The Poetry Friday Roundup Is Here!

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Wild Rose Reader this week. Leave the URL of your poetry post in the comments. I'll be rounding up all the links throughout the day.

The Friday Morning Poetry Pack

Charles Ghigna—also known as Father Goose—says he’d like to “Open the door a little more with ONE at the Bald Ego blog. He’d also like to share a few SNICKERS with us.

Ruth has Pablo Neruda’s Ode to a Lizard at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town.

Toby Speed shares an original poem about a “famous shoe” at The Writer’s Armchair.

At the Poem Farm, Amy has poem #4 in her series of poems about reading and books—and poem #5 of sock week. (Amy's got original poems for us every day of the week--not just of Fridays.)

Mary Lee of A Year of Reading has an original acrostic about “balance” today. (She says she’s trying to get some in her own life.)

Irene Latham gives us Mary Oliver’s What Is the Greatest Gift? this Poetry Friday.

Poet Heidi Mordhorst shares an original poem by her daughter titled ask mom at My Juicy Little Universe.

At A Journey in Learning, Debbie Diller has a poem by Sallie Wolf titled Cardinals from Wolf's book The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound.

Over at The Stenhouse Blog, you’ll find the poem Teacher by Sharon Draper.

Diane Mayr says she’s looking at oatmeal poems this week at Random Noodling. And at Kurious K’s Kwotes, she’s got a quote by Mackenzie Conneellee. She’s also “remembering Reynolds Price at Kurious Kitty’s Kurio Kabinet.

David Elzey reexamines a puzzling moment of his youth called “job interview #1.”

Children’s poet Laura Salas shares a lovely original poem titled Wintry Warmth at Writing the World for Kids. She’s also in with her weekly 15 Words or Less Poems.

Jama Rattigan adds Tomatoes to the Friday feast over at Alphabet Soup—the poem Tomatoes by Stephen Dobyns, that is.

Dorraine Bennett has the winning poem from the regional Poetry Out Loud contest at DoriReads. It’s "Who Understands Me but Me" by Jimmy Santiago Baca.

At Semicolon, Sherry presents Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Tabatha Yeatts has Rattle for us this Poetry Friday.

Blythe Woodson gives us Figment: A Space for Poetry on Poetry Friday.

At Deo Writer, MsMac shares William Stafford’s Ask Me.

Ben at The Small Nouns has the latest in his Poetry Mix Tape series.

The Write Sisters are offering up Eleanor Lerman’s Starfish for our poetry reading pleasure.

In her post Stepping Toward the Brink—of Paper, author/poet Jeannine Atkins shares a poem she wrote about finding inspiration through her senses.

PaperTigers joins in the Poetry Friday fun with a post about Canadian poet P. K. Page.

I’m in at Wild Rose Reader with a first draft of an original poem titled It’s Snowing Again!—which was inspired by all the winter storms we’ve had here recently.



The Literary Lunch Bunch

At Blue Rose Girls, I have an original fairy tale poem titled Dear Goldilocks that I wrote in the form of a letter.

Kelly Fineman is in with an excerpt from Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth—which relates to yesterday’s chapter of Pride and Prejudice at her blog Writing and Ruminating.

Janet Squires has a post about the book Bees, Snails, & Peacock Tails, which was written by Betsy Franco and illustrated by Steve Jenkins.

Tara says that a random encounter with a lost pet sign made her think about a particular Mark Doty poem.

Carlie serves up Aztec Drink in January, an original poem, at her blog Twinkling Along.

Sheri Doyle is revisiting a favorite poem by Ezra Pound today.

Take a one-click trip over to The Drift Record where award-winning poet Julie Larios has Double Abecedarian, an original double abecedarian about how to write double abecedarians.
I think I'd need more than one lesson to write one of those poems!


Early Evening Poetry Tastings

Liz Scanlon is in this Poetry Friday with some librarian love…

At One Deep Drawer, you’ll find a poem by W. A. Mathieu about Bach dying on the day after Mozart’s birth.


The Late Edition

Rasco from RIF has a poem by Linda Hull related to the Chinese New Year, which will be celebrated on February 3rd.

You'll find a book spine poem over at Looking for the Write Words.


Saturday Morning Special

Sylvia Vardell has an interesting interview with award-winning poet and anthologist Lee Bennett Hopkins about the future of publishing poetry for children. Click here to read the interview.


