Hemmingway would murder me if he knew
Today, Bambi told me that she was going to teach our 3rd Graders how to write an "English poem" (what that means, your guess is as good as mine), and asked me to write one before we had class. I asked her what kind (my first thought being LOL limerick but then thought about what a headache it would be to try to explain rhyming patterns to 9th graders). Turned out, she wanted a cinquain, which is a five-line poem where the first line is one word, the second is two, the third is three, the fourth is four, and the last is one.
She wanted me to write one so that she could have two examples on the board and how it was okay/interesting to have completely different poems. Go go gadget encourage creativity! However, her example cinquain looked like a freaking diamante poem - you know, the seven-line one that starts with one word, does the adjectives and gerunds, and then swings to its opposite in reverse order. But yeah, I asked her "any words are fine?" (as long as we both used the theme fall (in terms of autumn) as the first line.
The problem arrived when I only had like twenty minutes to come up with one. Now, that wouldn't've been a problem if I could use any English word in my head and any grammatical structure that I felt like, but unfortunately I was limited by the words they know, which are so boring for the most part that I had to be poetical in how I described things, while still not dropping important shit like "the"'s in the middle of a line. And plus: public scrutiny. Thus, when I was writing mine on the blackboard ("Let's see what Mer-sensei wrote!") my hands were um, shaking a bit.
Which is embarrassing and somewhat silly, considering I'm not all that great at creative writing. I have sympathy for remily who changed her major out of the blue to poetry/creative writing but still won't let any of us read her stuff.
It's easier for me to look at something I've made (or um, modified) visually and still be pleased by looking at it, in writing I have a tendency towards dissatisfaction and annoyance for not being able to articulate things more vividly. This has a tendency to happen more in longer pieces and it's probably why I find it easier to write word shavings.
On another note, one of my third graders today told me that my eyes are "kakkoi". I'm starting to suspect there might be a reason that he's such a little shit in class.
Curiously, I've been punched in the brain with this really involved crazy sci-fi story involving roommates and space operas and hate crimes against sexbots. Well, actually it's an excuse so that when they make it into a feature film, I would get to cast this chick as a space pirate. Yes.
Speaking of which, Hardison/Eliot/Parker as thieves in space? Awesome y/y?
Also: WHAT.
They are... dating?
I never realized how tall she was. Mostly because when I think of her I imagine her in pajamas.
She wanted me to write one so that she could have two examples on the board and how it was okay/interesting to have completely different poems. Go go gadget encourage creativity! However, her example cinquain looked like a freaking diamante poem - you know, the seven-line one that starts with one word, does the adjectives and gerunds, and then swings to its opposite in reverse order. But yeah, I asked her "any words are fine?" (as long as we both used the theme fall (in terms of autumn) as the first line.
The problem arrived when I only had like twenty minutes to come up with one. Now, that wouldn't've been a problem if I could use any English word in my head and any grammatical structure that I felt like, but unfortunately I was limited by the words they know, which are so boring for the most part that I had to be poetical in how I described things, while still not dropping important shit like "the"'s in the middle of a line. And plus: public scrutiny. Thus, when I was writing mine on the blackboard ("Let's see what Mer-sensei wrote!") my hands were um, shaking a bit.
Which is embarrassing and somewhat silly, considering I'm not all that great at creative writing. I have sympathy for remily who changed her major out of the blue to poetry/creative writing but still won't let any of us read her stuff.
It's easier for me to look at something I've made (or um, modified) visually and still be pleased by looking at it, in writing I have a tendency towards dissatisfaction and annoyance for not being able to articulate things more vividly. This has a tendency to happen more in longer pieces and it's probably why I find it easier to write word shavings.
On another note, one of my third graders today told me that my eyes are "kakkoi". I'm starting to suspect there might be a reason that he's such a little shit in class.
Curiously, I've been punched in the brain with this really involved crazy sci-fi story involving roommates and space operas and hate crimes against sexbots. Well, actually it's an excuse so that when they make it into a feature film, I would get to cast this chick as a space pirate. Yes.
Speaking of which, Hardison/Eliot/Parker as thieves in space? Awesome y/y?
Also: WHAT.
They are... dating?
I never realized how tall she was. Mostly because when I think of her I imagine her in pajamas.