Wednesday Writing Workout: Social Media Poems!

Throughout April (National Poetry Month), I'm posting poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts. This week, I was in the mood for something short. I thumbed through my worn copy of The Book of Forms by Lewis Turco, but none of the 175+ forms jumped out at me. I wanted something new.

Then my son Jimmy sent me an article, "The Ideal Length of Everything Online, Backed by Research," which defines (among other things) the ideal length of a tweet as 100 characters and the ideal length of a Facebook post as less than 40 characters. Naturally, I thought about writing poems short enough to be posted on social media.

I searched online to find out what already existed on the topic. In an article from 2011, Carol Ann Duffy, Britain's Poet Laureate, said poetry is "a way of saying more with less, just as texting is. We've got to realise that the Facebook generation is the future – and, oddly enough, poetry is the perfect form for them. It's a kind of time capsule – it allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form."

To celebrate National Poetry Month, New York City hosted its fifth annual "#NYCPoetweet" Twitter poetry contest. So obviously, I didn't make up the idea of writing poems to post on social media sites, although I've posted a number myself. Haiku fit perfectly, as you can see in Laura's daily Riddle-Ku. Liz Garton Scanlon is posting a haiku on her blog every day this month. My cousin Maureen sent me an article about H. W. Brands (@hwbrands), an author, historian, and history professor who is tweeting "Haiku History: The American Saga Seventeen Syllables at a Time."

But a brief poem intended for social media doesn't need a specific form—it just has to be a short poem, maybe with a tangy metaphor, an alliterative pun, or a haiku-like twist. Writing short-short poems is practice in writing concisely. Here are a couple new ones of mine, both about this spring in Wisconsin:

Gray skies, more rain.

One goldfinch brightens 

the world.

Wet sidewalks = worm traps.

Stop wiggling—I'm trying to help!

I found social media-length poems on Twitter using these hashtags:

#micropoem
#micropoetry
#poemtweet
#poetrytweet
#poetweet
#twitterhaiku
#twitterku
#twitterpoem

If you search (as I did), be aware that you will find poems of uneven quality, from brilliant to confusing to downright offensive. But do try writing some of your own just for fun—and then share them online!

Congratulations to our Fifth Blogiversary Book Bundle winners!
Rafflecopter lists our prize winners on the original post, so you can always check back there after a drawing ends to see who won. Five entries were chosen to receive five books each. Here are the winners:

New Teaching Author Book Giveaway!
Don't forget to enter for a chance to win a copy of Jill Esbaum's Angry Birds Playground: Rain Forest.

National Poetry Month
On my own blog, I'm posting more poetry writing tips and assorted poetry treats on Fridays through April. This week's post includes the final National Poetry Month giveaway of Write a Poem Step by Step. Be sure to stop by!

JoAnn Early Macken

Blogiversary; Goodbye, Poetry Month; and Angry Birds Playground: Rain Forest Book Giveaway

Happy Spring!

Since I didn’t get to post about our 5 year blogiversary, I’ll jump in here to say a quick THANK YOU to friends who have been with the blog since the beginning or found us somewhere along the way. I love knowing that 5-book bundles are even now winging (wheeling?) their way to 5 of you who entered our contest. Woot!

Another of my National Geographic books was released a couple of weeks ago, so it’s time for a book giveaway. If you have any kiddos in your life who like the Angry Birds or might enjoy a lively book about the Amazon rain forest and its animals, please enter. I’d love to send you a copy of Angry Birds Playground:  Rain Forest.

This fourth book in the series (the third written by me) was my favorite to research. I quickly compiled a lonnng list of the amazing creatures that live in the Amazon. Narrowing it down was actually the toughest part of writing this book. Reading about some of them made my jaw drop.

-Like Hoatzin chicks. Those are born with temporary claws on the front edges of their wings. When a hawk or other predatory bird attacks a nest (which are built hanging over the water), the chicks can ploop to the water below, then swim underwater to the bank until the threat is over. Then they use those wee claws to climb back up the tree to their nest. (I couldn’t get photo permission in time for this post, but check out this quirky, chicken-sized bird!)

-Like the wide-mouthed Amazon Horned Frog. This bugger will attack and try to swallow anything that crosses its path – including human ankles. They're so aggressive that they're often found dead with some poor, too-big-to-swallow beastie halfway in.

