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.

Poetry Friday

For the past ninety-two days, I've  been enjoying the very talented Amy Ludwig VanDerwater's daily poems.  In fact, I've enjoyed her work so much that she has inspired me to jump on board and try my hand at writing poems for the month of July.  I"m only working part-time this month, so it's the perfect time to try this experiment.

This month I'm hoping to accomplish three things: to get into a daily writing routine, to gain more confidence in my writing, and to have a group of poem sketches I can revise and polish during the school year. 

I'm  nervous about sharing this commitment, but I need to make myself accountable.   To stay on track, I'll post an update every Friday.  I don't have the time or confidence to post daily poems, but I promise to be honest about my progress. 

I am grateful to Amy for encouraging me to try this experiment. If you want to read some great poems head on over to  The Poem Farm. Amy is also our host this week for Poetry Friday.

Today I'm sharing the first poem sketch  from MyPoWriMo. I decided to make a list of some of my favorite things about summer, and this is what I came up with so far.

Summer Fun


Snow cones, sweet tea, lemonade
Ice cream, picnics,and parades

Riding skateboards, scooters, bikes
Sunday morning nature hikes


Baseball games played in the park
Catching fireflies after dark


Watching movies, staying up late
Sleeping in way past eight


Playing outside in the sun—
Let’s go have some summer fun!