Poetry Friday: A Ring, A Drum, and A Blanket Poem
Last month Elaine at Wild Rose Reader suggested writing a poem with the words “blanket, drum, and ring” as a result of an interview with Janet Wong. It was an assignment given by the late Myra Cohn Livingston to her students (JW was one of them) in a master poetry class at UCLA.
This poetry prompt eluded me all month! I left a comment on Elaine’s blog and Janet Wong responded with a suggestion to have the students draw before writing. So I did with Mrs. Fisher’s 4th grade class two weeks ago. I brought in my mother’s Navajo story ring which she gave me months before her passing, a swatch of a Pendleton wool blanket and my father’s drumsticks as a visuals. They drew and wrote.
This week, rather than me play editor, I took the class to the computer lab and they played with the line breaks. Samples are here and others are on Mrs. Fisher’s Class Page.
I have to point out Kymberlee’s poem. She sat for most of the time and felt stuck, “I don’t know what to write”. We chatted and then she wrote. Wow!
Outside a thin
Blanket
Of snow
Lays upon
The ground.
I look at my ring.
The snow so cold,
My ring looking so warm.
Then I look at the pattern
in the snow
then the pattern on my ring
so alike almost the exact same.
I couldn’t keep it off my
Mind until
My mom’s homemade soup
The same golden color as my ring.
By: Alicia
Loud drums beating
in the park awaking
people with every beat. But
there is no drummer to this
drum. It is the spirit of the
tribes long ago.
People hear the drummer but
there is no site to see.
by Jacey
Heard in the distant,
The drum gets louder
And louder
get closer to the drum beat
When I get to it.
It was my
Heart that is making
The drum beat.
by Kymberlee
Ring of fire surrounds the valley,
a black angel rises from the ground,
a white angel comes from the glistening heavens, and a voice as loud as 100 bombs exploding shouts go get him, Zinkof,
and the 2 angels start fighting.
Zinkof gets hurt
but has enough strength
to overcome his enemy.
by Tim
Personally, I still haven’t captured the poem for this prompt. But wow, wow, wow to these fourth graders. Wow to the experience of bringing them into the computer lab and having them play with the line breaks.
Poetry Friday Roundup can be found at writer2b.
Happy Reading.
MsMac
May 9th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Jone,
Those are wonderful poems! It looks as if your students were really inspired to write.
It’s great having computers so the kids can experiment with line breaks and shaping their poems, isn’t it?
May 9th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I admire you for the courage to lead an exercise that you didn’t feel quite “inspired” to do yourself–and yet I do believe that you have a poem waiting in the items you chose to share: your mother’s Navajo ring, your father’s drumstick, the swatch of Pendleton blanket. I KNOW there is a poem there!
The kids did a good job of writing poems that included at least one or two of the three “required” words. If they wanted to attempt another draft, I’d suggest “sticking” the other required word(s) in there somehow. The point of the exercise is to show that we don’t need “inspiration”; to make a game of poetry, a puzzle of it; and to force ourselves to find an image or memory for any word.
One of my favorite poems can be found at Mrs. Fisher’s classroom link. It is Olivia’s simple poem:
Loud drums beating
as I am surrounded
by a soft blanket
wearing my good
luck ring.
by Olivia
This poem reminds me of sitting in the park late at night, waiting for fireworks to begin…I love the simplicity of this poem. It is short, yet it very effectively conveys an image. My only question: what is the significance of the good luck ring at that moment? Why would she be wearing it? Or thinking about the fact that she is wearing it? If Olivia were willing to try a second draft, I would suggest adding a line (or even just a title) to answer those questions.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Wow! What a great exercise to try with kids. I’m always amazed at how creative they can be — even when, like Kymberlee, they claim they don’t know what to write. How lucky these kids are to be encouraged to be so creative…
May 10th, 2008 at 7:50 am
HUZZAH! WOWZER!!! These poems are fabulous!
Lucky kids who WRITE as a part of LIBRARY! Lester Laminack (I think it was him) said something to the effect that reading is breathing in and writing is breathing out.