                                                                                    Photo by George Grall

-Like the Golden Lion Tamarin, a photo of which you can see here. This fiery, red-orange (and endangered) species always looks so big in photos. Did you know they’re really only the size of a 5-year-old child’s foot?

Readers will learn about the four layers of the Amazon, the river itself, and the basin in general. Add cool lizards and turtles and insects and snakes, a few animals that consume their own … um, droppings, 5 primate species, and a frightening assortment of animals trying their darnedest to eat each other, and you’ve got one fascinating, four-layered place to discover.

Want to win a copy? Just enter via Rafflecopter below. I’ll send one winner their very own book. Contest runs through May 16th.

Jill Esbaum

Side note #1:  Farewell, Poetry Month. But if you're into rhyming picture books, I’m the guest blogger today over at Angie Karcher’s RhyPiBoMo.

Side note #2:  If you’re a picture book writer and are looking for a summer writing workshop, consider joining my author friend Linda Skeers and me at our Whispering Woods Picture Book Workshop. Follow link for more details.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

DECONSTRUCTING A POEM...and Happy Last Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month 2014!

.

Howdy, Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday!  

Today's host is Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference.
Thank you, Tabatha!

Our Carmela is out to make trouble.  I swear...she's a full-blown cyclone blowing through Poetry Month!

(Actually, she's not.  I'm just playin' with you.  I've been on the look-out for metaphors all month on my website, and that was a metaphor, blowing by...the poem on my site today compares writing to a challenging walk...)

Carmela has posted (and reads aloud) two versions of one of my poems, and she suggested I talk about the process of writing and revising it.

So...here's the story behind HOW TO READ A POEM ALOUD:

I was asked to help organize a poetry coffee house night for teens, and I wanted to teach them how to read aloud. Could I smush all the information into a poem, I wondered?  My teacher Myra Cohn Livingston always read poems aloud twice; I knew I wanted to include that in my instructions.

I've found nine versions of this poem; there may be more.  But don't panic--I won't make you read every draft!  Here's the very first version:

2/8/07  

READ ALOUD HOWS

Take a sip of water.

Read the title to your daughter. 

Pause.

Read the poet’s name.

Read the poem.

Read it once again

Take your time.

Say each word slowly

Let each word shine.

Take a breath and sigh.

Then think of how the poet put her hand to pen 

and why.

=========================

and here are the next several versions mashed together so you can see the ideas I tried and discarded...

HOW TO READ A POEM ALOUD

[Sit down in a meadow with a friend.

Tell the poet’s name and the title—

Now begin.]

[Stand up in your kitchen with your friend.

Tell the poet’s name and the title—

Now begin.]

[Walk home from the bus stop with your friend.

Tell the poet’s name and the title—

Now begin.]

[Take a sip of tea.

Tell the poet’s name to your friend.]

[Take a sip of tea.
Read the poet’s name
and say its title deliciously
to me.]

[To begin,
say the title
and the poet’s name
with a small smile.]

[To begin,
announce the title of the poem
and the poet’s name.
Make sure to pronounce it clearly]

[To begin,
read the title of the poem
and the poet’s name.
Be clear.]

Now—[your job is to] completely disappear

Say [taste] its title

deliciously.

Tell the poet’s name to me.

[Tell the poet’s name to me.

Taste her title deliciously.]

Pause. 

[Be sure you’re heard

so I can savour every word.]

Now:

   savour  [polish]

     every 

       word.

Let 

  each

    shine.

Then—read it one more time.

Next, take a breath

and sigh.

Then think about the poet 

at her desk

late at night

picking up her pen to write—

and why.

*   *   *   *   *   

 And here some of my moods as I write
and rewrite and write and rewrite (can you relate?):

...confused...

...determined...

...patient...

At some point on this journey, I read Marilyn Singer's prose,"How to Read a Poem Aloud"...and though it's a terrific list, it made my head spin, so I decided to stick with just the few points I'd been working with.

*   *   *   *   *  

And finally, here are the two versions Carmela posted (they've been floating around the internet, passing each other in the night, for years)...which do you like best?

            Version #1

            HOW TO READ A POEM ALOUD

            First, read the title of the poem

            and the poet’s name.

            Be clear.

            Now completely

            disappear.

            Let each line

            shine.

            Then read it

            one more time.

            When the poem

            ends, sigh.

            Think about the poet at her desk,

            late at night, picking up her pen to write--

            and why.

