beautiful monsters

Here is the blue car / with tiger sounds

I need five famous poems. Why? Have you read Love That Dog by Sharon Creech? If not, you should hunt down a copy, or follow the link to an extract. It’s very cool. Sad and sweet and endearing.

It’s a bit like a journal written by a boy, Jack. His teacher, Mrs Stretchberry, is teaching poetry to the class. She shows them famous poems and encourages them to write their own. Jack starts writing a series of poems about his dog, Sky, and his writing is influenced by the poems they are studying in class.

Kate (my tutor) has set me an assignment. I have to write a narrative poem, following the format of Love That Dog.

The poems Mrs Stretchberry uses are;
The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
The Tiger by William Blake
Dog by Valerie Worth
The Pasture by Robert Frost
Street Music by Arnold Adoff
Love That Boy by Walter Dean Myers

I have to choose a few poems to use in my own narrative. Any ideas? Most of my favourites are obscure poems by women from Aotearoa. I need to choose some poems that are at least slightly famous (Sign of Salute by Kate Camp is probably unfamiliar to most New Zealanders, let alone to people from other countries). I need to choose some poems by dead people. And especially, because of the particular narrative I’m trying to develop, I need to choose some poems by men.

So… your input would be appreciated. What is your favourite poem? The poem you have come across most often? The first poem you remember encountering? What poems did you study in school?

Entries on the back of a envelope, chocolate fish to anyone who suggests a poem that ends up in my final narrative.

Posted by Fionnaigh at May 13, 2003 11:59 AM