This week, we looked at a lot of different kinds of poems and tried our hand at creating our own. The first one that I read about and tried to create my own poem after was "So Much Depends Upon A Red Wheel Barrel" by William Carlos Williams. This poem was a lot of fun to create my own version of, at first I found it a little challenging because I could not decide what to write about and it was taking me a while to get started. However, I decided to make a list of things I use everyday that I really like. That is how I came up with the idea to write about socks. I love socks and they are one of my favorite things, I always have to have a pair on and if I don't my feet just don't feel right. I also had taken a picture of one of my favorite pairs a while ago for another photography class I had taken and I used that as some inspiration to help me write my poem. Once I decided what I was going to write about I thought about some things that I like about socks and what they do. It took me a little while, but I finally decided to go with the poem below. I really like it because it reminds me of why socks are the best and I feel like it has a little bit of a playful tone to it which I also really like.
Found Poem/BlackOut Poem
Here is a blackout poem that I created from a reading I had from one of my classes. I found it very difficult to make, there were so many different words to chose from and so many different directions I could have taken this poem. I think I changed up the direction of my poem many different times and played around a lot with different words and trying to figure out what I wanted to say and how I wanted it to sound. I think this could be a fun activity where every student get like the same page of text where they can to go through and create their own blackout poems. It would be interesting to see the similarities and differences that arise when you do that. I think it could lead to a great discussion about the power some words carry, or how different language affects us. I could also see students enjoying it a lot, especially with some students who may be more hesitant to write on their own, this way it is a little bit different.
Concrete Poem
This week we also talked about concrete poems which are probably one of my favorites. I just love the freedom you have when writing one and how creative you can be when making them. When we were reading about concrete poems, it reminded me of some crochet patterns I have seen. One of my favorite things to do is to crochet and I have seen some patterns like below when looking at new patterns for a project and to me they are kind of like concrete poems.
This is not my pattern, but here is the link to the page where I found it. This pattern takes the shape of what you are making and all the symbols on it stand for a specific stick that you are supposed to make. For example, the oval marks stand for a chain. To me this is kind of like a version of a concrete poem just without using the words, but symbols for words. I found this to be really awesome because in my mind now, when I crochet it is kind of like I am reading poetry in a way and the poetry is being read and followed to create this beautiful piece of art. It makes me think about how these patterns or patterns produced in written form are kind of just poetry for crocheters. It is kind of a neat thing to think about.