Challenged

I'm feeling particularly poetically challenged this week.

My older children dissected poetry last week. This week they are learning all sorts of methods of writing poetry (I'm not sure what else to call them). Things like imagery and personification, of which I am familiar. Today we (as in ME TOO) learned about apostrophe.

And here I thought it was a simple punctuation mark.

It is, but in poetry apostrophe means something else entirely. It's when a poet speaks directly to an object in the poem. Then my children, poor things, had to write a poem using apostrophe.

They tried hard, and I give them credit for that. Tomorrow, we discuss theme.

Personally, I'm looking forward to getting back to standard essays - especially those factual ones, like compare/contrast or classification. Those, I can handle.

All this dissection of poems, etc, is making me look for simple little rhyming poems that give me pleasure. Like this one I found on the back of a bookmark we picked up at our library (sorry the picture didn't scan well):

Fall
Nancy Giffy

In fall every
leaf is
a
fiery jewel
We
walk
in
long
lines
down the
halls
at
school
The sunset
comes
early
and
shortens
our day
We study
our lessons
before
we can
play.

And then, I think perhaps I am learning something - because I'm seeing the imagery (use of sound & senses) in the following poem. Things I wouldn't have particularly noticed before attempting to teach my children about poetry.

November Night
Adelaide Crapsey

Listen. . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

Perhaps there is still hope for someone like me. Maybe I should find the Poetry for Dummies book at the library (surely there is one!) to supplement our homeschool. Then again....

Here are poems other, more poetry-savvy bloggers chose for today, Poetry Wednesday.