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Water, Water Everywhere [Poetry Friday]
Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome, everyone! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I’m back with a third poem from The Poetry of US, J. Patrick Lewis’ newest anthology with National Geographic. I originally wrote this poem for one of my books for teachers, Wacky, Wild, and Wonderful: 50 State Poems. Other than family, the only
World Tour (After a Lucia Micarelli Concert) [Poetry Friday]
Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome, everyone! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) This month, our Poetry Princess challenge was to write a poem with an anaphora–a repeated, open-ended phrase. Recently, Randy and I attended a concert by Lucia Micarelli, a wonderful violinist. (We saw her years ago performing with Jethro Tull.) Although I played violin
Car with Eyelashes [15 Words or Less]
Hello, and welcome! This is 15 Words or Less Poems, a low-pressure way to wake up your poetry brain (guidelines here), and I’m very glad you’re here. I’m not a car person, but I saw this cutie parked in our neighborhood recently. This image makes me think of several things:
Revenge (of the Bonneville Salt Flats) [Poetry Friday]
Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome, everyone! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) As promised, here’s another poem from The Poetry of US, J. Patrick Lewis’ newest anthology with National Geographic. I was looking back to see a bit of my writing process. I knew right away I wanted to right about the salt flats in
Atlatl [15 Words or Less]
Hello, and welcome! This is 15 Words or Less Poems, a low-pressure way to wake up your poetry brain (guidelines here), and I’m very glad you’re here. If you tried to visit last week, or did visit in the brief window that the post was live, I apologize! My technology world came crashing down last
Sacred Land [Poetry Friday]
Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome, everyone! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I’m thrilled to be hosting today, as it’s almost my birthday, and I’m awaiting the arrival of The Poetry of US, J. Patrick Lewis’ newest anthology with National Geographic. It features poems about or set in diverse spaces around our country, and I
Dragonfly Captured! [15 Words or Less]
Hello, and welcome! This is 15 Words or Less Poems, a low-pressure way to wake up your poetry brain (guidelines here), and I’m very glad you’re here. This is a close-up of a dragonfly on one of the herons in La Crosse, WI. This image makes me think of several things:
Little Free Library 3.0
So excited! We got our Little Free Library installed last week and stocked it up on Sunday. Our daughter Annabelle painted two nice sets of READ letters for it, featuring characters from awesome children’s books. Recognize them?
spike roof shadow: Building Short Poems with the Poetry Princesses [Poetry Friday]
Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome, everyone! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) So, this month, our Poetry Princess challenge was my choice! And I chose short poems (6 lines or fewer) about animals that had to include three words (or forms thereof): spike, roof, and shadow. I was inspired by two books: Myra Cohn Livingston’s
Double Vision [15 Words or Less]
Hello, and welcome! This is 15 Words or Less Poems, a low-pressure way to wake up your poetry brain (guidelines here), and I’m very glad you’re here. I took this pic over the summer when Randy and I were getting new glasses. The optometrist was measuring…something to do with Randy’s eyes:>) This image makes me
Hooray for Young Authors
Over the past two weeks, I did three storytimes at libraries in the East Central Region of Minnesota. It was great to meet families and celebrate kids as readers, as (mostly) preschoolers and toddlers swooped like bats, bloomed like flowers, made monkey noises, did toothpaste art, and echo read my books and poems. But a
Is This Just Fantasy? [15 Words or Less]
Hello, and welcome! This is 15 Words or Less Poems, a low-pressure way to wake up your poetry brain (guidelines here), and I’m very glad you’re here. Okay, I try not to be too repetitive with images, but everyone had such fun with the chalk art photo a couple of weeks ago that I wanted
Wind Tunnel [15 Words or Less]
Hello, and welcome! This is 15 Words or Less Poems, a low-pressure way to wake up your poetry brain (guidelines here), and I’m very glad you’re here. Here’s Randy in front of a dome near our old home. It’s used to create a wind tunnel for fluid dynamics testing. We drove by it for a
Toys Rise Up! [15 Words or Less]
Hello, and welcome! This is 15 Words or Less Poems, a low-pressure way to wake up your poetry brain (guidelines here), and I’m very glad you’re here. We went to the Maple Grove Chalk Art Festival again this summer, and we were amazed as usual. The art pieces getting the most attention were the
Daydreams Through a Looking Glass — Collage Cento [Poetry Friday]
Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome, everyone! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) This month, Sara chose a cento as our Poetry Princess challenge. Not just a cento, but a cento collage, in which we would each choose one word from a set of lines Sara provided from poet Agha Shahid Ali and then find a
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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