Water Poems

I live on an island, surrounded by water.

So it's not surprising that I want to devote our last week of National Poetry Month to water poetry.


Water is life-giving. It's also beautiful, and wet, and wild and wonderful, which is why so many poets use water images. 

Water also turns into ice, like in "Woman Skating" by Margaret Atwood:

With arms wide the skater

turns, leaving her breath like a diver's

trail of bubbles.

Seeing the ice 

as what is is, water. 

Here's "Water Music" by Robert Creeley, with its dark mood:

The words are a beautiful music.

The words bounce like in water.

Water music,

loud in the clearing

off the boats,

birds, leaves.

They look for a place

to sit and eat-

no meaning,

no point. 

And here's the start of the fun, silly "Duck's Ditty" by Kenneth Grahame: 

All along the backwater,

Through the rushes tall,

Ducks are a-dabbling,

Up tails all! 

What is YOUR water poem? Is it about the ocean? A lake? A stream? An icy pond? Or a duck? 

Find your own images and let yourself get wet with water words!

Onomatopoeia for Earth Day

It's perfect that Earth Day falls in April, which is National Poetry Month.

This Earth Day, I want to combine two things I love: animals and onomatopoeia. 

In case you haven't heard of this wonderful word, onomatopoeia (pronounced ah-no-mah-to-PEE-ah) refers to a word that's formed from the sound it makes.

sizzle, crunch, cuckoo, tick-tock, fizz

Can you think of more? 



Animal sounds have great onomatopoeia:

oink, meow, chirp, hiss, ribbit, croak, squeak, quack

To celebrate Earth Day, let's write a poem using animal onomatopoeia. Here's mine:

Croaking and Squawking

The crow croaks at the mouse

Who squeaks at the sheep

Who bleats at the cat

Who mews at the dog

Who yowls at the pig

Who oinks at the raven

Who caws at the parrot

Who squawks at me that it's time to eat. 

Try making your own poetry animals "talk" with onomatopoeia.

Recite your poem out loud on Earth Day, or read it to your pets. For extra zing, add your own sound effects!

Rhymed Couplets

It's the second week of National Poetry Month. Hurray for poetry!

And hurray for William Shakespeare! I'm reading Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, a story about fairies, love, and confusion in the forest.

One of the joys of reading Shakespeare is his language. Sometimes he uses blank verse (poetry that doesn't rhyme). Sometimes he uses prose (not poetry). And sometimes he uses rhymed couplets, which are wonderful to read aloud.

One story in A Midsummer Night's Dream is about Oberon, the King of the Fairies, and Titania, his Queen. 

In these rhymed couplets, Oberon tells Puck to place some magical "juice" from a flower on the sleeping Titania's eyes. When Titania wakes up, she will fall in love with the first being she sees.

In rhymed couplets, Oberon begins: 

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet muskroses and with eglantine.

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.

And there the snake throws her enameled skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. 

Read it out loud. Can you hear and feel the rhyme? The rhyme scheme is what we call:

a
a
b
b
c
c
d
d

We say "couplets" because the first two lines rhyme, the next two lines rhyme, and so on.

Blows means to burst into flower. Oxlips, woodbine, and eglantine are types of flowers. Weed means clothing. But even if we don't know the meaning of these words, it doesn't matter. The rhyme and the sense of the poem carry us away.

Want to try your own? Write a short poem in rhyming couplets. It doesn't have to be about fairies and magical juice. It can be about anything you want. 

Rhyming is fun. If you get stuck trying to find a rhyme, go to one of the rhyming dictionaries online.

Now excuse me while I start my poem in rhyming couplets:

a      I love my stapler, so sleek and gray,
a      I always hate to put it away. 
b      It chomps, it bites, it holds together
b      Anything, in any weather. 

It's not Shakespeare, but as I said, rhyming couplets can be about whatever we want! 

National Poetry Month 2015

April is National Poetry Month! 

On Yellow Pencils, that means all poetry, all month.

Not a poet, you say? Not a problem. Even if we write fiction or nonfiction, writing a poem lets us play with words. And we all love words, right?

