A Ring/Drum/Blanket Poem by Kelly R. Fineman

In my Interview with Janet Wong, Janet spoke about her experiences as a student in the master class in poetry that Myra Cohn Livingston taught at UCLA. One of the writing exercises Myra gave her students was to write a poem that contained the following three words: ring, drum, and blanket. It doesn’t sound so easy to write a poem that must include three words that seem to have no connection in any way, does it? Well, the talented students in Myra’s class came up with inventive and varied ways to use these three words in poems. If you can find a copy of Myra’s book I Am Writing a Poem About…A Game of Poetry, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Janet and I extended an invitation to readers of that interview to write their own ring/drum/blanket poems. So far…just one brave blogger has taken up the challenge—the talented Kelly R. Fineman of Writing and Ruminating. Kelly wrote an outstanding poem! Here it is:


Inside the Fairy Ring
By Kelly R. Fineman

Inside the fairy ring,

awash with silver light,

sprightly dancers caper

on a blanket of dew-dappled flowers.

When grassy pipes and acorn drums fall silent,

all will fade away

to dawn.

Is that lovely? I’m so impressed—and so is Janet Wong! Here's what Janet said about Kelly's poem: What a fine poem! I love the image of acorn drums, and the “p, p, p, p” in “sprightly” and “caper” with “dappled” and “pipes”…”p, p, p, p,” might well be the sound that this tiny fairy festival would generate (to clunky human ears)!

Invitation to Write a Poem

Here, again, are the ring/drum/blanket poems that Janet and I wrote. We’d like to extend the invitation once more to everyone reading this post to write ring/drum/blanket poems to post at their own blogs--or for me to post at Wild Rose Reader. If you post the poem at your own blog, please send me the link. If you’d like me to post your poem at Wild Rose Reader, type it in the comment section or send it to me via email.

Oh, Brother!
By Janet Wong

The little squirt,
begging for boiled eggs and toast,
circles me like a wrestler in the ring,
bouncing on my bed,
bouncing,
bouncing,
bouncing,
bouncing,
and when I try to hide my head,
he dives under the blanket,
to drum my stomach
until it surrenders
a growl.



The Early Sixties: A Summer Day
By Elaine Magliaro

On an old army blanket,
a rough, khaki-colored island
floating on a sea of sand
at Devereaux Beach,
we sit in a circle…
a ring of friends
playing kitty whist,
drinking cola,
talking about boys, and
listening to rock and roll music…
to the sexy sound of the sax
wafting over us
moaning about love,
to a drum beating
like a young heart in overdrive.


You can read three more ring/drum/blanket poems here.

Poetry Book Review: On the Farm

Are you looking for a poetry book about farm animals to share with young children? A poetry book with fantastic illustrations done by the recipient of a Caldecott Honor Award? Then…

Cock-a-doodle-do!
I’ve got a book for you!

ON THE FARM
Written by David Elliott
Illustrated by Holly Meade
Candlewick Press, 2008

This large-format book contains twelve poems about animals commonly found on a farm: rooster, cow, pony, dog, sheep, barn cat, goat, pig, bees, bull, and two reptiles—turtle and snake. Elliott’s poems, printed in large, bold typeface, are short and playful—as in The Sheep: The Sheep/Began his woolly life/as gentle as a/lamb. Too bad/he turned/into a/ram./BAM! The illustration that accompanies this poem shows two rams butting horns in an orchard while a ewe watches. Her little lamb looks out at readers from the page. As in The Sheep, the titles are often a part of the poems.

The Bees

Tell their story,
sweet and old.
It begins in clover;
and ends with gold.

Elliott’s rhyming poems, for the most part, are simple and straightforward—but he does include figures of speech in some. For example, the pig’s tail is “As coy as a ringlet.” The snake “coils/in the/garden/like a/ spring…”

Holly Meade’s art truly brings Elliott’s poetry to another level. Known for her mixed media illustrations, Meade used woodcuts for the first time in On the Farm to bring these domestic and wild animals to life. Meade takes us on a tour of the farm with her big, bold illustrations. Her dynamic double-page spreads include scenes of a rooster crowing his head off near the henhouse, a goat chewing on laundry hanging from a clothesline, and a close-up of a snake slithering through a vegetable garden. Meade’s stunning artwork enhances Elliot’s spare text without overwhelming it.

The poems and the illustrations meld together well to produce an attractive package of pictures and poems about farm animals with child-appeal. On the Farm would be a great book to share with children in preschool and kindergarten.

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NIBBLE NIBBLE
Written by Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrated by Wendell Minor
HarperCollins, 2007

Suggestion: Pair On the Farm with the 2007 edition of Margaret Wise Brown’s book Nibble Nibble that was illustrated by Wendell Minor. This edition of Nibble Nibble contains just five of the poems included in the original—but Minor’s gorgeous watercolor paintings of bunnies, mice, a fox, fish, a robin, lightning bugs, and butterflies really add to the charm of Brown’s classic poems. (Note: You can read my review of Nibble Nibble here. You can view a flip book of Nibble Nibble here.)

