The Poetry of Song Lyrics
We will be covering a unit on poetry in the near future, but before we begin I’d love to get a conversation going about some of your favorite song lyrics. Below are a few excerpts from some of my favorites. Please respond to them or post your own favorites.
Miss Morris 🙂
In the rain,
The pavement shines like silver.
All the lights,
Are misty in the river.
-from “On My Own” from the musical Les Miserables
I chose these lines because I think the simile comparing the pavement to silver is beautiful and it creates a vivid image in my mind when I read the lines. MM
Moving in silent desperation
Keeping an eye on the Holy Land
A hypothetical destination
Say, who is this walking man?
-from “Walking Man” by James Taylor
In these lines, I especially love the concept of a “hypothetical destination.” What does that mean? MM
Imagine no posessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brother hood of man
Sharing all the world
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
-from “Imagine” by John Lennon
I just think that these words are so inspirational and I really like the idea of a “brotherhood of man.” MM
“There is no such thing as writer’s block!”
“There is no such thing as writer’s block!”
Tips that will help you get “unstuck” when writing:
Be organic!
– Your best writing is what comes most naturally to you…if you are stuck for a topic or don’t like what you are writing…change it. You may come back to your orginal idea anyway.
– If you don’t know what to write at all…then write that! It is okay to get started with a list, or other brainstorming activities. Sometimes those things turn in to the best pieces.
Use your resources:
– “Interview” friends and family about your topic – react in your writing to what they said or run with the new ideas and see where they take you.
– Search your subject, genre, or idea online – see what others have already written about it
– Look up words you have already written in the dictionary and discuss their meanings
Go back to previous writing-
-Use your seed entries from other pieces
-Re-examine lists and topics that you have worked on before and see if they inspire new ideas
-Revise something – you may change it so radically that it becomes an entirely new piece
-Change your angle – write about a subject you have written before and look at it a different way
– Lift a line from what you just wrote and make it the first line on a new page and see where it takes you!
– Don’t get rid of anything. If you don’t like something you have written, just put a line through it and move on. You may change your mind later and find it useful.
Any other ideas? Let me know! 🙂
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