POETRY FRIDAY: My Poetry Month So Far...

This week I did a lot of playing with poetry exercises and forms. I didn’t put much time into revising because my goal was just to have fun and get some rough drafts down.

One exercise I tried came from Charles Ghigna’s Father Goose blog. The idea is to write metaphors for a poem. This would be an excellent activity for introducing the concept of metaphor to students. You can check out the details of the exercise here.

I wrote four little "poems" comparing a poem to all sorts of things such as a skateboard, a comet, and a kitten. I wrote this one after looking at a picture of my grand-daughter, Evie.

A poem is a baby
Smiling up at you
Full of surprise and wonder
Discovering something new

Another picture of Evie inspired this little poem.

Swimsuit Edition

Those models in that magazine
They think they’re pretty cute—
But they haven’t seen me yet
In my brand new bathing suit

I also worked on some tanka.

Left Out


Boys shooting baskets
laughter bounces through the air
I sit on the porch
watching them and wondering

Why won't they ask me to play?


Waiting

Maggie’s father left
in the middle of the night
without a good-bye—
It’s been over a year now
she still waits for his return.


No letter, no calls
she believes he once loved her—
Did he change his mind
wanting his freedom instead
of a daughter who still waits.


A special thank you to Amy (The Poem Farm), her encouraging words were much appreciated this week!

Carol's Corner is our host for Poetry Friday this week.