Friday, March 15, 2013

Poetry Poems

Linda at Teacher Dance inspires me to participate.
Poetry Friday is hosted by Jone MacCullough.
Find more from Sara Holbrook here.

At a recent poetry club meeting we talked about how poets often write about poetry. I shared Sara Holbrook's poem, "If I Were Poem" from Chicks Up Front, Michael Salinger's "Neon,"  "Ars Poetica" by Macleish and Niki Giovanni's "Kidnap Poem." I shared this list of poems about poetry along with a challenge: Write your own poetry poem. Here's my (unfinished) draft from that afternoon. 

Stuck, stuck, stuck
Sometimes poems come
flow from pen to page
like water finding
the lowest point.

Poems slide, slip, and surf
Gulf stream currents
skirting the coastline of dream
or memory, rhythms
made more vibrant
in metered rhyme

Sometimes poems
get stuck, stilled
like water in a retention pond
or a river dammed
ideas swirl and shift
fermenting, rising to the surface
like scum no  one wants to skim

Sometimes poems come.

...

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10 comments:

  1. Love it, especially the river dammed and wondering where the dammed should really go. Also love the scum that noone wants to skim...sometimes there's great stuff in the scum! Enjoy the weekend!

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    Replies
    1. That's funny. I don't like the scum image or ending with it, but you're right a lot of life in pond scum! You have a great weekend too, Melanie.

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  2. I love the power of your work choices. Love the movement :)

    Sometimes poems
    get stuck, stilled
    like water in a retention pond
    or a river dammed
    ideas swirl and shift
    fermenting, rising to the surface
    like scum no one wants to skim

    Sometimes poems come.

    Bonnie

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  3. I love the water images! I did something similar when sharing Charles Bukowski's "Defining the Magic" about poems. My students (and I even tried it, too) used his as a model for creating their own poems about poems or books or whatever their passion was.

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    1. I do enjoy Bukowski. I will have to return to that poem.

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  4. That second verse was especially powerful...chasing poetry can be tricky.

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  5. Thoughtful, interesting extension of this metaphor! :) "like water finding the lowest point" is PURE GOLD! I also like the line break in the third stanza -- "river dammed", but also "dammed ideas". Great piece!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Paul! I love your polished pieces and how you've played with form. I need to take more time for poetry.

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  6. The variety of water imagery is vast. I love how you tied it into the writing process with a focus on poetry. April is coming and I will have to remember this when we start our poetry unit. Thanks!

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