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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.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Lantern Poem

copyright 2014, Joy Acey
Wild
wart hogs
trot around
the water hole
run


    The form of this poem is a lantern or lanterne.  I like to think of it as a half cinquain.  It has five lines like a cinquain, but each line has half as many syllables.  So there is one syllable in the first line, then 2,3,4, and 1 syllable in each of the next lines.  This form is difficult because word choice is heavily favored for one syllable words.  Thus the scope of the poem is very limited.  The lantern has fewer words than a haiku.  Plus starting and ending with just one word lines is difficult.  How do you think I did in writing this one?  Now it is your turn to try.
   My friend David Harrison has a poem challenge this month using the word evergreen.  You can find poems using this word on his blog at www.davidlharrison.wordpress.com

So let's see if I can do this, writing a lantern using evergreen.  Since evergreen is a three syllable word, I'll need to split it into two words.  An evergreen is a tree, so I'll use that for my first word.  Now all I need to do is fill in the middle.

Tree
growing
stretching tall
standing ever
green

This is my first draft.  But looking at this, I think if I change this to a pine tree, I can do more.

Pine
growing
loblolly
stretching ever
green

    Have fun trying to write your own lantern poem.

4 comments:

  1. Where are you that you are inspired by all these exotic animals? Very interesting form. I love cinquains. Maybe I'll try this. Thanks for the post.

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  2. I think you met the challenge well of including evergreen, especially in the second poem. Way to go, Joy!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Linda. I'm still searching for the right subject to write a lantern with. So many of my safari photos won't work--lions, elephants, ostrich, zebras, gazelles, topi, --they all have too many syllables, unless I break it up like I did with the wart hog.

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