                             

*   *   *   *   *

Version #2 (as published in Sylvia Vardell's book, 

Poetry Aloud Here 2 ~ Sharing Poetry with Children)

HOW TO READ A POEM ALOUD

            To begin,

            tell the poet’s name 

            and the title 

            to your friend.

            Savor every word—

            let 

                each 

                        line 

                              shine.

          Then—

          read it one more time.

          Now, take a breath—

          and sigh.

          Then think about the poet,

          at her desk,

          late at night,

          picking up her pen to write—

          and why.

                             © April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved. 

Do I like one version better than the other?  Depends on what day you catch me.  That's the trick in creating something, isn't it: sometimes I know, I just know when it's finished: there's that satisfying click of the lasts puzzle piece...

from morguefile.com

 But just as often, I just...get...(yawn) t i r e d...so...I stop.

And that, dear campers, is the story behind HOW TO READ A POEM ALOUD!

Now, go outside and play.

posted with a glue gun by April Halprin Wayland.
(p.s: I've just been interviewed by author
and Seminar on Jewish Story organizer Barbara Krasner here.)

from mykidcraft.com

Wednesday Writing Workout: Fibs!

Throughout April (National Poetry Month), I'm posting poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts. Today's form is a Fib, a counted-syllable form with an increasing number of syllables per line, following the Fibonacci sequence. Each number in the series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on) is formed by adding the two previous numbers. The Fibonacci sequence can “describe an amazing variety of phenomena, in mathematics and science, art and nature.”

Greg Pincus visited the Teaching Authors last year. He explained the origin of the Fib form on his blog. The New York Times article “Fibonacci Poems Multiply on the Web After Blog's Invitation” describes the form’s increasing popularity. According to the Poetry Foundation, “These short, straightforward poems are that rare thing capable of crafting a bridge between the often disparate souls of art and science.”

When I tried writing Fibs, I found that the lengthening lines seemed to suit a subject that unfolds gradually or a conclusion that slowly dawns on a narrator and/or reader.

In this poem, my early drafts stopped at seven lines. Then I realized I had more to say, so I reversed the pattern and counted back down.

Signs of Spring

I
walk
my dog
cautiously
through our neighborhood
in spring, when warning signs crop up
on lush green smooth-as-carpet lawns: Pesticides! Keep off!

How on our dear troubled planet did poison become
an acceptable lawn care tool?
Is grass truly green
if nothing
else can
thrive
there?

Today is the last day to enter to win one of five Teaching Authors Blogiversary Book Bundles! Details are here.

On my own blog, I'm posting more poetry writing tips and assorted poetry treats on Fridays, including giveaways of Write a Poem Step by Step. Be sure to stop by!

JoAnn Early Macken

How to Read a Poem Aloud (Revised) and 2 Giveaway Reminders

Hi Everyone,
This month, we've been having a great time celebrating our BlogiVERSEary by sharing audio and video clips of the TeachingAuthors reciting some of our favorite poems. If you missed any of them, here are the links one more time, in the order posted:

• April reading Janet Wong's "Liberty," from Declaration of Interdependence: Poems for an Election Year.
• Carmela (me!) reading our own April Halprin Wayland's "How to Read a Poem Aloud," which was originally published  in the 2009 edition of Greg Pincus's 30 Poets/30 Days project. (See below for a revised version of this great poem!)
• Video-recording of JoAnn, April, and Jill reciting a poem in rounds: Mary Ann Hoberman's "Counting-Out Rhyme" from The Llama Who Had No Pajama. If you've never heard a poem read in rounds, you definitely want to watch this!
• Esther reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s "My Shadow," from A Children's Garden of Verses.
• Laura reading Rudyard Kipling's "Seal Lullaby."

Our actual blogiversary is tomorrow, April 22. Believe it or not, we've been posting for FIVE years!

Our blogiversary giveaway runs through Wednesday, April 23, so if you haven't entered yet, be sure to do so on this blog post. And while our blogiversary celebration is coming to a close, the Poetry Month fun continues with JoAnn's weekly poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts. JoAnn is also giving away copies of her terrific book, Write a Poem Step by Step on her blog.

Before publishing my last blog post, I double-checked with April regarding the formatting of her poem "How to Read a Poem Aloud," which I was sharing in my post. I was surprised to learn that she'd revised the poem since its first publication. Unfortunately, the news came after I'd already uploaded my recording of the original poem to SoundCloud and I didn't have time to re-record it before the post went live. I realized later that today's post was a great opportunity to share that revised version with you. I uploaded a new recording (email subscribers can listen to it here) and I copied the latest version of the poem below. If you want to compare the two, you can go back to my last post.

