Poetry Before You Know It (and How Your Computer Can Help) - Part 1 (5-8)
by Hilda and Henrietta
Maybe you're one of those kids who moans when your teacher asks you to write a poem? Or maybe you really enjoy writing poems? But no matter whether you love to write poems or not, you're sure to get a "write a poem" homework assignment every school year. So what can you do?
Think COMPUTER when you get one of those assignments. Consider this:
If you type a poem into a word processing document, you can change it around in all sorts of ways--with no messy erasing! --And on the Internet there are free rhyming dictionaries that you can use to help you find rhymes to even for difficult words like "brilliant". Of course, not all poems are supposed to rhyme, but these dictionaries are a good thing to know about anyway.
Okay, let's start by writing a rhyming poem together. We'll tackle the non-rhyming poems in our next lesson:
Your teacher asks you to write a rhyming poem. Maybe she (or he) will let you write any type of rhyme or maybe you'll need to write a certain type of rhyming poem. Some poems rhyme every other line, such as the "Roses are red" type poems, and other poems must be written to rhyme in certain ways. Types of poems that rhyme are couplets, triplets, quatrains, ballads, sonnets, and limericks. All of these types of poems have different rhyming and beat patterns.
Because limericks are so much fun, we've used one as example of a rhyming poem that must be written in a specific way. A limerick is a humorous poem with five lines. Some people say that the limerick was invented by soldiers returning from France to the Irish town of Limerick in the 1700's. Here's one you probably have heard before:
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were caught, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "Let us flee."
"Let us fly," said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
As you can see, in a limerick the first two lines and the last line must rhyme, as well as having the two middle lines having their own rhyme.
Limericks usually start by telling about someone from some place in the first line. Like this:
There was a young lady from Lare,
Why did we pick Lare? The place doesn't have to be real, so the key is to pick a place that rhymes with lots of other words you can use in your poem. You wouldn't want to have the person come from Gzyrgevichop, for example.
The second line often begins with the word "who", but remember that the first two lines must rhyme. HINT: When you begin a limerick, type in the first line without the name of the town. That's because you can change the name of the town to fit your rhyme. We had the idea of writing about someone with a bug in her hair, so we called the town Lare. If the bug had been on her toe, maybe we'd have called the town Stowe. We typed in the first line without a town, and then this line:
Who discovered a bug in her hair.
Then we named the town. Of course, it could have been called Square or Where or Pear, couldn't it?
To get lots of words that rhymed we went to two of our favorite rhyming dictionaries WriteExpress (http://www.writeexpress.com/online.html) and to Word Central (http://www.wordcentral.com/). We typed in "hair" and up came words like bear, millionaire, unfair, declare, and loads more.
So after you are satisfied with your first two lines, you need to write two more short lines with a different rhyme. If you can't think of any good rhymes to go with your idea, head to a rhyming dictionary like one of those we listed above for some inspiration. This is what we wrote:
So she slammed on her hat,
And did squash the bug flat,
Next, you need a last line that rhymes with the first two. If you can think of a good ending line that rhymes with Lare and hair, you're done. How about this?
Which the bug thought was very unfair.
Put all together, and we have our own limerick:
There was a young lady from Lare,
Who discovered a bug in her hair.
So she slammed on her hat,
And did squash the bug flat,
Which the bug claimed was very unfair.
Do you remember that we said that limericks are USUALLY about someone from somewhere? They don't have to be, though. They can be about anything as long as they rhyme like the poem we created or the one we gave you in the example above. They also should have a similar beat to them. It's usually about 9 beats (or three stressed syllables) in lines 1, 2 and 5, and six beats (or two stressed syllables) in lines 3 and 4. You don't need to worry so much about that unless your teacher insists upon exact beats in your poem. If she (or he) doesn't, just make sure your poem sounds right as you say it or have your computer read it back to you. Some computers or software programs can do that. It's a good idea to see if yours will.
That's all you have to do to write a limerick. When you're writing on the computer, it's easy to change your writing around to get your poems just perfect. If one rhyming scheme won't work, try another. The computer makes it much easier for writers, especially poets.
Here're some sites to give you some help with writing rhyming and non-rhyming poems:
Rhymezone
http://www.rhymezone.com
This is another nice rhyming dictionary.
Shadow Poetry: Types of Poetry
http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/types.html
This is a great place to find information about different types of poems. If your teacher assigns a specific type of poem, you can head to Shadow Poetry to find out exactly what you need to write. Shadow poetry gives you information on rhyming patterns and beat, along with other ideas about writing poems.
Giggle Poetry
http://www.gigglepoetry.com
Giggle Poetry is site packed with crazy poems that will make you laugh.
Poetry Express
http://www.poetryexpress.org/
Poetry Express features tips and techniques for writing poetry.
Next time we'll will tackle non-rhyming poems. Are you ready to Haiku?
View Computers and Homework Archive
|
