POETRY FRIDAY IS HERE!!!

Welcome to Poetry Friday! Please leave a comment with your link and I'll update throughout the day!

For my own entry...

Street Love Walter Dean Myers

In this verse novel, we get to hear the voices of many characters. Damien has a house on Sugar Hill and a scholarship to Brown. Junice's mother has just been arrested and she's doing everything she can to keep her family together. Their love is against the odds and we hear their lives, those of their friends and family, people in their neighborhood, and even Junice's social worker.

While the terseness of the verse novel form doesn't work as well for bringing the reader along as Damien and Junice find each other, I do really like how Myers has a very distinctive voice for each character. Damien's actions in the end of the book drove me UP A WALL, but I loved how strong Junice was, doing everything she could to keep her family and life together. She refused to be victimized by her circumstances and did what she could to keep it together.

My favorite poem is in the voice of Junice's grandmother, Miss Ruby, whose mind is coming and going:

Yeah, it's hard baby
It's hard right down to the bone
I said Oh, it's hard baby
It's hard right down to the very bone
It's hard when you're a woman
And you find yourself all alone
I've been flapping and scrapping
And running from door to door
You know I've been flapping and scrapping, honey
Running from door to door
I ain't what I used to be, ain't really Miss Ruby anymore

Book Provided by... my local library

ARGH! I had most of the roundup done and then my computer shut down and ATE IT. Grrrrr...

Anyway, bear with me! I'm working on it!

Ok, it's almost lunch time, here's what we have so for! Keep your links coming and I'll update again in a few hours!

Round two of the round up has been added! I need to go pick up my Cybils holds from my local library (which isn't the library that employs me) but I'll be back before dinner for more poetry fun!

Round three has been added. If I get many more entries, I'll add 'em before bed!

Round 4 is up! Thanks everyone for a great poetry Friday!

Lots of Halloween Poetry and related posts today! (Which reminds me, I should get candy before tomorrow, shouldn't I?)

Sally at Paper Tigers has a review of Halloween Poems selected by Myra Cohn Livingston and illustrated by Stephen Gammell.

Elaine from Wild Rose Reader has a round up of Halloween Poetry books to share with kids.

Elaine at Bluestockings shares Shakespeare's "Song of the Witches" from Macbeth.

Gregory K. from GottaBook has an original Halloween zeno!

Laura from Writing the World for Kids has a some zombie haiku.

Sara at Read Write Believe shares a poem by Jacqueline Jules about Harry Houdini who died on Halloween.

April from Teaching Authors offers up Halloween lesson plans with original Halloween poetry AND illustrations.

Liz from Liz in Ink shares "All Hallows" by Louise Glück

Gisele from Reflective Ink shares an original Vampire Haiku.

Pam from MotherReader shares "Folloween" by Adam Rex.

Charles from Father Goose gives us an original, "A Ghostly Night."

MsMac from Check It Out shares some of her students' spooky zenos.

Michelle from The Cat and Fiddle shares a Halloween word poem and how to make our own!

Julie from She-Smoke offers up some Halloween food poetry, including her original "Trick or Treat"

Barbara at The Write Sisters shares "The Erl-King" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Kelly Polark gives us an original Halloween parody.

Priya from Book Crumbs shares "Jack-o'-Lanterns" by Ann Pedtke

Janet from All About Books gives us "Hallowe'en" from The Little Hill by Harry Behn.

I'm not the only one doing book reviews today!

Mary Ann from Great Kid Books has a review of the new edition of Edward Lear's The Duck and the Kangaroo, illustrated by Jane Wattenberg.

The Stenhouse Blog looks at Metaphors and Analogies by Rick Wormeli and explores how do define poetry with a metaphor.

Lots of great original poetry is being shared:

Elaine at Political Voices shares "Paean to a Bovine Beauty"

Julie from the Drift Record gives us two original zenos.

Laura from Writing the World for Kids also gives us a round-up of this week's 15-words-or-less poems.

Diane from Random Noodling shares an Emily Dickinson poem and her own, "With Apologies to Emily."

Jen and Colin from Coolhead Luke share some of the poems and pictures from their books.

Karen from Karen Edmisten (or, The Blog with the Shockingly Clever Title) shares an original, "I Am From"

Over at Deo Writer MsMac shares her own zeno.

Lorie Ann from On Point shares her haiku "Harvest"

And a plethora of wonderful poems by others!

Janet from Across the Page shares "These Are the Days when Birds Come Back" by Emily Dickinson

Kurious Kitty from Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet shares "The Excrement Poem" by Maxine Kumin.

Jama from Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup shares "Autumn Song" by Katherine Mansfield.

Ruth from There Is No Such Thing as a God-Forsaken Town gives us "The Door" by W. H. Auden.

Little Willow from Bildungsroman shares "The Rose of Battle" by W. B. Yeats.

Sherry from Semicolon shares "The Children's Hour" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Tricia from The Miss Rumphius Effect gives us "Spelt from Sybil's Leaves" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Mary Lee from A Year of Reading shares "Fall" by Edward Hirsch.

Lorie Ann at Readertotz gives us the full text of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (Did you know there are 5 stanzas?!)

Lisa from Lisa in Little Rock gives the traditional English ballad "Scarborough Fair"

Sylvia from Poetry for Children explains the new zeno form and gives some examples by the creator, J. Patrick Lewis.

Don't forget to leave your Poetry Friday link below!!!!

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