One of Wendell Minor's Illustrations from Nibble Nibble

Lilacs: An Acrostic Poem

When I was a child, we had a string of lilac bushes growing in our backyard--a border between our yard and our neighbor's. My maternal grandparents had lilacs bushes lining both sides of their property. I'm thinking of planting some lilacs in my backyard. I miss the sight and scent of the little lavender-colored flowers in spring. Here's an acrostic in praise of lilacs.


Lilacs
by Elaine Magliaro

Little-petalled blossoms hang

In soft clusters of

Lavender lace

Adorning spring’s greenery,

Catching honeybees with

Sweet perfume.

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Remember...tomorrow, April 17th, is the first national Poem in Your Pocket Day. Click here for more information. Click here for some Poems for Your Pocket. Click here for some short rhyming poems for young children to keep in their pockets tomorrow.

A Poem for Your Pocket

Celebrate the first national Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 17th. Click here for information. Click here for some Poems for Your Pocket.

Here are some short rhyming poems by unknown authors that I thought might be great for young children to have in their pockets on Poem in Your Pocket Day.


I’m glad the sky is painted blue,
And the earth is painted green,
With such a lot of nice fresh air
All sandwiched in between.


I eat my peas with honey.
I’ve done it all my life.
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on the knife.


The sausage is a cunning bird
With feathers long and wavy;
It swims about the frying pan
And makes its nest in gravy.


Awake, arise, pull out your eyes,
And hear what time of day.
And when you’ve done, pull out your tongue,
And see what you can say.


Get up, get up, you lazy head.
Get up, you lazy sinner.
We need those sheets for tablecloths.
It’s nearly time for dinner.


The thunder crashed
The lightning flashed
And all the world was shaken;
The little pig
Curled up his tail
And ran to save his bacon.


A horse and a flea and three blind mice
Sat on a curbstone shooting dice.
The horse he slipped and fell on the flea.
The flea said, “Whoops, there’s a horse on me.”


Nicholas Ned,
He lost his head,
And put a turnip on instead;
But then, ah, me!
He could not see,
So he thought it was night, and he went to bed.


Mary had a little lamb,
A lobster and some prunes,
A glass of milk, a piece of pie,
And then some macaroons.

It made the busy waiters grin
To see her order so,
And when they carried Mary out,
Her face was white as snow.


A mouse in her room scared miss Dowd;
She was frightened and screamed very loud,
Then a happy thought hit her—
To scare off the critter,
She sat up in bed and meowed.


There was an old man of Peru
who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He woke in the night
In a terrible fright
And found it was perfectly true.


There was a young farmer of Leeds
Who swallowed six packets of seeds.
It soon came to pass
He was covered with grass,
And he couldn’t sit down for the weeds.

Poem-Making

Myra Cohn Livingston

I own quite a number of books on the topic of writing poetry. Most of these books were intended to be used by adults teaching poetry writing to children. Many are excellent; many helped to provide me with ideas to use with my students. If someone asked me to name the book that had the greatest influence on my teaching of poetry to my students, it would be a book written by the late Myra Cohn Livingston. Myra, an award-winning children’s poet and anthologist, also wrote critical essays and books about writing poetry with children. In addition, Myra taught a master class in poetry at UCLA. Students in that class included many of the best poets writing for children today. (Read my Interview with Janet Wong to find out more about Myra’s master class and the kinds of writing exercises she gave her students.)

Over the years, I came to trust the wise words of Myra Cohn Livingston—for whom poetry was a passion. Her book Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry taught me so much about poetry. It helped me to explore the writing of poetry with my elementary students. Myra wrote the book for children—but I consider it to be one of the most valuable resources that I have used as a writer myself.

POEM-MAKING: WAYS TO BEGIN WRITING POETRY
Written by Myra Cohn Livingston
A Charlotte Zolotow Book/HarperCollins, 1991

In her introduction to Poem-Making, Myra states the following:

This book is about poem-making, how to begin to understand what goes into a poem. We don’t ask the question What does a poem mean? For if the poet has written well, we seem to know inside of ourselves what it means to us. It is better to ask, as John Ciardi has said, How does the poem mean? And the how means writing the feeling in such a special way that our listeners and readers can sense something of what we have encountered, see something they might never have noticed before, or look at something in a fresh way—the way the poet has offered.

What we hope to do is to make the image, the thought, even the sound come alive again. By arranging words, making a sort of music with these words, we create something fascinating and new.


Poem-Making is concise and easy to understand. It could serve as a beginning course for those hoping to learn about the writing of poetry. In the book, Myra talks about the voices of poetry (lyrical, narrative, and dramatic); sound and rhyme; rhythm and metrics; figures of speech; and different forms of poetry, including the haiku, the cinquain, free verse, and the limerick. But Myra doesn’t just explain the elements of poetry and its different forms, she provides examples of poems to elucidate what she is telling us. When she talks about the narrative voice, she includes excerpts from Ogden Nash’s The Adventures of Isabel, Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, and Homer’s The Odyssey. When she writes about the cinquain, she includes not only her own original poems—but also cinquains written by the woman who developed the form, Adelaide Crapsey.

In addition to being an excellent poetry-writing resource, Poem-Making is also a fine anthology. The book is no longer in print—but used copies are still available through online booksellers. Poem-Making is a book no writing teacher should be without. I give it my highest recommendation!!!

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Read Sylvia Vardell's post Hail Myra Cohn Livingston! to learn more about the author of this book.