Pam Webb

a writer's journey as a reader

Archive for the category “Poetry”

16 Apr 2013
1 Comment

Poem Flow


From the “About Poem Flow”:

Poem Flow is a poem-of-the day application on the Apple app platform.

Each day a new poem flows to thousands of screens around the world. Everyone receives the same poem on the same day creating an instant, invisible community of simultaneous readers. The poems are from a mix of the greatest poems in English. Turned in your hand, each poem dissolves in a gentle reading animation. Turned back, the original poem returns.

 Poem Flow is mesmerizing in how it presents a poem. Instead of the poem being present in all its form, Poem Flow segments the words so that they words appear in digestible bits of anticipation.  The poem collection is a mix of contemporary and classics; receiving a new poem every day is like receiving a daily dose of serendipity.

You can check out the site: www.poemflow.com and experiment for yourself the wonder of a poem flowing gently across your screen.

feature 1

Posted in Poetry, Reading, reviews, technology and tagged ,
15 Apr 2013
3 Comments

Spoken Poetry


Poetry is an...

Poetry is an… (Photo credit: liber(the poet);)

Have you ever attended a Poetry Slam?  This  is where poetry gets to break out of its stuffy stereotypical silently read and reflected mode.  A Poetry Slam is where poets perform their poetry.  Recitation is accompanied by dramatics and the audience gets in on the action through rating the performance.  It’s amazing.  It will forever change your opinion that poetry can only be recited in dull monotones from a podium in front of barely stirring, half-asleep listeners.

One of my favorite Spoken Poetry artists is Taylor Mali. Not only was he formerly a teacher, he is one of the few poets who is actually making a living as a poet.  Go to his website or type in his name on YouTube for any number of his videos.  Much of his poetry deals with his experiences, opinions, and outlook as a teacher.  I can definitely relate to the subject matter–yet, his words reach to a wider audience as well.

His most repeated poem is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuBmSbiVXo0

We held a poetry slam at our local library a few years ago.  One of my students performed her work and left the audience, mainly middle-schoolers with a smattering of high schoolers, cheering and clapping.  She was supposed to go on the regionals and couldn’t due to her age (16). Who would have thought talent could be hemmed in by being too young?

Check out Poetry Slams and next time someone says poetry is boring you can plug in a Taylor Mali and then ask for their revised opinion.

Happy Poetry Month!

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Posted in America, creativity, education, Poetry, Teachers, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , ,
14 Apr 2013
3 Comments

A Triptych of Daffodils


The Poem

The Daffodils (I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud)

by William Wordsworth

Portrait of William Wordsworth, by William Shu...

Portrait of William Wordsworth, by William Shuter, 1798. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The Parody

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv1L-8f2erg

 

The Possibility*

       JOY

Multicolored splendor
that’s just how my day has been
Confetti bits of happiness
round about me swirling
filled with
Dancing Bright Lights
of promise
Like spring after
a tedious winter–
a golden day filled
with pristine greens
The release of dark days
and the renewing
of earth’s
bounty
Liberating–
like the  spangle sparkle
of firecracker flickers punctuating
the night sky
Free–
grass blades shimmer emerald
tree leaves bud pink
robin song chuckle eloquent
Bright light points of promise
that dance out from the earth
tingling and jingling
into
smile
eyes
all in reach
catch that feeling
of delicious buoyant
bounce of new
and they, too
will become
Joyous like a chartreuse star
Confetti

Confetti (Photo credit: DuracellDirect)

*from the collection The Dance of Color (an exploration of synesthesia)

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Posted in Blogging, celebrations, creativity, Poetry, Reflections, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged , , , , ,
13 Apr 2013

Imagery of Poetry


Poetry and imagery are synonymous. For fun I pulled a variety of images that celebrate National Poetry Month.

poetry

http://cabell.lib.wv.us/pages/bb-poetry09.html

Visit www.poets.ca to find out more about the League of Canadian Poets and National Poetry Month

http://lcpnationalpoetrymonth2013.wordpress.com/

From Poets.org poster gallery:

2012 Poster, designed by Chin-Yee Lai    2008 Poster  2006 Poster   2005 Poster

2004 Poster

2002 Poster                           2001 Poster

1998 Poster

1996 Poster   1997 Poster

I ordered my poster for this year, did you?

