English 10: Write a new poem tonight using the ideas from today's exercises or on a completely new topic

 New poem due tomorrow. Typed. Be sure to continue using our criteria: use surprise, sound devices, enjambement, a title with an image in it, cut cliches, use language in fresh and startling ways. Sound like the poems you are reading in the magazines and books you took out from the library. Add context (who, what, where, why) where needed so that we know what is going on and why this point of view is key.

DUE MONDAY: Your best four poems, typed. Please include the edited drafts so that I can evaluate your process as well as your product. I will hand out a criteria sheet for this project tomorrow.

Some poets like to write about things or places. Below are two examples to inspire you.

Here is a poem about a scarecrow by the poet, Roo Boorson:

from the book A Sad Device

Scarecrow

Three hours I walked in the fields.
Dandelions that only last week exploded
like the yellow eyes of a million madmen had turned
to full hazy moons in the grass, waning.
Fish shivered the surface of the pond like soft whips.
Redwing blackbirds flashed like daggers,
concealing themselves in leaves.
Gray barn in the distance;
that is the true shape of a man; his own body
belongs to the animals. Or maybe his real form
is a mismatched suit
stuffed with straw, a halpfles thing
overseeing a field of dying stubble,
in a shape that thinks
it can scare away birds.

Light in the Pine Grove, Roo Boorson

An inland gull with dirty snowy wings
criss-crosses the days. At night
great brids, the houses, nest in fog,
everywehere fog pointing the way, meaning
there is no way. All of us
are so strange with one another
that you and I can barely speak.
All I can do is give little hints
that you won't be able to trust.
That is why the wind at night
strangles the slim daffodils,
bangs on the weakening shingles
and shakes us around.
I saw a little light pulsing in a pine grove.
I saw that I had been growing up
for twenty-five years.