Found Poem Activity

Hey!

Image courtesy: poetry-puzzle.jpg

So, I took three of your poems (I hope you saw the comments I left for you in Google Docs), and then I took lines from each to create what I call a found poem. Here it is!

Found Poem

I did not listen

I need to answer

Clear boundaries, without pressure

I do not know how to feel

Cold as ice

I am learning

Liberation

Will you try to come back?

The lines I took correspond in font type with the poems I took them from. If that makes sense. Ergo,

"Grieving Paranoia"

"Just Because"

"Silent Echo"

You can do your found poem a different way. If you want to indicate where each line came from, you can do what I did or change font color. Or you can bold lines from one piece, italicize another, underline, etc. Whatever type of aesthetic you want. It is your poem, after all. I look forward to seeing your poem in the comments!

Activity 2: Books That Shape Us

So, we all have favorite books. Me: Sabriel by Garth Nix and the Harry Potter series, hands down. But what about books that have shaped us as writers by modeling good form, beautiful sentence structure, or theme? There are several "writing" books that I've found helpful and chief among them are Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard, Upstream by Mary Oliver, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, and Three Genres: The Writing of Literary Prose, Poems, and Plays by Stephen Minot and Diane Thiel.

Credit: A1Gmy-aj0qL.jpg

However, if I had to suggest one of those to anyone, it would be Upstream by Mary Oliver (although all of them are wonderful). Oliver writes these essays with the deftness of years spent honing her craft writing poetry. It is part memoir and part reverie. Quite simply: it is lovely.

Those books up there are just a few of the works that have helped me along my writing path. If we dive deeper into my book collection, we'd see that I have a penchant--developed early in life from reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lloyd Alexander--for science fiction and fantasy.

So, part one of the assignment for this week is to tell me about a book that helped form your ideas about writing or that makes you think "Wow, I wish I could write like that."

Part two: Do some research and find three literary journals that you think would be a good fit for your poetry. A good place to look is Submittable. If you don't have an account yet, sign up! Look through all the journals and look into the process of submitting. You don't have to submit anything at this point; we're saving that for later in the semester once we've workshopped some of your poems.

Also, I took a look at your blog! I noticed that you like to rhyme. I like how you list three songs at the beginning and end of your posts to get readers into your current mindset. Very cool. Alright, now off to work! 

Week 2: Activity 1

Hi Philliecia! I decided to create this blog as a way for us to communicate and collate what we do over the semester. Anyway, here is the first activity I'd like you to complete! Don't worry, I'm going to participate as well. Just post your response as a comment below this post. Have fun!

Adapted from Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink by Gail Carson Levine (p. 191)

Photo credit: Harper Collins

Pick a paragraph in a favorite book (tell me the title/author in the post) and rewrite it at least three different ways using different word choices. Think about using bigger words or shorter words. Consult a thesaurus. You probably won’t be able to change every word. Now see if you notice repeated sentence structures within the paragraph. If you do, recast them. Decide which way you like best. You may improve upon the master. Although it's okay if the revisions are silly. Mine likely will be. Post the original paragraph and the revision you think is best as a comparison. 

Reflection: What did this exercise teach you about word choice and sentence structure?