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Posted in America, creativity, Poetry, Writing and tagged , , | Leave a comment
12 Apr 2013
2 Comments

The Epicness of Poetry part three


Cover of "Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics...

Cover of Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics)

Paradise.  Lots of connotations. For some it is the place of perfection (Hawaii, for many), and for others it is the Garden of Eden, which is how Milton deemed the meaning in his epic poem Paradise Lost.

What makes this an epic poem?

For one thing it is like the other poems: BIG.  Milton transcribed a twelve book poem to his amanuensis, (he was blind at the time he “wrote” it), which came to over 10,000 lines.  He takes on the big topic of God’s way of doing things.  And there are the other  big characters of Adam, Eve, and Satan,. The theme of good and evil is a pretty big concept as well.

To understand the poem, let’s look at the poet.

File:Temple of British Worthies John Milton.jpg

image: wikipedia.org

During the 1600s in England, the government was undergoing change, which is definitely an understatement. John Milton got himself in trouble, and eventually into prison, due to his political beliefs.  As a writer, he considered himself among the upper echelon, but thought he could improve his game and be considered one of the truly big league guys (like Homer and Virgil) if he, too, wrote an epic poem.  Although he’d been planning to write Paradise Lost for some time, it’s thought his disenchantment with England’s government might have also been a catalyst for writing about a paradise (his country’s government) being lost.

The Poem
(thanks, Shmoop, you always say it so much better)

The other thing about epic poetry that you should know is that it always begins in medias res, or in the middle of things. This means that the poem begins, and then usually gives you a back-story before returning you to where you began, and then moving forward. For example,Paradise Lost begins with Satan already in Hell, but all the events leading up to it are narrated in Books 5 and 6. Similarly, the creation of the world, of Adam, and of Eve takes place sometime between Satan’s fall and the solidification of his plans for revenge (Books 1-2), but the creation is described in Books 7 and 8. In other words, the poem begins somewhere in the middle of the story, but then goes back and fills in the details. In medias res, baby.

Now, Milton’s poem doesn’t deal with war or the foundation of one of history’s greatest empires, and in this respect his epic poem is different from most of his major generic forebears (Homer, Virgil, and Spenser chief among them). While we do have a huge battle sequence in Book 6, something about it just seems funny. For example, it’s hard to take the battle seriously because we already know the outcome (Satan loses, which we learn in the very first book of the poem); if we’ve somehow forgotten the outcome, however, we always get the sense that God is going to win. The weirdness of Book 6 is explained at the beginning of Book 9, where Milton says flat out that he’s not interested in the type of martial heroism typical of epic poetry. He’s more interested in a type of internal, spiritual, Christian heroism, what he calls the “better fortitude/ Of patience and heroic martyrdom/ Unsung [i.e., not sung about in previous epics]” (9.31-33).

And he sticks to his guns: one could very well characterize Paradise Lost as an epic poem about “patience,” if only because it is Adam and Eve’s impatience that is the cause of their downfall. Now you might be asking yourself, what’s epic about patience, Adam, Eve, etc.? Well, for the Christian world, Adam and Eve’s story is of comparable significance as the founding of Rome or the Trojan War. According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, by eating the Forbidden Fruit, Adam and Eve introduced sin and death into the world, two very serious consequences. Seriously, who likes death?

Post-Thoughts

Paradise Lost is not light reading. Furthermore, it can be overwhelming to read, plus it addresses (for some) an uncomfortable topic. Nonetheless, Milton tackles the subject of choice (free will) in an eloquent manner, and his epic poem set a standard for tone and diction for English poets (probably all poets).  I have to admire a writer who dedicated so much time to one particular work. The results prove that tenacity and perseverance are part of a writer’s toolbox.