I'm hoping April will share with us her revision process, because, to be honest, I loved the poem the way it was. Of course, I like this version, too. J

                 How to Read a Poem Aloud (Revised Version)
                    by April Halprin Wayland

            To begin,
            tell the poet’s name 
            and the title 
            to your friend.

            Savor every word—
            let 
                each 
                        line 
                              shine.

          Then—
          read it one more time.

          Now, take a breath—
          and sigh.

          Then think about the poet,
          at her desk,
          late at night,
          picking up her pen to write—

          and why.

                             © April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved. 

Happy writing!
Carmela

"Seal Lullaby," by Rudyard Kipling [Poetry Friday]

I hope you've been enjoying our sharing of some of our favorite poems. I've really loved hearing my fellow Teaching Authors read!

I could never choose one favorite poem, but this is definitely one I come back to again and again. It has several elements I adore: rhyme, nature, the ocean, gorgeous language, a melancholy but still comforting tone, and content that acknowledges the dangers in the world but promises safety anyway.

Seal Lullaby

Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
  And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us,
  At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
  Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
  Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas.

—Rudyard Kipling

And here I am reading the poem:



I hope you're having a terrific National Poetry Month! There's so much amazing stuff being shared in our kidlitosphere--it's hard to keep up, isn't it? I do hope you'll take a couple of minutes to go to our Blogiversary Post and enter our giveaway. You could win one of five book bundles from one of the Teaching Authors:>)

Artist/writer/blogger/poet and all-around lovely person Robyn Hood Black has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Life on the Deckle Edge. Have fun!

[posted by Laura Purdie Salas]

Wednesday Writing Workout: Book Spine Poems!

Throughout April (National Poetry Month), I'll be posting poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts. For today's workout, why not try a book spine poem?

Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books project has inspired numerous book spine poems. Also check out Travis Jonker's 2014 Book Spine Poem Gallery. You can even send in your own if you're so inspired!

I tried a few and could hardly stop myself. Good thing my bookshelves are somewhat limited! Do not set me loose in a library!

 Curiosity

 

Poetry Is

Note to Self

For the Next Generation

 

Remember to enter to win one of five Teaching Authors Blogiversary Book Bundles! Details are here. 

On my own blog, I'm posting more poetry writing tips and assorted poetry treats on Fridays, including giveaways of Write a Poem Step by Step. Be sure to stop by!

JoAnn Early Macken

Happy Blogi-VERSE-ary!!!!!

Hip (to the 5^th power) Hooray!
It’s our Blogiversary!!!!!
Our TeachingAuthors group blog has been teaching authors since April of 2009!

To celebrate the occasion, we’re celebrating you!  Enter our Raffle drawing to win one of FIVE Blogiversary Book Bundles – each bundle a set of five books hand-selected by a TeachingAuthor that includes at least one autographed TeachingAuthor book.  Check the end of this post for details.

But wait!

It’s also our Blogi-VERSE-ary, so smartly re-named by our reader Mary Lee of A Year of Reading, because we six TeachingAuthors chose to celebrate the occasion by reciting our favorite poem in honor of Poetry Month.

I suggested the idea once I read about the Poetry Foundation’s current Favorite Poem Project: Chicago which grew out of former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s national Favorite Poem Project – Americans Saying Poems They Love which celebrates poetry as a vocal art. 

Poetry Foundation President Robert Polito shared in his project description that “a favorite poem can be a talisman or mantra, a clue, landmark or guiding star and dwells deep down in our psyches.”

Thank you for your interest in the Favorite Poem Project: Chicago. Check this page regularly to view the six videos in the series which will be release twice each week starting on Monday, April 14.Hana Bajramovic
"The Order of Key West" by Wallace StevensNaomi Beckwith
"The Children of the Poor" by Gwendolyn BrooksMayor Rahm Emanuel
"Chicago" by Carl SandburgThank you for your interest in the Favorite Poem Project: Chicago. Check this page regularly to view the six videos in the series which will be release twice each week starting on Monday, April 14.Hana Bajramovic
"The Order of Key West" by Wallace StevensNaomi Beckwith
"The Children of the Poor" by Gwendolyn BrooksMayor Rahm Emanuel
"Chicago" by Carl FYI: the Poetry Foundation, located in beautiful downtown Chicago, is an amazing resource – for writers and readers, for teachers, of course, but really-and-truly, for anyone human.

