Thursday, September 07, 2006

Young Poets

This is what has made my heart full today. How can you see the world as bad when there are young children writing poetry like this? It's from a local organization's, Powerful Schools, free poetry class. Powerful Schools provides free after school classes in a handful of schools down in South Seattle (where we live) where the kids are more "in need" of free programs like this. How lucky we are, truly.

I took off the kid's names for the sake of their privacy.


Vowels: A,E,I,O,U and Sometimes Y

A
The sound that
comes out and
makes an apple.

E
The shape of the
end of a rake.

I
The letter that
switches around and
makes an H.

O
The mouth of yours
which opens and shuts.

U
The symbol
of the smile
on your face
(or a frown that
makes you feel down.)

Y
The two fingers
you use
to make a
funny bunny’s
ears.



My Dog Sky

My little dog is named Sky. People
say he is shaky as a wire
but I don’t care. They say he isn’t
one speck of silver, but a speck
of dirt, but I don’t care. They
say if the sun was to come
today it would burn all the dirt
off him, but I say “good,” and
“I don’t care, he needed a bath anyway.”
They say if it snowed, he wouldn’t dare
to shiver because all the
dirt would keep him warm.
They say he is dark, is a
night time sky, but I don’t
care; they say he is crazy
just like the people on the
road trying to get through
traffic last Sunday. But
I don’t care because
I love my dog and
I always will.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

it's really disappointing to read interesting poetry from youg people but no comments, no opinion, no debate whatsoever... only spammers spilling their useless ads. so anyway, i think "vowels" is a very nicely written, funny piece of poetry. it made me remember a short story about some of the vowels being jealous of the A and beating her badly... it was hilarious

i am writing poetry myself but still unsure about making my stuff public. as a beginner, i enjoy reading poetrymagazine.org, readwritepoem.org and blogs like worldclasspoetryblog.com, youngamericanpoets.blogspot.com and what have you.. still the same problem in those other blog... very little interaction. keep posting stuff like this!

thanx

Anonymous said...

This is David Weinglas from the YAP blog mentioned above and I just wanted to tell young poets out there that deadline for 2008 submissions is December 15th. Want to submit? Read our submission guidelines here: http://youngamericanpoets.blogspot.com/2008/08/submissions-frequently-asked-questions.html

Thank you!

Brooke said...

I beg to differ with some enthusiast commentators. American poetry is lagging behind, and what worries me the most is that we opt to stick our heads in the sand. I am an avid reader of Internet poetry, because I once thought this medium would bring the necessary fresh air. Instead, all I see is authors locked in their little blogs, writing poetry without other ambition than getting as much links as possible to their websites. Not convinced? Read silliman or this poetry blog and you will understand what I'm talking about.


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