poetry that goes for the jugular

It's Poetry Friday, and if you're new to this blogging tradition, go here for an overview.

Last Friday, our 3rd Poetry Friday of the school year, I presented Colleen Thibeaudeau's "balloon" to go with our Junior Great Books exploration of The Red Balloon.

I also introduced my blog to the class and shared my "Last Saturday in September" poem (not really written for younger kids), after which one young'un, alias Taylor, pressed his fist to his heart and sighed. We all considered with great wonder how two poems about round red things (a balloon, an apple the color of the setting sun) could FEEL so different. 

There ensued a flurry of poetry writing, and by the end of the day one small group had decided they would be writing poems for sale and were making advertising posters!  Folks, I have a class of writers.

Here's the poem that Taylor wrote:

Killer Jaguar Poem

The killer jaguar
killed the chicken with his
sharp claws.  It digged into 
the chicken's body.
It killed the chicken. It
ate the whole entire
chicken.  It got rid
of the chicken forever.

*******************

Chilling, no?  Talk about creating a mood.

The roundup today is at Violet Nesdoly / Poems--prowl over and grab some poetry by the neck!

ditty challenges

 

The delightfully ambitious Michelle at Today's Little Ditty is our Poetry Friday host today, and she has offered two challenges that I'm about to tackle.  First is Nikki Grimes's wordplay challenge which concludes the fascinating interview she gave Michelle last week:

"When I talk about wordplay, I'm talking about studying a word from top to bottom, and inside out, considering every aspect of the word:  What it looks like, sounds like, feels like.  What it does, how it's used, etc.  The idea is to bring all of your senses into the act.  The poem you create may end up being complex and sophisticated, or very simple."

Second is the Five for Friday challenge periodically set by Michelle, which is an exercise in minimalism, a ditty of five words only (although I note that many poets endow theirs with expository titles, a practice which I wholly condone).

So--for Nikki's challenge I do not choose the word "bell" or "lemon" (done that one!), "blanket,"  "leaf" or "sun," as I might usually.  Instead the news lately takes me to "bullet" and I'm a little afraid of it, but here's my Draftless Luck* effort.  The title is both expository and five words long, if you allow me a hyphenated word, so that's my Five for Friday, too.

Thank you, Michelle; thank you, Nikki; and thank you, Poetry Friday people, for reading the raw and unpolished with interest and respect.  We do each other a great favor in that.

May I also point you to this quote from George Eliot and this recording by Elvis Costello?

*With apologies to Erica Jong, this refers to my time-challenged technique of writing a poem right now, once, with the revision allowed by one hour, publishing it on the blog as though it were finished--and hoping for the best.