Let's start with nonsense. Being silly is always a good way to get into poetry. I'm in the mood to write an acrostic poem using the word "nonsense." How about you? 

Natty was batty
Oony was loony
Nilly was silly
Sadie was a-fraidy
Elso was nutso
Nad was mad
Soupy was loopy and
Elaine was insane. 

Your nonsense acrostic can rhyme or not. The only "rule" is, Have fun. Welcome to National Poetry Month!

Write a Poem About Your Place

Where do you live? 

Is it a big city or a tiny town? Do you live on a farm or in a high-rise building? Do you live on a busy corner or high up a hill? 

To continue celebrating National Poetry Month, let's write about our place. 

Think about where you live. What do you like about it? What don't you like? What makes it different from any other place? How do you get there? By train, car, boat, bus, or elevator? 

First write down some images that come to mind. Use all your 5 senses: what do you see, hear, smell, taste, touch in your mind when you think about the place where you live?

Include details that make your place unique. 

Now take those details and images and put them into your poem, telling the reader--as only you can--about the place where you live.

I live on an island. Here's my poem.

An Island in the Morning

The ferry honks three times:
I'm coming in!

The heron lifts its wings:
I'm hungry!

The salt air stings the nose:
I smell like fish! 

The dock stretches into the harbor:
Tie your boats up here! 

The mountain shows off: 
I'm a giant ice-cream cone! 

The rocky beach makes walking hard:
I'm slippery and wet! 

The grocery store opens its doors:
I hear the morning gossip!

A bus rumbles down the main street:
I take commuters to the ferry!

The ferry honks one time: 
I'm going out! 

What do you want to say about your place? 

A Silly Poem for Earth Day

Tomorrow is Earth Day!

And we're still celebrating National Poetry Month.

Have you noticed, a lot of poems about nature or Earth are serious? 

They don't have to be. 

I'm mixing my love of nature with my love of silliness. Here's my silly poem about Earth (with thanks to the poet Joyce Kilmer, author of "Trees"--who was a guy, by the way). 

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.

I think that I shall never view
A poem as lovely as a gnu.

I think that I shall never spy
A poem as lovely as a fly.

I think that I shall never glimpse
A poem as lovely as two chimps.

I think I'll never scrutinize
A poem as lovely as the skies.

But now I'll end this poem, you see
Cause nothing's better than a tree! 


How about your Earth Day poem?

Be silly, fun, and full of mirth
To celebrate our Planet Earth! 

Write a Poem About a Library

Not only is this National Poetry Month. It's also National Library Week.

Put the two together, and what do you get? No, not a mixed-up calendar. You get a poem about a library!

Do you have a library at school or in your town? What do you love about it? Is it the big windows? The shelves of books? The rows of computers? The helpful library workers? The storytimes? 

We can celebrate our library with an acrostic poem. That's a poem in which the letters of a word (like "library") give us the first line.

Here's my library acrostic. Have fun creating your own!

Lots and lots and lots of 
Interesting 
Books.
Real stories and made-up stories
About animals, action, and adventure. 
Read! 
Your library has the perfect book to carry you away. 

Haiku

This is our last week celebrating National Poetry Month. And no celebration of poetry is complete without haiku.

Haiku is a form of poetry originating in Japan. A haiku has 17 syllables, broken down like this:

First line: 5 syllables
Second line: 7 syllables
Third line: 5 syllables

Traditionally, haiku is about the natural world.

The most famous Japanese haiku poet, Matsuo Basho, lived from 1644 to 1694. Haiku actually dates from the 9th century, so you can see that it has been around for a very long time! 

When Basho's haiku is translated into English, it doesn't usually follow the traditional number of syllables. 

flower of the harvest moon?
it only looks that way
a cotton field

Here's a traditional haiku by Rachel, a student from Wisconsin.

An orca whale jumps
Sending a cry in the air,
Splashing water high.

You can also add artwork to your haiku. Try writing your own, and have fun experimenting. 
Happy haiku-ing! 

An Earth Day Ode

Today is Earth Day. And we're still celebrating National Poetry Month. So naturally it's a good day to write a poem about....the Earth! 

