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This is my playground for poetry written for children with ideas and inspiration for writing your own poems. Come on in. Sit for a spell, have a cup of words to swirl around and make your own cup of poetry. I'm so glad you are here. I hope you'll find the Kingdom of Poetry a fun place to be.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Library Books

This book went to the library.
This book stayed home.
This book was lent to friends to read.
This book was left to roam.
This book crackled, cheeped, and peeped--
it was full of poems.

I'm still having fun with the This Little Piggie exercise, I hope you are too.  I always enjoy poems about books and libraries.  One of the longest recent list poems I have read was 9 pages, titled Library, written by Albert Goldbarth and included in his award winning collection SAVING LIVES.  The poem is a list of all the books in his library and is full of rich details so the reader can personally know each book too.  As the lead poem in the SAVING LIVES collection, Library starts

This book saved my life.
This book takes place on one of the two small tagalong moons of Mars.
This book requests the author's absolution, centuries after his death.
This book required two of the sultan's largest elephants to bear it; this other book fit in a gourd.
This book reveals The Secret Name of ...

You can read the rest of the poem at Poetry Daily. You can learn more about Goldbarth at http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1295    or http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/albert-goldbarth

Look at the books on your own bookshelf, or go to the library and look.  If you were going to write your own library poem what would you include?  Are there details you could use for each of the five senses?

For another fun idea, Travis Jonker a librarian in Michigan, is featuring spine poems on his blog this month.  It is a fun exercise if you want to try it, check out his blog at http://100scopenotes.com/2012/03/06/wanted-book-spine-poems/

Have fun.

4 comments:

  1. I actually have a list of my favourite books on my blog. Hmm...I'm going to try to write a poem about them using the senses.

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  2. Joy,
    I like how you changed from piggies to library books. I also enjoyed the information about spine poems. What a fun way to be inspired to write poetry. Thanks for all you share.
    Linda A.

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  3. I think u all need to have poems entitled 'school library' for secondary level because look at it in my situation I would obviously depend on any poem about the above title to do my coursework examination. I am not getting any clues for the past days. what to do?????

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  4. Good luck on your course work examinations. Thank you for the idea. I'll think about a School Library poem aimed at older students. It might be fun to write.

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