Special Edition Sunday

Over at TeachingAuthors they're talking about organizing your writing...and your life. April Halprin Wayland has an interview with Clutter Buster Brooks Palmer about his book . She also offers an original poem (and two drawings) about cleaning out the clutter.

It's Snowing Again!: An Original Poem

Well, we had yet another big snowstorm here yesterday! There is NO place to put any more shoveled snow. Here’s the first draft of a “snow” poem that I was inspired to write this week.

It’s Snowing Again!

It’s snowing again.
It’s blowing again.
It’s snowing and blowing.
The traffic is slowing.
The drifts keep on growing and growing and growing.
It just keeps on snowing
and snowing and snowing.
I don’t think it’s
EVER
going
to end.

I'm doing the Poetry Friday Roundup at Wild Rose Reader this week.

NOTE: Click here for the link to my ROUNDUP post.

An Icicle Shape Poem

I'd been trying to write an icicle poem for about a week. I thought it had some good images and creative language--but I just couldn't get it right...no matter how much I worked on it. This morning, I thought I'd attempt writing a different kind of icicle poem. This time, I wrote one in the shape of an icicle. (I rarely write shape/concrete poetry.)

Here's the rough draft of my icicle shape poem--and two icicle pictures that I've taken in the past week.

Tears of snow
held suspended
in winter’s
icy grasp
grow
drop by
drop
into
crys
tal
s
p
e
a
r
s

********************

Note: Barbara Juster Esbensen wrote one of my favorite icicle poems. It was originally published in her poetry collection about the four seasons titled Cold Stars and Fireflies. Unfortunately, the book is now out of print. The poem is also included in Weather: Poems for All Seasons (An I Can Read Book), which was compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins. Fortunately, that book is still in print.

Here's how Esbensen's icicle poem begins:

Have you ever tasted icicles

fresh from the edge
of the roof?

Have you let the sharp ice

melt

in your mouth

like cold swords?

In the poem, Esbensen also compares icicles to a glass xylophone and to a crystal harp being played by the sun.

To Catch a Setting Sun: Rough Draft of an Original Poem

I've been taking a lot of pictures lately--and hoping some of them might inspire me to write poetry. Here's a photo I took a few days ago from my bedroom window at sunset.

And here's the rough draft of a poem I just wrote for the picture. I haven't used any punctuation. I just used line breaks.

Trees stretch their bony fingers
weave them into a dark net
try to catch
the setting sun
before it slips away
before it steals the light of day

Under the Snow: A Nonfiction Picture Book Review

Under the Snow
Written by Melissa Stewart
Illustrated by Constance R. Bergum
Peachtree, 2009

When it’s cold outside and snow blankets the ground, it may appear that there’s little animal life around. But appearances can be deceiving! Just because we can’t see something, it's not proof that “something” isn’t there. Because…under the snow—tucked into gaps in stone walls and in underground burrows and inside rotting logs and beneath layers of fallen leaves and buried in the mud at the bottoms of ponds—many animals spend the winter unseen by human eyes.

Melissa Stewart’s nonfiction picture book is about the animals that are resting/sleeping/living somewhere “under the snow” hidden from view during the coldest months of the year.

This large format book with spare text and realistic watercolor illustrations is lovely in its simplicity. It is an excellent book to read to young children as an introduction to hibernation.

Here’s how Stewart begins the book:

You spend your days sledding and skating
and having snowball fights.

But under the snow lies a hidden world.

Then author Stewart takes us on a tour of a field, the forest, a pond, a wetland, and tells us what animals are hidden there “under the snow” in those four different habitats. And illustrator Bergum shows us those animals, which include the following:

• Ladybugs clustered together in a gap in an old stone wall
• A vole tunneling through the snow
• A centipede and bumblebee queen inside a rotting log
• A wood frog nestled beneath a layer of fallen leaves
• Bluegills swimming slowly in chilly pond water
• A turtle buried in mud at the bottom of a pond
• A beaver family huddles together in their cozy lodge
  
  

Art and text work perfectly together to “show-and-tell” young readers about the many forms of animal life that lie in a hidden world “under the snow.”

Under the Snow was designated an NSTA/CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book for 2010 and a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year. It was cited by the 2010 Charlotte Zolotow Award Committee as a highly commended book. It was also a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist and a Junior Library Guild Selection.



Book Extension Resources

Under the Snow: Curriculum Guide
Under the Snow: Readers Theater

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The Nonfiction Monday Roundup is at Great Kid Books.