Poet Tree

the ride this week was awesome. a friend of mine cut my derailer cable, hoping to replace it for me. when we realized we only had brake cable to replace it we picked a gear in the middle and we went out to cruise. its been about three weeks since we rode, and I realized how much I've missed it. a single speed is all you need most of the ride is through switchbacks with some climbing, but lots of twisting around back and forth. we rode on really soft ground through what's left of the bushes that got burned up in last year's Cedar Fires. At one point, I cut through a right turn and didn't cut enough. the branch caught me a half inch from the narrow point of my eye. Its cool. I've been telling people I got in a knife fight. As I rode, I was prepping for the next day's class on Digital Video Poetry. the class was designed for English teachers to show ways they could use iMovie to breathe life into their poetry classes. we added still images, music and then had the choice to use voiceovers, or transitions, titles, or effects. it was up to us what we wrote about, and what was expected of us. I chose to do a poem about poetry that turned out pretty well. It makes me laugh to write a poem about poems. You can read it below... I wrote it the first 20 minutes of class In this video, you will see different parts of poetry. Today we'll see three, so don't forget the first example's a couplet. The second hits your imagination. Repeated sounds are alliteration. The third example, if you're keeping score, is what we call a metaphor. We start off with words that rhyme poems will do this some of the time. When they rhyme two lines you get, what English teachers call couplets. Poems have something else called meter words have beats to please the reader. When we open up our book, we'll learn about a thing called foot, another way of saying stress- the syllable you like the best. Poems are fun. The terms, too stoic. But we will learn couplets heroic. Big bold bad bruisers with words which whisper. When sounds stuck side by side show students such sentences all authors allow alliteration. A metaphor is warm banana bread. When the smell hits your nose and fills up your head with words that compare two unrelated things. They're effective for the feelings they bring.