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Posted in Christianity, Literature, Poetry, writers and tagged , , , , ,
09 Apr 2013
2 Comments

NPM FAQ


We are going into our second week of poetry celebration and some of you might not be aware of the why, hows, and whats of National Poetry Month.  And because I didn’t know much about its background I looked it up and thought y’all might like some elucidation on the matter. For even more information I suggest the site (from whence I borrowed these).

National Poetry Month Frequently Asked Questions or NPM FAQ:

  • What is National Poetry Month? National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern. We hope to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated.
  • Who started it? The Academy of American Poets has led this initiative from its inception in 1996 and along the way has enlisted a variety of government agencies and officials, educational leaders, publishers, sponsors, poets, and arts organizations to help.
  • When is National Poetry Month? April. Every year since 1996.
  • Why was April chosen for National Poetry Month? In coordination with poets, booksellers, librarians, and teachers, the Academy chose a month when poetry could be celebrated with the highest level of participation. Inspired by the successful celebrations of Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March), and on the advice of teachers and librarians, April seemed the best time within the year to turn attention toward the art of poetry—in an ultimate effort to encourage poetry readership year-round. <!—-T. S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month.” It is our hope that National Poetry Month lessens that effect.On a lighter note, Chaucer wrote:

    Whan that April with his showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veine in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flowr

    Finally, Edna St. Vincent Millay asked, “To what purpose, April, do you return again?” For National Poetry Month, of course!—>

  • What are the goals of National Poetry Month? The goals of National Poetry Month are to:
    • Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
    • Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
    • Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
    • Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
    • Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
    • Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
    • Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry
  • Shouldn’t we celebrate poetry all year round, not just in April? By all means, yes! We encourage the year-round, life-long reading of poetry. National Poetry Month is just one of the many programs of the Academy of American Poets. To keep the celebration going, consider becoming a member of the Academy and receive special benefits and privileges year round. You can also subscribe to receive daily poems by email for free, all year long.
  • How does the Academy celebrate National Poetry Month?
    • Posters: Each year the Academy creates and distributes nearly 200,000 official NPM posters, which are mailed for free to teachers, librarians, and booksellers nationwide.
    • Events: The Academy presents several special events and readings in April, including our star-studded annual Poetry & The Creative Mind.
    • Publicity: To ensure that poetry gains national attention in the media each April, the Academy sends press releases to editors and journalists across the country. As a result, thousands of articles about poetry appear in newspapers, magazines, and online media outlets. The Academy also acts as the official clearing house for news and information about National Poetry Month.
    • Inspiration & Guidance: The Academy offers a plethora of practical resources for celebrating NPM, including tips for teaching poetry during April, creating a poetry book display in your bookstore or library, presenting a poetry reading or contest, and much more.

I feel much more informed having read through all of these.  Frankly, I though April was chosen to offset the sting of taxes and because April is when spring begins to do its thing more clearly. Goes to show, how much I didn’t know. Can’t stop rhymanizing my sentences–must have to do with all the poetrizing I’m doing these last few days.

Happy National Poetry Month!

(not)

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Posted in Blogging, celebrations, Poetry, Writing and tagged , ,
08 Apr 2013
3 Comments

Oh, the Magnetism of Poetry


Sometimes I lament that our library moved from its dilapidated and inadequate former bank building because it contained some quirky and cool things. For instance, part of the children’s section was located in the old vault–no kidding. Another interesting aspect to the building were the support beams and posts placed hither and thither, which made for shelving dilemmas. The posts placed so right there in the middle of everything begged for decoration.  One clever use of post availability were cookie sheets of word magnets.  Great fun in creating poems and stories by sliding and arranging these words about.

I created my own set of word magnets by cutting out words from magazine ads and gluing them on to strip magnets found in craft stores.  The progeny and their friends reveled in creating messages.  I’m tempted to do something along the lines with my students, yet I harbor concerns of inappropriate arrangements no matter how urbane the word selection might be.

For fun I found a site that provides the pleasure of refrigerator verse arrangements:

Refrigerator Poetry Play

Here is some inspiration in the mean time:

Image: tumblr.com

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Posted in creativity, Libraries, Poetry and tagged , , ,
07 Apr 2013
17 Comments

Coming to Terms with Poetry


education

education (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

They say the best education we receive is that learned while teaching.  I found this to be especially true for poetry fundamentals.

