Week 22 Blog 3B: Writing a Poem about Childhood and Platonic Love

Task: write a “write like” poem using one of the poems we read in class as your model. You can base your poem off of "Piano" or "Those Winter Sundays." Write the rough draft of you poem in your Reader/Writer notebook. Next, type it up, send it to Mr. Sabath via email (peter.sabath@pgcps.org), and then post your poem in the comments section below.

¡ Step 1: Think back to your childhood and jot down a few memories.

¡ Step 2: Select one memory (today’s warm-up), positive or negative, and write a short poem about it using one of the poems from class as your model.  Your poem should have one example of each of the five senses in it.  It should be 1-3 stanzas long. (See rubric on next slide for details.)

Grading Rubric: Poetry Using Sensory Detail

1.     Poem deals with a childhood memory  __ /10

2.     Poem is a “write like” using either Piano (rhymed verse) or Those Winter Sundays (free verse) as a model __ /10

3.     Poem integrates the five senses (sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing) __ /10

4.     Poem is written in stanzas (1-3 stanzas in length) __ /10

5.     Poem is told in first person __ /10

Total Score: ___ /50

 Poem about my childhood (This is what you'll need to post in the comment's section below!)

“Write-Like” Model Poem: Piano, by D.H. Lawrence

Example:

Down Hill

by Mr. Peter Sabath

Gracefully, in the falling snow, a skier is weaving down the slope;

Taking me back down, not up, the ski-lift of years, of forgotten hope

Till I see a lost child at the bottom of a great mountain, in the flakes of

     more falling snow

And looking for the outline of his mother coming down

     but she’s out of site, nowhere to be found.

In spite of myself, this insidious mastery of downward speed

Yanks me back, though the heart of me tries not to take the lead

To this old mountain slope in Pennsylvania, with ground blanketed by winter

And a little boy without his mother, his little soul

       leaving his body’s center

So now it is pointless for the skiers to bend and push

As their skis carve deep into the snow, scratching the buried bush

In the panic of the distant moment, I thought she had melted away

My blood and bones, nerves frozen in ice,

       on this down-hill Olympic day.

Poems from class:

PIANO

By D.H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Those Winter Sundays

by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?