I mentioned a few weeks' ago that one of the books I was reading was "Immersed in Verse: An Informative, Slightly Irreverent & Totally Tremendous Guide to Living the Poet's Life" by Allan Wolf. Nonfiction books aimed at preteens are among my favorites. As I get older, I don't want to work quite as hard to learn things. This book is helping me learn all the stuff about poetry that I imagine the rest of you learned in college.
Anyway, I am halfway through the book right now and the first exercise is to write my own "Where I'm From" poem, using George Ella Lyon's poem as inspiration. This was more difficult I thought it would be. I was a rather morose child and young adult, so every poem I started went in a dark direction. In keeping with my new vow to "just write something", I am sharing the least depressing verse I could come up with.
I'm from tiny dark spaces
That are far from the light.
I'm from energy that spikes
In the middle of the night.
I'm from glorious coffee
In all the ways that it's made.
I'm from all shades of green,
Especially emerald and jade.
This is my essence
So brilliant and bright,
Protected by thorns
And hidden from sight.
3 comments:
Great post. I'm inspired to try this myself.
I like what you came up with...it is more here and now than simply (but wonderfully in the example poem) the ingredients of childhood.
I'm from all shades of green too... Good exercise and I like what you came up with.
You did very well with that exercise. I think I will try this too.
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