Tag: borrowed lines

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#VerseLove Day 3 with Denise Krebs of California – Borrowed Rhymes

Our host for our third day of #VerseLove is Denise Krebs, who lives in Yucca Valley, California, near Joshua Tree National Park. She blogs and resists at Dare to Care. 

Denise invites us to write Borrowed Rhymes poems today in her prompt. You can read the prompt in full here. Please jump in today to read the posts and feel all the harnessed energy of a community of writers. We’d love to have you!

Denise encourages us to find a poem with rhyming or song lyrics we like. “Extract the rhymes and write them down on the right margin. Fill in your own line for each rhyme,” she explains.

I extracted these words: blue, knew, round, down, time, mine, care, anywhere from my favorite Eagles song, Take it to the Limit. I wrote them at the end of each line and crafted my poem using these pairs.

More Time

….when out of the blue,

who even knew?!

can I last one more round?

do I feel too beat down?

I want more time

to call mine – ALL MINE!

to spend time how I care

to day trip anywhere….

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#VerseLove Day 1 with Jennifer Jowett of Michigan: The Verse Collector

During the month of April, I’m participating in #VerseLove 2025 at http://www.ethicalela.com. Each day, a different host will lead us in a fresh prompt to inspire writing. These prompts can be used in classrooms or for personal writing development. It is my hope that you will visit the site and consider writing and sharing your own poems as we celebrate National Poetry Month together.

Today’s host is Jennifer Jowett of Michigan, who leads us in The Verse Collector prompt. You can read her full prompt inspiring us to write Cento poems here.

For my poem today, I looked no further than my old Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes, the book that started my love of poetry as an elementary school child. I sat in a dark closet with a flashlight for hours on end, mesmerized by the reading. Here are some rearranged lines from that volume of poems that I used to create a new poem.

Stolen Childcrafted Secrets

I was going to the window

(to steal the secret of the sun)

too burning and too quick to hold

but something surely to behold

the swallows blow along the sky

the sparrows twitter as they fly

the wind is passing through

I was going to the window

(to steal the secret of the sun)

(hush, I stole them out of the moon!)

I have so much to tell!

Here are the poems from which I took the lines, in order:

Once I Saw a Little Bird, anonymous

This is My Rock – David McCord

The Falling Star – Sara Teasdale

Song of the Wake-Up-World – Countee Cullen

April – Sara Teasdale

Wind Capers – Nancy Byrd Turner

Who Has Seen the Wind? – Christina Rossetti

Repeat 1

Repeat 2

Overheard on a Salt Marsh – Harold Monro (the poem that put a spell on me for life)

March – Emily Dickinson

My original book had a pink spine and a whole different set of illustrations. This one features the same poems, but is from a different year of this set of books. One day I hope to recover the original book from an attic somewhere……..
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Day 5 of February’s Open Write with Amber Harrison of Oklahoma, Day 36 of The Stafford Challenge

Ollie, tugging a stolen sock

Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 5 of the February Open Write is Amber Harrison of Oklahoma, who inspires writers to write a borrowed form poem using a fill-in-the-blank approach. You can read her prompt and the poems of others here.

Amber writes:

Today, I invite you to fill in the blanks in these lines by Whitman, or create and refill blanks of a stanza by another poet of your choice (this could be a time when you fill in the blanks expressively or reflectively in zine form):

I celebrate ________,

And what I _____ you ______, 

For every ____________________ me as good

___________________ you.

Original lines by Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Boo Radley, Stolen Sock World Champion, taunting with those eyes
Stolen Socks

I celebrate stolen socks
And what I tug, you wrangle
For every muscle moved by me as good
as hackles you.
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June 17 – June Open Write – Day 1 with Jessica

Just some of my writing friends, NCTE, Anaheim, CA November 2023

Today’s host at the Open Write is Jessica from Arkansas, who inspires us to write about our friends using borrowed lines from friendship songs. You can read her full prompt here.

I can’t think of a better way to kick off any month than celebrating friendship. Jessica’s invitation to search songs was just what my heart needed this morning, and for me, no one touches my heart like The Divine Miss M. Here’s to all of my friends who are writers – all of you, using a line or two from Wind Beneath My Wings

A Haiku for YOU

you, fellow writer,
are the wind beneath my wings
cheers to friends with pens!

did I ever tell
(forgive me if I haven’t)
you, you’re my hero?

-Kim

You can watch her sing it here: https://youtu.be/0iAzMRKFX3c

And here are some more songs to help you celebrate: https://parade.com/1182863/jessicasager/best-friend-songs-about-friendship/