Embarrassed? Frightened? Write a Poem!

by Jacqueline Jules

Poetry is a great outlet for expressing strong emotions. The Poetry Friday Anthologies are a wonderful source for poems about first day jitters, disappointments, fears, and other emotional moments students experience on a daily basis. I’d like to share two poems I wrote that your students could use as models to write about their own feelings.

“Embarrassed” appeared in The Poetry Friday Anthology, K-5 Edition,2012.

In this poem, I use food images to describe the feeling of being embarrassed after saying the wrong thing. I say “Words spilled like soda/Now there’s a stain.” Sometimes things slip from our mouths in a sloppy way we didn’t intend. It can feel like being a sloppy eater and having potato chips end up in your hair.

The use of images to describe one’s feelings is a powerful tool in writing, particularly in poetry. Ask your student to think of an embarrassing moment. It can be a time when they said something they were sorry for or it could simply be a time when they dropped something or lost their balance in front of someone they wanted to impress. Can they think of an image to describe their feelings? Can they compare it to another situation or object readers will immediately identify with?

Begin with a freewrite, asking your students to describe the situation in prose, with as many metaphors or similes that come to mind. Freewrites give writers the opportunity to find their images first before trying to rhyme or condense their thoughts into a poem. Sometimes, writers choose words only because they rhyme. Doing a freewrite first can help writers avoid this pitfall.

Another strong emotion is fear. Fear of homework. Fear of thunder. Fear of being embarrassed. These poems, “The Math Beast” and “Thunder” appeared in Balloon Lit Journal, August 2015.

In “The Math Beast” I compared math homework and my fear of failing to a tiger roaring in a cage. In “Thunder” I compared the frightening sound of a storm to a stampede of buffalos on the roof.

Ask your students to write about something they fear. Storms? Tests? The High Dive? Monsters? Can they compare their fear to something else?

Once again, begin with a prose freewrite, encouraging your students to identify images before they try to write a poem. Poetry should contain at least one clear picture for the reader and having one in mind before you start is very helpful.

There are so many emotions to write about. Encourage your students to explore emotional terrains and describe their feelings in concrete images.

www.jacquelinejules.com

TRANSFORMING A FREE WRITE

by Jacqueline Jules

Free writes are a staple of writing workshops. Gurus like Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within) frequently advise writers of all ages to just keep that pen moving across the page. It doesn’t matter what you write in the first draft, just get some words down. And it is good advice. Before I start a project and every time I get stuck, I put my fingers on the keyboard and type ideas, questions, fears, memories, and anything else that comes to mind in a random manner. I don’t worry about figurative language, clichés, or didactic phrases. I just get words down, something that I can re-read to rework later. 

Here is an example of a free write I did for a poem later called “Daddy and Venice.”

The final poem, published in Imitation Fruit, May 2010. 

had only one line from the free write: “dressed in pigeons.”  I used that image to describe what it was like to feed the pigeons in Saint Mark’s Square in Venice when I was a girl.

So how did I transform a free write which essentially says I don’t remember much beyond the pigeons and my father’s desire to show me the beauty of Venice? My poem makes references to the Doge’s palace, a grand staircase, gondolas with Persian rugs and velvet seats— details I absolutely did not remember from my eight-year-old-experience in Venice. How did I do it? Research! I went to Venice travel sites and used the facts I found to create imagery in my poem.

The next time you study countries, ask your students to write a poem using highlights described in their research. Travel websites are designed to entice the reader to spend the necessary dollars to see that not-to-be-missed vacation spot in person. They are great sources of persuasive language and generally chocked full of sensory images. Using interesting details spices up any piece of writing.  

 www.jacquelinejules.com