Poetry Friday: Letter Poems

How about writing a poem in the form of a letter? It could be a love letter, a letter of complaint, a thank you letter. Here is an “angry” letter poem that I wrote from Mama Bear to Goldilocks for a collection of fairy tale poems.


Dear Goldilocks,


You little brat. You little scamp!

You sneaked into our summer camp

And ate my little baby’s bowl

Of porridge, broke his chair, then stole

Upstairs and napped on Baby’s bed.

You ripped the new embroidered spread

His Grammy gave him yesterday.

This time you may have slipped away.

But if you ever come back here,

I’ll grab you, Goldie, by the ear—

And cut off all you curly hair!

You are not welcome!!!!!


Yours,

Ma Bear


Here’s another rhyming letter poem that I wrote and posted previously at Wild Rose Reader:

LETTER FROM THE QUEEN OF BEASTS

Dear Lion,

I’m tired of doing the hunting, the preying

While your only job is to watch the cubs playing.

I’m tired of stalking the zebras and gnus

While you lie around on the grassland and snooze.

I’m tired of running, and pouncing, and killing.

I want a career that is much more fulfilling.

I’m tired, so tired. I’m spent to the core.

While I’m hard at work, you just eat, sleep, and snore.

I fetch all the food. You grow stronger…I thinner.

For the next seven days you can catch your own dinner!

I’m going away for a well-needed rest.

I’ll be seeing you soon.

All my love,

Lioness


Recommended Poetry Books with Letter Poems

DEAR WORLD

Written & Illustrated by Takayo Noda

Dial/Penguin Putnam

2003

In DEAR WORLD, Takayo Noda writes poems that focus mostly on the natural world. She writes her letter poems to apples, the dawn, the sun, snow, trees, the stars—to a turtle, a bird, and fish. Her watercolor and collage illustrations are colorful and visually stunning. They absolutely add another dimension to her text.

Here are excerpts from three of the letter poems in Dear World:

dear bird

I see you
sleeping alone
on the rooftop

your beak is red
feathers are blue
they are shining and
reflecting in the moonlight

**********

dear snow

I see you

spinning and dancing

just like angels in white…

**********

dear sun

I know

when you are happy

because you shine

and bounce

on everything

I know

when you are sad

because you become

hazy and fuzzy

as if you had

tears in your eyes

LOVE LETTERS

Written by Arnold AdoffI

llustrated by Lisa Desimini

The Blue Sky Press/Scholastic1997

Unfortunately, Love Letters is now out of print—but you may be able to purchase a used copy. The book includes love letter poems written to a dog, a cat, to a little sister from a big brother, to a snoring dad from his son, to a teacher from a secret admirer, and to a “prince” from his “potential princess”--and many others


Here is the last poem from Adoff’s book:

Dear Once Upon A Time:

I
know
we can
write
that
story
together
if
we
just
put
our
heads:
ear
to ear.
our
faces:
eye
to
eye.

Your Happy Ending.



CLASSROOM CONNECTION: Writing Letter Poems with Children

• First, share and discuss some letter poems with your students in class.
• Second, talk about reasons why people write letters to each other.
• Third, ask students to think about and suggest the people, animals, elements of nature, or inanimate objects to whom they might consider writing letter poems.
• Fourth, write their responses on chart paper.
• Next, with the help of your students, choose a letter recipient from the list you made and write a collaborative class letter poem on chart paper to that recipient.
• Elicit from your students “things they would like to tell the recipient” in the collaborative letter poem. Copy down students’ responses on the chart paper.
• When you and your students are finished with the rough draft of the poem, read it aloud as a group.
• Leave the poem out for a few days for students to reread. Ask them to think about ways they could improve the poem—by adding lines, eliminating lines, including figurative language, substituting stronger verbs/more expressive words in place of others, etc.
• Discuss suggested changes with students and write a second draft of the collaborative poem on another piece of chart paper.
• Finally, after reading the second draft of the collaborative poem aloud with the class, ask students to write their own letter poems to a person, animal, element of nature, or object of their choice.
  

One More Thing
Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing (Read. Write. Think)

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

At Blue Rose Girls, I have a video of Naomi Shihab Nye reciting a “found” poem she wrote using things that her young son had said. The poem is called One Boy Told Me.

This week at Political Verses, I have to new poetry posts:
Bye-bye, Bybee and Extended Engagement: A Poem by J. Patrick Lewis


Maya has the Maya has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Allegro. at Allegro.