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Poetry Friday: I’m Sort of Sorry About What Happened… (by me)
Last week, I shared how I came to write some found poems recently.This week I’m sharing another found poem, again aimed at about 4th-5th grade. Today’s found poem is called “I’m Sort of Sorry About What Happened While I Was Walking My Dog,” and the source material is an online review of Mario Kart DS.
Poetry Friday: How to Talk to a Girl (by Me)
I wrote some found poems to submit for an anthology a couple of months ago, but the way I do found poems is a little different–I like to find an article or song or whatever and use it kind of like a word bank to create a poem out of. I don’t usually try to
That Freaking Goldilocks Chapter Book
You might think I’m annoyed with this project, given this post’s title, but I’m really not. It’s myself I’m annoyed with. That’s just my “affectionate” nickname for this whole project now. Anyway, I wrote three chapter book first drafts last November during NaNoWriMo, and one of them was this Goldilocks-related story. I was so excited–I liked the
Checking Off Goals–Not That I Necessarily Accomplished Them, But…
2010 is 2/3 over! I figured it was a good time to check on my writing goals for this year (not including any of my work-for-hire writing or hourly work I do) and see how I’m doing. Various changes over the past few months have affected my time, energy, and income level, so it’s a
Quotation Motivation: Flap Those Ears
“We should approach the page as a dog approaches an open car window. We have to stick our heads out, let our ears flap and watch for bugs in our eyes. We have to be in and of the moment. We have to let our hearts fly.” –N.M. Kelby A dog with its head
Boston Pictures…Minus a Few
I blogged Monday about the quick trip my husband and I took to Boston. Now I have a few pix to share, except none of our tour of the USS Constitution, which was a high point of the trip. The camera battery died (of course) that morning. And Facebook isn’t letting me upload pix from my
Back from Boston’s Back Bay
Randy and I just got home from a short trip to Boston, and we had a great time. Highlights included a whale watching cruise (where we saw two mother humpback whales and their calves, plus a couple of minke whales), touring the USS Constitution, and eating amazing amounts of food (Randy–seafood, me–salads, pastas, and sandwiches). We
Quotation Motivation: Set Our Own Conditions
To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy … is to set our own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances instead of being conditioned by them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) I’m struggling to be happy lately. I do think happiness is largely
Lesson Plan for Emotion Poems
On Friday, I shared just a few of the cool poems that 4th-8th graders came up with in my Young Authors Conference workshops. A few people asked about the process, so I thought I’d share the outline of what we did. Each session was only 50 minutes, which gave us 45 minutes tops for the whole
Poetry Friday: Poems of Hope and Fear by Young Authors
I had a great time working with 4th-8th graders at Young Authors Conferences in May, and I wanted to share (with their permission) just a few of their poems. We imagined certain scenes/settings, and then the writers brainstormed all the things Hope and Fear could do in those situations. They used randomly chosen verb lists to
Poetry Friday: Jane Kenyon Went to My Pool?
I started reading Jane Kenyon: Collected Poems recently, and was shocked when part of one of the poems described a landmark of my childhood, The Langford Hotel, in Winter Park, Florida. My family had a membership to the pool, and my dad put on pool/diving shows there, sometimes including my sisters (I took diving
Quotation Motivation: Lost at Sea
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”–Andre Gide This is one of my favorite quotations, because I need to remind myself of this frequently with regard to my writing. In my life, I’m up for adventure and change and challenge. But in my writing, I find
Poetry Friday: Seal Lullaby (by Rudyard Kipling)
Yesterday, I was catching up on a little blog reading from National Poetry Month, and Kathi Appelt in her interview at The Miss Rumphius Effect mentioned her father reading Rudyard Kipling poems to her as a child. I’ve shared this poem once before, but I love it–so here it is again. Seal Lullaby Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the
Three Days With Fourth Graders: The Poems
Last week, I shared some of the highlights and the areas I needed to work on in my poetry residency with fourth graders. Today I want to share just a few of their poems. Most of these were first drafts, written in three minutes or less–we put the timer to good use! I loved how
Words Matter: Let Someone Know
I got the loveliest email last month. It was from Autumn Lubin, a woman I’ve never met, who recognized my name in an article about a writing fellowship. She works with foreclosure intervention counselors who work with families facing foreclosure, and here’s part of what she wrote: I start each of my classes by reading your poem “Smaller.” One of my
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Are You Looking For?
Go to my Poetry page for:
- National Poetry Month projects through the years
- Small Reads Roundups (poems grouped by topic)
- Introductions to several favorite poetry forms