To plan a (highly-recommended) visit, click here.

To explore the children’s poetry resources, click here. 

Students can find recitation tips and look for poems here.

Teachers can learn all about Poetry Out Loud in the classroom by clicking here.
So you’re never without a poem nearby, click here to download the Poetry App.

The poem I chose to recite via SoundCloud (and – fingers-crossed – successfully uploaded to today’s post so you can hear it) is Robert Louis Stevenson’s MY SHADOW.

The poem dwells deep, deep, deep in my psyche, placed there by my mean-spirited third grade teacher Miss Atmore at Philadelphia’s Overbrook Elementary.  (Think every gruesome teacher Raoul Dahl created, to the max (!), down to the spit that sprayed the air when she’d lean in close to admonish a mistake.)

In between Halloween and Thanksgiving of that third grade year, each of us was to choose, memorize and then recite before the class eight lines of a poem.  I instantly knew the poem I’d choose.  I treasured my copy of A CHILD’S GARDEN OFVERSES.  How could I not choose my favorite poem, My Shadow? I loved the poem’s sing-song rhythms; I loved its playfulness. I even recall jumping rope while I recited the poem, practicing, practicing, practicing.  I so wanted to get it right.  Standing before my classmates in the front of my classroom, beside Miss Atmore seated dispassionately at her desk, demanded Courage and Moxie, both of which I lacked.

"My poem is My Shadow,” I bravely began, and Miss Atmore stopped me, cold, mid-sentence.

“Po-em is a two-syllable word, child!” she shouted. “How many times must I tell you all that?!  Now raise your head, start again and this time, for goodness sake, speak the words correctly!”

The rhythm of the lines ran away (probably scared); I mispronounced "India" as "Indian." All I could do was stare at the two shiny pennies that adorned my new brown loafers. 
But that failed recitation serves as a landmark. Thanks to Miss Atmore, I knew then and there that when – I – grew up to be a teacher someday, everything that Miss Atmore was, I would spend my lifetime making sure I wasn't.                                (IIllustration by Ted Rand)                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Ironically, when I was first trying my hand at writing for children, I wrote a poem entitled “P-O-E-M is a Two-syllable Word.” In time the title became a line in the first poem I ever sold, to Ebony Jr. magazine.  I’ve searched high-and-low for my copy so I might share the poem, but alas, no luck.  Even today, I can’t speak the word “poem” without enunciating clearly its two two-letter syllables.

           My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head.
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow –

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

[Note: If you're receiving this post via email, here's the link to the Sound Cloud reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's My Shadow by Esther Hershenhorn ]


             * * * * * * * *
I offer at least five bundles of thanks to you, our readers, for embracing our blog, and to my fellow TeachingAuthors too – Jill Esbaum, JoAnn Early Macken, Carmela Martino, Laura Purdie Salas, April Halprin Wayland and currently in absentia but always in my heart, Mary Ann Rodman and Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford, for embracing me.

I did indeed find that long-ago missing Moxie and each of you makes sure I maximize it bi-monthly.

Here’s to a month of poetic celebrations!

 Oh, and don’t forget to enter our BlogiversaryRaffle to win one of FIVE Blogiversary Book Bundles. 

Good Luck!

Esther Hershenhorn

Favorite Poem Project: A Group Effort!

We Teaching Authors are celebrating National Poetry Month by posting recordings of us reading some of own favorite poems.

Today is my turn--lucky me! I spent a few days at a writing retreat with Teaching Authors Jill Esbaum and April Halprin Wayland, who generously helped me try something I've wanted to do for a long time: read a poem in rounds.

Here's our recording of Mary Ann Hoberman's "Counting-Out Rhyme" from The Llama Who Had No Pajama.

What fun! Thank you, Jill and April!

If you're reading this post via email, you can view the video on YouTube.

Don't forget to enter our drawing to win one of five Teaching Authors Blogiversary Book Bundles! The details are here.

After you enter, remember to visit me over at my own blog, where I'm posting more poetry writing tips and assorted poetry treats on Fridays throughout April and giving away copies of Write a Poem Step by Step. Good luck!

Poetry Friday
Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Today's Little Ditty. Enjoy!

JoAnn Early Macken