"Where We're From" Poems

This week we're writing poems about where we're from, modeled after George Ella Lyon's poem:

Where I’m From
by George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins,from Clorox and carbon tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush,
the Dutch elm
whose long gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons,
from perk up and pipe down.
I’m from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch, fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.

I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded–
leaf-fall from the family tree

We read the poem together, and then talked about the images and sensory details in it. Then we made sixteen lists of things in our neighborhoods, in our houses, childhood objects etc. And finally we took those items and applied our literary elements (which we learned last semester) to them...metaphor, simile, imagery, onomatopoeia, and more...and wrote our own poems. We recorded and edited using imovie. Enjoy!