Choices: Building Your Portfolio
Haiku / Fog / in Just-
Writer’s Notebook
1. Collecting Ideas for Interpreting Art
Look around you. Look at this image of a Japanese screen;
What do you see? How does it make you feel? Then, do some research in a library or on the Internet. Find out what you can about Japanese screens. What’s their history? What are they used for?
Creative Writing
2. A Special-Day Haiku
Write a haiku about your special day. Keep in mind that a haiku brings two images together for comparison, contains a seasonal or weather word, and presents a moment of discovery.
3. A Weather Change!
Compose a weather report that describes how tomorrow’s weather will look, sound, smell, and behave—in terms of the animal you chose.
4. A Seasonal Salute
Imitate the style of Cummings’s poem “in Just-,” and write a poem presenting
fresh images that you associate with a particular season. Avoid clichés and other overused expressions.
You might open the way Cummings did: “in Just- . . . when the world is . . .” Play with words and punctuation and typography just as Cummings did.
Critical Thinking/ Creative Writing
5. You Can Bank on It!
Poets are always searching for words. Set up a word bank in which you enter unusual and interesting words. To get started, tear
out words from an old magazine or newspaper. Then, define and enter in the word bank any unusual or interesting words from your page. Set your words up in a computer file or in a scrapbook. Map each word as shown below. Give its
meaning, a synonym, an antonym, and an example of the word in a sentence. Use a
dictionary and a thesaurus if you like. Then, using one of the poems in this collection as a model, write a poem of your own. Use as many of the words from your word bank as you can. (If you are inspired, write a poem
about a word bank.)
| Word: | implacable |
| Meaning: | "relentless"; "can't be satisfied or stopped" |
| Synonyms: | "inflexible"; "rigid" |
| Antonyms: | "flexible"; "easy-going" |
| Uses: | Robert is an implacable force on the StudentConcil. I am never implacable. |
Creative Writing
6. Foggy Weather
Sandburg’s poem “Fog” appeals to our sense of motion by comparing the movement of fog to the movement of a cat. Sandburg develops this
extended image over the six lines of his poem. Extend the image in the poem even further. Write three or four sentences describing other catlike qualities and actions that might be applied to fog.
----