I don’t recall studying poetry in jr. high English, unless studying Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” counts.  As for high school, I remember short stories, yet nothing on the poetry radar comes up for remembrance. College yes, ohmagoodness, poetry aplenty. I do recall a cacophony of emotions as I partook in the banquet of poets found in my Norton Reader. I transversed from embarrassment to  gratitude as I feasted on William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Plath and others I had not known existed.  Why, oh why, did I feel the compunction to resell my Norton at the campus bookstore?  College students out there?  Think twice before reselling your textbooks.  All those annotations and well-visited markings really do become appreciated some day.

norton reader

norton reader (Photo credit: cdrummbks)

These days I’m teaching to Common Core Standards and have come to terms with poetry.  They are an absolute on the schedule of attained knowledge.  I also have my AP crowd to cater.  Although I have over 200 literary terms we learn over the course of  the year in AP, I start out my ninth graders with double dozen or so.  How many do you know or remember?

  1. accent: emphasis or stress given a syllable or a particular word.
  2. alliteration: the reiterated initial consonants in prose or poetry.
  3. anaphora: repetition of an opening word or phrase in a series of lines.
  4. assonance:  the repetition of two or more vowel sounds in successive words, creating a type of rhyme.
  5. ballad: a song which tells a story; also be a poem with songlike qualities which tells a story.
  6. blank verse: the most common meter of unrhymed poetry in English; it lacks stanza form and rhyme.
  7. caesura: a pause within the line of verse.
  8. conceit: a fanciful expression, usually in the form of an extended metaphor or an analogy that usually displays intellectual cleverness due to the unusual comparison being made.
  9. consonance: a close similarity between consonants or groups of consonants, especially at the ends of words, e.g. between “strong” and “ring.”
  10. couplet: two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme, and often have the same meter
  11. diction: the selection of words in a particular literary work, or the language appropriate for a particular (usually poetic) work.
  12. doggerel: crude verse that contains clichés, predictable rhyme, and inept meter and rhythm.
  13. elegy: a poem which mourns the death of someone.
  14. enjambment: when one verse runs into another verse
  15. epic: a long narrative poem on a serious subject, usually centered on a heroic or supernatural person.
  16. epigram: a short poem, which can be comical.
  17. figurative language: language which goes beyond what is denoted (see denotation), and has a suggestive effect on the reader; a figure of speech is part of figurative language.
  18. free verse: poetry which lacks a regular stress pattern and regular line lengths (and which may also be lacking in rhyme). Free verse should not be confused with blank verse
  19. haiku: Japanese form of poetry of seventeen syllables with three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables
  20. heroic couplet: a couplet with iambic pentameter
  21. iamb: a metrical foot of one short or unstressed syllable followed by one long or stressed syllable.
  22. imagery: often taken as a synonym for figurative language, but the term may also refer to the ‘mental pictures’ which the reader experiences in his/her response to literary works or other texts.
  23. kitsch: sentimentality, tastelessness, or ostentation in any of the arts.
  24. limerick: a five line humorous poem involving a fixed aabba rhyme scheme
  25. lyric: a short non-narrative poem that has a solitary speaker, and that usually expresses a particular feeling, mood, or thought.
  26. metaphor: a direct comparison–it does not use “like,” “as,” or “than.” In literature it is a figurative statement asserting one thing is something that it is not.
  27. meter: the recurrence of a similar stress pattern in some or all lines of a poem.
  28. ode: a relatively lengthy lyric poem, usually expressing exalted emotion in a complex scheme of rhyme and meter.
  29. onomatopoeia: a word or expression which resembles the sound which it represents, like the meow of a cat or the quack of a duck.
  30. pastoral: usually written by an urban poet who idealizes the shepherds’ lives. The term has now been extended to include any literary work which views and idealizes the simple life from the perspective of a more complex life.
  31. prosody: the rhythm of spoken language, including stress and intonation, or the study of these patterns
  32. repetition: the duplication of any element of language such as a sound, word, phrase, sentence, or grammatical pattern.
  33. rhyme: the identity of the sounds of the final syllables (usually stressed) of certain proximate lines of a poem.
  34. scan: to assign stress patterns to a poem.
  35. simile: a figure of speech that draws a comparison between two different things, especially a phrase containing the word “like” or “as,” e.g. “as white as a sheet.”
  36. symbol: a person, place, thing, or event that stands both for itself and for something beyond itself.
  37. syntax: how an author chooses to join words into phrases, clauses, and sentences; similar to diction which is focused on individual words, yet syntax is concerned with groups of words.
  38. theme:  the central idea or insight about human life revealed within the work.
  39. tone: the attitude, as it is revealed in the language of a literary work, of a personage, narrator or author, towards the other personages in the work or towards the reader.
  40. voice: the writer’s distinctive use of language, which is created through the use of a writer’s tone and diction.

