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Lessons for April / May 1999

Poetry --Time

Inspired by poet Geoff Hewitt's marvelous new teaching book, Today You Are My Favorite Poet : Writing Poems with Teenagers (Heinemann 1999)
This month's lessons are all about Poetry.

K-3
Lunes

A lune is a simple form of poetry which begins with a very simple pattern

3 words

5 words

3 words

Begin by reading several lunes to the class. Here's a lune by a first grade poet from a book called Poetry Everywhere (Teachers and Writer's Collaborative.)

Here I am
For you to see me
and that's it.

Tell your class how the last line of the lune often does something surprising or funny.

Spring is here!
Snow melts into wide puddles
Splish, Splash----Bath

Write a lune on the board with your classes help. Decide on the first line, then the second, then the finale. Tell your class they can begin writing their lune without knowing how it will turn out. Each lune is an adventure.

Love is great
when it wraps around you
like new skin

3-4
Metaphor Factory---a Game

This is a fun activity to get students thinking metaphorically.

On one side of the paper list feelings as nouns

1

Love

Happiness

sadness

joy

On the other side of the paper list foods. Processed foods work especially well.

2

Salami

Bologna

peanut butter

cream cheese...

Now choose a word from each list to fill in this sentence    1   is a 2

Example:            Love is a Salami.

Once you have the sentence now it's time to prove it by extending the metaphor with an explanation.

Love is a salami. If you slice it thin it will last a lifetime.

5-8
Memoir
(excerpted from Today You are My Favorite Poet by Geof Hewitt)

For many poets the richest source of material lie in their childhood memories. For me, at least, these memories often involve behavior that was not appreciated by adult society. Not that I was a bad boy, but many of my memoir poems touch on common types of childhood malfeasance. A story involving wrongful acts is usually more interesting than one describing the narrator's virtues.

Write a poem that creates an event without analyzing it, allowing the reader to draw the conclusions. The event does not need to involve a moment of naughtiness, nor does it need to be autobiographical: one may choose to create fiction in this exercise!

Eagle Rock
Remember us to Eagle Rock

Billy Koenig and me at 9 years apiece

hiking one Saturday in early May

way up past the house with half a pack

of embezzled cigarettes and enough matches

to light each a dozen times

Remember us to Eagle Rock

where couples in their cars

pulled off the road to watch the N.Y. skyline

and make love to Billy and me

dizzy from tobacco sitting on the big pavilion

wondering what to do once we felt better

And how as if we had no choice

we'd find ourselves each time

working toward the place the cars were parked

provided by the town, a pressure seal

for lovers prevented by circumstance

from doing it at home

And picture Koenig and me, pockets stuffed

with newly sprouted acorns

we used to stone the lovers

I can't believe we stoned the lovers

taking such liberties with our health

and how, when we did get chased

we'd run and run and run

half laughing and half very scared

some wild-yelling cursing half-dressed

passion victim in pursuit

I hated to trip but often did

Billy usually way ahead of me, down down

into the forest below Eagle Rock

to a cave we knew where

we'd heave and choke and get our breath,

lungs aching from the cigarettes and from the chase

and laugh and swear we'd never come so close

to getting caught

                                                 Geof Hewitt

9-12
The Art of Bad Poetry -- Unmetaphors

    Truly awful poetry depends on bad metaphors. Ironically, to write bad metaphors one must understand what a good metaphor is. Poet Geoff Hewitt calls bad metaphors, unmetaphors. A good one seems to blow up, sometimes elegantly in the readers face. Here are some examples of unmetaphors. Try writing some with your class.

The little bowl drifted gently across the pond exactly like a bowling ball wouldn't.
He was as tall as a six-foot three inch tree.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with two big dots in the middle.

Her vocabulary was bad as , like, whatever.

One way to make your metaphors funnier is to extend the. Keep describing them till the reader starts thinking, "enough already!"

He spoke with the wisdom that could only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked a a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches they used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

Submit Student Work

Has your student written something you think should be published? Try submitting it to us and we will try to use it in a future Discover Writing Press publication. We are particularly interested in funny writing or satirical research papers. See 5-8 lessons. You can submit the work electronically by email, or snail mail it directly to:

Discover Writing Company
PO Box 264
Shoreham, VT 05770.

Make sure the student’s age and home address is on each piece mailed so we can send home permission forms to the student’s parents.