Sonnets

Shakespeare had his sonnet style, Petrarch had his -- now we have ours.

Sentence Poetry

When we are children, our stories come from a time of completely different vistas and viewpoints.  The sentence poems in this journal were written from the perspective and with the language of children—students taking us back to the hard, embarrassing stories of youth.  They are called “sentence poems” because the idea is to tell the story as a child does—all in one breath!  (Cover art by Tia Reilly)

List Poems

These poems begin exactly as you would imagine—as LISTS! List poems are also known as catalog poems , and a most famous example is Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing." In this case, 9th grade students took collections of ideas and turned them into poems. As a result, we end up with titles such as

“Things to do While Trying to Fall Asleep” 

“Never Run with Scissors”

“Things I should not have done”

“Things a child tells their mom”

“Home”

And lines such as                          "Don’t sit on your sister”

“throw a bubble wrap soiree”

“Don’t tie up your sister”

“AHH, IT’S A BEE!”

“Never never never ever die before I do!”

You have to discover these lists of life and learning! Well worth the time and smiles!(Cover art by Jason Donaldson)

Haiku -- 5, 7, 5

Generally—and in the original Japanese haiku—this poem evokes the emotion, the power, the delicacy, the touch of nature. However, in today’s assignment, we do not necessarily stay in that subject area. Enjoy the nature, but also the sports and war and personal notes of these very short three-lined poems of a very precise syllabication: five syllables in line one, seven syllables in line two, and five again in the last. Cover art by Tia Reilly.