procreate.

This amazing earth
with arriving hummers,
with wild red buckeye,
pecans leafing out,
with bees waxing and brooding,

Take the last pile of wood
for your campfire.
Raise a glass, honor
each other and the mother.
Bask in the quiet moonlight.

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Morning

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged aubade, hummingbirds, morning, spring on March 26, 2013| 7 Comments »

Slice of Life Challenge Day 26

An Aubade, praise poem for the morning, inspired by Frederick Snock’s Morning presented on The Writer’s Almanac post yesterday.

All year long there is
a window by the red coffee pot,
a ship’s porthole looking
out to the day’s beginning.

Sometimes there is a jay
in the birdbath beyond,
if the cat isn’t there,
flapping feathers clean and blue.

Today, I filled the feeder
with sweet red juice
waiting for spring hummers
come to decorate the sky.

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