For our 3rd writing assignment, I am giving you 2 poems to read.
Each poem describes the WINTER season and a landscape.
First, a poem by William Carlos Williams: “Winter Trees.”
Second, a poem by me: “January Scene.”


Step #1:
As you read the two poems, allow the landscape they each describe to form picture in your mind.
Read each poem over a couple of times.
Read them aloud. Listen to each description.
Think about the images in each of the poems.
What is different in each poem?
What is similar in each poem?

What will you write about when you create a poem about the WINTER landscape?

January Scene
by Lynda McKinney Lambert.

dull morning light
blurs the overview –
rows of worn-out mailboxes
rusted red, grey-green,
hoary weathered metal,
one is newly painted
optimistic silver.

across the street
bare maple branches grasp curled-up
leaves trapped in wintry spines
like a torn umbrella, partly opened.

my body aches
moves slowly beneath
a hand-stitched cotton quilt
where two lovers sleep
entwined through-out
a frigid January night.

sheltering pines in the early fog
embrace neighboring houses.
A yellow one lurks
behind an ancient blue spruce
nearly twice its height.
A burnt-orange house broods
in the distance between
rows of naked maple trees.

We listen
for the next
winter’s snowfall
We wait
for its silent passage
along the banks of
the icy river.

Published:
Walking by Inner vision: Stories & Poems,/em>LD Books, 2017.

The Avocet, Winter Issue, 2017-18.

Step #2

Write a few sentences about the picture you see in each poem.
Describe the picture each poet painted.

Look at how WCW mingles his imagination with the real sight of the winter trees in his descriptive poem.

Look out your window. Imagine the window as the frame around a painting.

Imagine this window view as a painting hanging on your wall. What room is it in?

Imagine you are painting on a canvas. Describe what colors you will put into this winter painting.

Describe what you see in your window view, and how you will bring it to life on your canvas. Paint your picture with words.

In your descriptions of this painting/window view, use words that evoke the senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, sound.

Can you COMBINE – the description you created with a memory from your past?

TRY to WEAVE or MINGLE these two aspects together to complete your writing assignment today.

–
Copyright January 27, 2019. All rights reserved.
This Writing by Inner Vision Personal Journal Assignment #3 is created and published by Lynda McKinney Lambert.

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• Notes from Lynda:
  William Carlos Williams is one of my favorite modernist poets. He was a family physician who jotted down fragments of his poetry on the pages of prescription pads and in notebooks in his car when he made his rounds to see patients. He wrote poems in between driving to visit his patients in their homes or at the hospital. I believe Williams had a unique perspective on every aspect of life through his profession. He wrote about what he saw as he lived his life of service as a family doctor. He focused on individuals, objects, buildings, and nature and celebrated the extraordinary aspects of everyday, mundane life. In this exquisite poem, he celebrates winter and gives us the feeling that every living thing anticipates and prepares for the changing seasons. In the poem, we begin to see beyond the snowfall, and into the very essence of the life force in the woods.

Listen to Lynda reading a tanka poem, “we stand in darkness.”