Poetry

[_KimberlyAnn]

My daughter, Courtney, writes poetry.

While riding the bus to school this morning, she saw and owl and wrote a poem about it.

When I picked her up from school, she gave me this:

I Saw An Owl This Morning

I saw an owl this morning.
He looked at the highway, and through the
fingerprinted glass, tinted and hazy,
I heard Him scoffing.

He did not glance my way,
but He knew I was there.
A fluttering moth might have passed behind Him,
quivering in the morning chill,
in a foreign place, and He might have acknowledged it.

An ant shuffled to its hill.
His head darted in that direction.
A hare fell into a trap long forgotten
and cried out.
His head swiveled that way,
and I was left to wonder,
passing by as quickly as I had approached,
why He had not permitted His eyes
to stray my direction.

I saw an owl this morning.
And I was the only one.


-Courtney

The great thing about Court is that she wants criticism of her work. She's not adverse to revising over and over until she's satisfied with the end product. The above is her first draft. She'll undoubtedly rework it, but overall, it's not a bad first draft, especially for a fourteen year old.

KA

[_Blixa]

Thanks for sharing that KA. I like Courtney's poem a lot; in fact, it strikes me as very sophisticated for a 14-year-old. The capitalization of the pronoun, the verb "scoffing," the understatement, the fact that the poem is built around observation and not emotional confession---well all of these are things beyond the appreciation of most of the college students I encounter.

I'm working off my laptop now since my Big Mac is in the shop for repairs and I don't have easy access to all my files. But if I can find it I'll email you the packet of poems I'm teaching right now---I think Courtney would like all of them, especially the Rilke.

[_Doctor Steuss]

[...]She's not adverse to revising over and over until she's satisfied with the end product. [...]

My experience is that with poetry, there’s seldom an end product. Poems are rarely “finished,” they merely reach a point when they’re abandoned.

At least that's what I read somewhere... or maybe I made it up and I am pretending I read it somewhere in order to give it credence (or maybe it was a poet greater than I that once said something similar).

ShamWow.

[_KimberlyAnn]

My experience is that with poetry, there’s seldom an end product. Poems are rarely “finished,” they merely reach a point when they’re abandoned.

At least that's what I read somewhere... or maybe I made it up and I am pretending I read it somewhere in order to give it credence (or maybe it was a poet greater than I that once said something similar).

ShamWow.

There's a poet greater than you?

"That's 13% of your cola right there...you gettin' this a**hole? Sham*uckin'Wow."

And, Blixa, thank you for your comments! Courtney will be thrilled when I tell her what you had to say.

Kimberly

[_Dr. Shades]

My experience is that with poetry, there’s seldom an end product. Poems are rarely “finished,” they merely reach a point when they’re abandoned.

At least that's what I read somewhere... or maybe I made it up and I am pretending I read it somewhere in order to give it credence (or maybe it was a poet greater than I that once said something similar).

You actually heard it somewhere. George Lucas, during one of the featurettes surrounding the Special Edition of the Star Wars trilogy, relayed what one of his mentors told him: "Movies are never completed, they're just abandoned. Now, with digital technology, I could finally go back to my abandoned movie."

[_KimberlyAnn]

Stu, you're the boy with the poetry power.

(Just heard this on my iPod while mopping the kitchen floor. :)

Candyfloss

KA

[_Doctor Steuss]

You actually heard it somewhere. George Lucas, during one of the featurettes surrounding the Special Edition of the Star Wars trilogy, relayed what one of his mentors told him: "Movies are never completed, they're just abandoned. Now, with digital technology, I could finally go back to my abandoned movie."

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
--Paul Valéry

[_JonasS]

"A Valentine to My Wife" -- Eugene Field.

"She walks in Beauty" -- Lord Byron.

"When we two parted" -- Lord Byron.

:)

[_Dr. Shades]

Hey JonasS,

When KimberlyAnn said "share a favorite poem or two," I think she meant to post the entire poems, not just their names. (The names alone don't help us much.)

[_JonasS]

Hey JonasS,

When KimberlyAnn said "share a favorite poem or two," I think she meant to post the entire poems, not just their names. (The names alone don't help us much.)

I wasn't sure about copyright and such but ok.