Friday, August 23, 2013

Book Spine Poetry

The ever-inspirational Kara posted about this here, and I thought the idea was too fun to pass up.  Stacks of books with titles forming a coherent (?) whole -- what could be better?  So here are what I came up with, pulling from my own shelves and a couple of my hubby's.


Lost in a good book
Under the lilacs:
A gathering of days
In the company of others.
Ourselves,
Strangers to these shores.


Desolation island,
A gathering storm,
Battling the elements.
Dirty hands,
An antic disposition...
Trouble is my business.


Kind of like magnetic poetry, only with whole phrases to work with.  And not nearly enough verbs.  Definitely felt the lack of verbs!

18 comments:

  1. Awesome! I really like how yours turned out - especially LOVE the first one! :)

    And yeah...not so many verbs to work with, are there? :P

    ~Amber

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    1. Either I'm not drawn to titles that begin with verbs, or they just don't happen much. "To Have and Have Not" is the only one that comes to mind. Hmm.

      And thanks! I like the first best myself.

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  2. I kind of wanted to try the book spine poetry, and I wish I had...maybe in another readathon. I'm always afraid my poems will end up being stupid, especially since I don't have a ton of books to work with. Yours turned out great though!

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    1. Thanks! They only took me all morning, lol. Okay, not really, just the spare moments between breakfast, brushing all the teeth, doing the kids' schoolwork, and making lunch. They actually came together pretty quickly once I'd read over all the books on my shelves and figured out what titles might work.

      Short poems are good too! Book spine haiku?

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  3. Way fun. That first one is cool. :)

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    1. Thanks! I spent more time on the first, probably why it's better.

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  4. That's really neat! I also love the first one.

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  5. Great idea! This could be fun with Middle School students in my library!!! I think I just found a fun activity for the first week of school. Thanks, daughter!

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    1. Yay! Glad you found it fun and useful. Hope your students have fun with it!

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  6. This is a great idea! I'll have to try it sometime. A way to motivate me to finally unpack my books from the move. :)

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    1. Isn't it nifty? Good luck with your unpacking! Sometimes that's even harder than packing, since you don't have a deadline.

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  7. These are fabulous, Hamlette! I think the first one is my favorite, but I love both a lot. And yes, those verbs are kind of lacking, aren't they? I had a little struggle with coherency on mine too! :D

    Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Thanks! This was a lot of fun :-) And yes, coherency was difficult!

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  8. What a fun idea! I used to do found poetry in school, where you would turn an article from a magazine into a freestyle poem--I usually chose National Geographic. Can't believe I never thought of doing this!

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    1. I know, how is that I'd never done this before?

      What you're talking about sounds cool, kind of what Austin Kleon does. Found poetry is so groovy.

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    2. Oh yeah, kind of! We didn't black-out that much, mostly tearing things up and putting it back together differently, but it's the same idea. I'm not really a poet, so things like this are really fun for me!

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    3. I do like writing poetry, but I love constraints like that that force me to be especially creative with limited things. Like magnetic poetry.

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