Earth is a BIG subject, so let's write about one small part of nature. 

I love to write odes. An ode is a poem that celebrates a person, animal, object...or anything. 

To write an Earth Day Ode, first think about your subject. A porcupine, pine cone, or polar star? A cactus, canyon, or caterpillar? 

Choose your favorite animal, your favorite place in nature, or go outside and find a leaf, rock, or stick you'd like to put into an ode.

Odes don't have to rhyme. Often they're addressed directly ("you") to the subject. They can follow any form.

Here's my Earth Day Ode to ice.

Ice

You cover our poles

South and north 

Keeping Earth cooled down.

Frozen bubbles of water.

Silver, white, gray, black.

Your frost and rime and crystals are

Brittle and beautiful as diamonds.

We don't thank you enough

So I'm thanking you now.

Your fields stretch out

Like a frozen blanket

Protecting us. 

Telephone Poems

We're still celebrating National Poetry Month! 

These days we all seem to be attached to our phones. So it seems fitting that we combine telephones with poetry....and write a Telephone Poem.

No, this isn't an ode to our phones (as much as we love our smart phones, dumb phones, or whatever kind of phones we have).

A Telephone Poem uses your phone number as a start-off point to write a poem. 

Write your phone number down the left-hand side of a page or screen. 

Now write a poem in which each line contains as many words as the number opposite it. The number zero can be no words--an empty line--or it can be a "wild card" to fill any way you want. 

I'll make up a phone number (with no area code, so we can't call it): 545-8604. I'm going to use the zero as a "wild card," a line with as many words as I want. 

Extreme Tide

5   Yesterday the extreme low tide
4   Exposed the sea stars 
5   Clinging to the ferry dock. 
8   A little boy told me he'd touched one. 
6   "How did it feel?" I asked. 
0   "Weird. But fun." 
4   Just like the tide. 

Writing with a particular form, like a set number of lines, can free up our imagination. That doesn't seem logical, but that's how it works. 

Your phone is ringing. It wants its own poem! 

Nonsensical Poems

Yellow Pencils is continuing our celebration of poetry this month.

There's something about spring that makes me think about...nonsense! It must be the wonderful smells in the air, and the extra kick we have in our steps. Or maybe it's the dogs running around in hats. 

Nonsense poems are silly and fun, like Edward Lear's "The Quangle Wangle's Hat." It begins: 

On the top of the Crumpetty Tree
The Quangle Wangle sat,
But his face you could not see,
On account of his Beaver Hat.
For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide,
With ribbons and bibbons on every side,
And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace,
So that nobody could ever see the face
Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.

Try not reading that poem out loud. You just have to, it's so fun, with made-up words like "crumpetty" and "Quangle Wangle." (And what if the Quangle Wangle was a dog?)

Lewis Carroll wrote the ultimate nonsense poem, "Jabberwocky." Here are the first two stanzas:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jujub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

Try writing your own poem with nonsense words. You can use either Edward Lear's or Lewis Carroll's poems as a model. 

Read a poem just for fun or to inspire your writing. Writing is made up of words, and poets have the most fun of all experimenting with them. 

Animal Poems

April is National Poetry Month! All month long, we'll be celebrating poetry here at Yellow Pencils. 

I love animals, and let's face it, some animals look silly, act silly, or have a silly name. Like the three-toed sloth. Or the kiwi. Or the ocelot. 

Write a poem about a "silly" animal, your favorite animal, or any animal you think is really cool. Be silly or serious, use rhyme or not, and make up words. Think about your animal, and what makes it special to you. 

Here's my silly poem, The Ocelot

The Ocelot

I like the ocelot.
A lot.
I likes its spots
like polka dots. 
More often than not
this cat is hot
the tawny, yellow ocelot. 

Here's a silly poem by John Gardner.

The Cockatoo

The Cockatoo is widely known
For talking on the telephone
And also (wretched, thoughtless bird)
For hanging up without a word.


And a serious one by Langston Hughes.


