This week I would like you to pick one of the poems that you have created thus far. Polish it, make it shine and post it on your blog. You have written some beautiful poems you have shared with the class and possibly some amazing ones you have yet to share.
Pick something you like and want to share with the rest of us. I look forward to some amazing blogs this week. Blow me away with your genius!
This blog will be due next Tuesday.
Although I do not think this particular candy is edible, I do love to play with them. They are great for creating poems! I hope that you enjoyed playing with them and were able to create something extremely creative! This week post the picture of your poem from class. Be sure that you also tape a picture of this poem in your journal! Can't wait to read your fabulous poetical creations! This blog is extra special so it will be due on Wednesday.
As we approach Valentine's Day and look for love poems. They are all around and do not have to be written to a person! I encourage you to read a lot to help as you begin to write your own.
We have read in Poem Crazy about using images to encourage inspiration. I have put several images which may help to inspire you, or I encourage you to find your own. You will want to print the image and attach it to your journal with your practice work. Really look for something that creates a strong emotion within you and use that as your muse for this poem. After playing around in your journal create a final poem to post on your blog.
Be sure to include the image in your blog with the poem it helped to inspire. Create your love or anti-love poem; share it with us in class or not; post it on your blog.☺
All over Europe there are love padlocks,
they started appearing in the early 2000s;
no one is sure who started each one.
There is one in Rome where the ritual of
affixing love padlocks on the bridge
Ponte Milvio is attributed to the book, I Want You by Federico Moccia.
I think is a beautiful sentimental tradition.
In Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love
Graffiti artist Bansky has done several wonderful pieces
these are few with some romantic notions
Jenny Holzer has created art with the power of words...she takes what she calls truisms and makes them art. The piece below was a xenon she did in Berlin.
This is the meeting place by Paul Day
at St. Pancras Railway, in London; there
are some great statues here.
Of course there is Romeo and Juliet in Central Park.
El Beso is in Lima, Peru
This set pictures is from Emily Campbell's Love Ties, it is absolutely genius the words are all about Hanley Park in Stoke on Trent. She created these pieces "a reminder of distant memories, of words once spoken that can and often are so easily forgotten or torn apart. As it lives in the park a permanent and solid nature the reminder of these letter is not allowed to die, they can't be retracted or torn up. Love Ties serves to remind us that despite what we may have neglected, our words can and often do live on in others."
This cute scene can be found in Ottawa
Hearts like these are all over San Francisco.
The love seat is another padlock and tribute to love in Italy.
I ache for people who approach poetry like a root canal with torturous fear. They may have experienced the English class torture chamber Mr. Collins described for us; holding the poems of dead, white, men hostage. There may have been a sprinkling of Whitman and Dickinson. But the experience sucked the joy out of their marrow...crippling their poetic souls. That school experience is enough to cause some to run with they hear the word poetry later in life as if there were a swarm of killer bees after them.
I hope that in this High School Poetry class we can reexamine poetry and learn to love it. Just as we love other things like music and food; we don't all love the same types, but for each of us there is something we like. To the average person, poetry conjures images of archaic rhyming couplets, Shakespeare, beatniks snapping their fingers, diaries full of feelings, and a horde of other stereotypes. Like all stereotypes it only shows a few aspects and not the multifacets of poetry.
You could say that those people who run, suffer from Metrophobia, the fear of poetry.
Ideally poetry is everything, and that most certainly includes humor, love and modern relevancy. All those people who pass poetry off as elitist and esoteric work of dead white men are happy to create their self-fulfilling prophecies, limiting themselves and missing out on gems.
I hope that each of you will not fall prey to Metrophobia so you don't miss out on great poems like these gems by Maya Angelou:
Alone
by Maya Angelou
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Directions for this blog: Watch and read the poems by Maya Angelou. In this post write a response paragraph or poem to one of Angelou's poems. Tell my what you think?
Welcome to the fabulous world of poetry! I am so excited to study poetry with you this semester.
As we study this semester I want you to think about... Why write poetry? Why Study poetry? Why is it that for thousands of years human beings have been creating and thinking and writing down their thoughts in the form of poetry? These are all fabulous questions; ones that I hope you will answer for yourselves this semester. I believe we love poetry because it is alive, it is the expression of humanity. Poetry is full of emotion, passion, opinions, beauty, anger, hope, dreams, fears...it is the window into our souls. Part of being human is the desire to express ourselves. I believe poems are the expression of what is inside each of us, and each poem is written because of a need to express our emotions. Poems allow us to express a moment, a feeling, an idea as truthfully and carefully as possible so that each reader can feel the essences of the emotion behind it. There are so many poems, types of poems and ways to express ourselves. I can't wait to get started!☺ Once you have set up your blog please write your first post. Tell me why you are studying poetry. What is your experience with poetry and how do you feel about it? Why do you think so many people either love or hate poetry? What do you hope to gain from your experience with poetry?
This week I would like you to pick one of the poems that you have created thus far. Polish it, make it shine and post it on your blog. You have written some beautiful poems you have shared with the class and possibly some amazing ones you have yet to share.
Although I do not think this particular candy is edible, I do love to play with them. They are great for creating poems! I hope that you enjoyed playing with them and were able to create something extremely creative! This week post the picture of your poem from class. Be sure that you also tape a picture of this poem in your journal! Can't wait to read your fabulous poetical creations!
This blog is extra special so it will be due on Wednesday.
Graffiti artist Bansky has done several wonderful pieces
Jenny Holzer has created art with the power of words...she takes what she calls truisms and makes them art. The piece below was a xenon she did in Berlin.