 Okay, there is about a triple dozen and a dose for good measure here. Some terms crossover into prose which is why we start off with poetry before short stories. We’ve found our students grasp analyzing smaller chunks of literary concepts and then retain those terms and skills for the longer works.

So, how did you do?  I didn’t include the various types of poems in this set.  Stay tuned…

Happy Poetry Month

Poetry

Poetry (Photo credit: Kimli)

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Posted in celebrations, creativity, education, Poetry, summer, Uncategorized, writers and tagged , , , , ,
05 Apr 2013
7 Comments

American Rhyme and Reason


Walt Whitman's use of free verse became apprec...

Walt Whitman’s use of free verse became appreciated by composers seeking a more fluid approach to setting text. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In researching  material for upcoming National Poetry Month posts I came across an article which got me thinking on a couple of different levels.

First of all, how is it possible to narrow the immense possibilities to ten?

Secondly, the article is written from a British standpoint–is that observation, compliment, or review?

After perusing the list I find myself nodding to a couple of the choices, being perplexed at a one or two, and adding the others to my “must read.”

What are your votes and opinions?  Would you name these as “The 10 best American poems”? (click on “article” and read the reason and rhyme of each mentioned)

1.  “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman

2.  “The Idea of Order at Key West” by Wallace Stevens

3.  “Because I could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson

4. “Directive” by Robert Frost

5. “Middle Passage” by Robert Hayden

6. “The Dry Salvages” by T.S. Eliot

7. “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop

8. “To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Ann Bradstreet

9. “Memories of West Street and Lepke” by Robert Lowell

10.  “And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name” by John Ashberry

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Posted in America, Poetry, Reflections, reviews, Uncategorized, writers and tagged , , , , ,
04 Apr 2013
8 Comments

A Garden of Verses


image

As children we begin our acquaintance with poetry through nursery rhymes and catchy little verse books and move up to reading by way of Dr. Seuss. If the love of poetry takes hold. Then we discover there is a world of rhyme through the pens of such poets as Jack Prelutsky (shown happily proffering his poetry pencil). And of course, Shel Silverstein.

Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Carroll come to mind for when we are older. And then what? We are told “good” poetry shouldn’t rhyme and rhyming verse is childish. We then go deep into the likes of Robert Frost, Longfellow, and perhaps Langston Hughes when we get into school. This is not a bad thing. Not at all. Life gets more complicated as we get older and poetry can be that reflection.

I wonder if this is where we lose the initial love of poetry, when we have to work at understanding it through its symbolism, imagery, and meter. Cats and fiddles, Jacks and Jills no longer suffice as poetry thrills. Tis a shame.
My freshmen groan and revolt when I trot out the poetry unit. I wish I could say I have swayed their opinions or created new converts at the end of the designated nine weeks, yet that doesn’t happen as often as I’d like. Most do appreciate poetry a bit more. Sure, that works for me–I’ll take it.

I wonder how many of us would continue loving poetry if we could only be allowed more Jack Prelutsky when we are all grown up.
image

When

Posted in Poetry, Reading, Reflections and tagged , , , ,

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