Plan for Wednesday

Welcome back from vacation! I hope you had a good one -- and are enjoying all the snow. Pretty crazy, huh?

(1) As a class, re-read the tips from Billy Collins (see Friday the 13th post) on reading poetry aloud.

(2) Choose a partner and spend 10 - 15 minutes reading your chosen Read Aloud poems to each other. If anyone is ready to practice with Leah, that would be great. If you don't have your poem, choose any poem by another person and practice with that.

(3) #6 Point of View / Voice Poem:

Write a poem in which you write in 1st person and take on the voice, vocabulary, and point of view of someone or something other than yourself.

A few possibilities:

• write from the point of view of your cat, dog, horse, etc.
• write from the point of view of a grandparent, or a baby, or a homeless person.
  
• write from the point of view of an inanimate object.
• find a news story in today's paper and write from the point of view of one of the people involved.
• find an animal shelter listing of a cat or dog -- and write a poem from the perspective of that animal.

When writing, you might choose to situate the person, animal, or object in a particular moment and a particular place -- and then go from there.

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Use any remaining time to touch up previous poems.

"Y'all" are producing some really good material. It's time to start thinking about moving toward a product. Where would you like to go from here in terms of producing a collection of poems? (We'll talk about this next time).

Reading Poetry Aloud

Tips on reading poetry aloud from Billy Collins.

#5 Imitation/Response Poem

Exercise #5: Imitation Response Poem

Imitate or respond to a poem by another.

• respond to the ideas of the poem, or change the topic slightly
• imitate at least some aspects of the writer's style
• your poem need not be as long as the original

Model: See The New Poem by Charles Wright

#4 Line Breaks

Exercise #4

1. Make some observations about line breaks after looking at some sample poems in class
2. Write your own short poem that incorporates use of what you have learned about line breaks
3. Write a alternate version of the poem by changing the line breaks.
4. Place a star near the version of the poem you prefer.

That's it! Pretty simple! Line breaks are a powerful and simple tool!

#3 Figurative Language

Exercise #3:
(1) Read the model poems below.
(2) Create a list of 9 original metaphors / similes.
(3) Write 1 - 3 poems (total of 15 lines or more), each using a least one example of figurative language.

Models:

Mary Oliver, Morning at Great Pond

Pablo Neruda, Ode to My Socks

Metaphors and Similes in Hip Hop

Poetry.org: On Figurative Language