Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Another Ella - George Ella Lyon - Poet Laureate of Kentucky

from http://www.kentucky.com/entertainment/books/article44561367.html

Kentucky's 2015-2016 poet laureate, George Ella wrote "Where I'm From".

Where I'm From
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.

Be a copycat or an impressionist like Ella Fitzgerald.  Revise your initial writing to mimic George Ella Lyon's "Where I'm From".  You may choose to use a four stanza structure and create similar metaphors. 

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