The Snail

Little snail,
Dreaming you go,
Weather and rose
Is all you know.

Weather and rose
Is all you see,
Drinking the dewdrop's 
Mystery.

What is your animal poem? 

Funny Poems

April is National Poetry Month, and that means it's a fun time to write poems. It's also a fun time to write funny poems.

What's funny to one person isn't always funny to another, but I think everyone would smile at the following poem by Laura E. Richards.

Eletelephony

Once there was an elephant,

Who tried to use the telephant--

No! No! I mean an elephone

Who tried to use the telephone--

(Dear me! I am not certain quite

That even now I've got it right.)

Howe'er it was, he got his trunk

Entangled in the telephunk;

The more he tried to get it free,

The louder buzzed the telephee--

(I fear I'd better drop the song

Of elephop and telephong!)

And here's a short, funny poem by Ogden Nash:

The Eel

I don't mind eels

Except as meals

And the way they feels.

What makes these poems funny? They all use word play and rhyme. They even make up their own words! It's fun to break the rules and write, "And the way they feels."

So try writing your own funny poem. Play with words, make up your own, and try out some rhymes.

If you need help getting started, rewrite "The Eel" with your own animal or thing:

The _________

I don't mind ______________

Except as ________________

And the way they ___________.

Here's my poem, "The Cat." Have fun writing your own!

The Cat

I don't mind cats

Except as mats

And the way they get fats.

"I Am" Poem

In an "I Am" poem, we write about a thing as if we are that thing. (Isn't it fun to pretend?)

Here's the form we use for an "I Am" poem:

I am a __________, __________ing ___________________.

I am a __________, __________ing ___________________.

I am a __________, __________ing ___________________.

I am a ____________________________________________.

In the first blank, write down an object. In the second blank after the comma, use a verb ending in "ing." Try to think of fun and unusual verbs, something you don't usually connect with that object. Instead of "I am a pine cone, falling to the ground," how about "I am a pine cone, diving to the ground?"

In the third blank, finish the sentence as you'd like. So: "I am a garbage can, opening my mouth to eat leftovers." (Who says you can't write a poem about a garbage can?)

For the next two lines, write about two other objects. For the last line, finish the poem however you'd like with an "I am" statement.

Since we just celebrated Earth Day, I wrote an "I Am" poem about something from nature.

Leaf

I am a leaf

swallowing rain.

I am a blade of grass

listening to skateboarders.

I am a daffodil

hiding from flower pickers.

I am the big, fat, yellow sun winking at Earth.

A How-To Poem

For the rest of National Poetry Month, I want to focus on writing poems.

How about a "How-To Poem?"

We all know how to do things. Some of us know how to bake chocolate chip cookies. Others know how to put on a pair of skis (I don't). Still others know how to take the subway. If someone asks us, we can explain how to do those things.

That's what a "How-To Poem" does. It explains how to do something, only we use our imaginations instead of explaining how to do something from real life.

For example: How to give a giraffe a bath. Or how to find buried treasure. Or how to put a bathing suit on a four-ton hippo. (Don't try that at home.)

What would you like to explain in your "how-to poem?" Use your imagination: the sillier the better. Here's my "how-to-poem" about putting a cat to bed.

HOW TO PUT A CAT TO BED

First, find a cat.

He may not cooperate.

Tuck him in with blankets.

Sing lullabies until he purrs.

Then turn away and wait

for the sound of

little

cat

paws.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, and that means it's time to write poems! Not that we ever need an excuse to write a poem, but April is a good time to remember how much fun it is to play with words.

So go ahead! Write a poem!

How, you ask?

Start with an acrostic poem. That's one where you use the letters of the person, animal, place, or thing you're writing about to start each line. Like this:

Always running

Moving quickly with her

Yellow braids flying.

Baby seagulls cry while

Early morning swimmers

Arrive with their

Chairs and towels

Hoping for a scorcher.

Use your own name, your street, your favorite ice cream, the best month of the year (in your opinion), or even the word "poem" to write an acrostic poem.

Practically no one writes

Ordinary poems.

Except me.

Maybe it's because I'm extraordinary.