Saturday, November 5, 2011

Playing with Color

That's one way to play with color...


I took the suggestion from Victoria at the dVerse Poets' Pub and invited my two daughters (4 and 6 years old, respectively) to help me write a few poems with color as inspiration. I love their unconventional choices and the way they already enjoy playing with language, just like their mom! Here are three of the products of our combined color-play.

Blue
Blue is fast.
It's soft as pillows.
It is cloud boats,
cloud stars, cloud moons.
Blue sounds like sky
like a tiger
like the letter "s."
Blue is flowers
in a mountain meadow
and smells sweet
like crispy fall leaves
under my feet.

Red
Red is happy.
I want to paint the walls red,
paint my ears and my belly,
paint the dog and the chandelier.
Red feels like sitting on an airplane.
It is the breath in my body
and the breath
coming out of my body.
Red tastes like bananas
and burns my tongue
like lava.

Yellow
Yellow feels like the slap
of lilypads against my skin.
Yellow is a colander dripping
in the dishrack.
It colors the cat and the picture
and the mug on the table.
Yellow sounds like boots crunching
through snow,
like rain clouds
coming closer.

Click here to see how others played with color, and maybe try it yourself!

10 comments:

  1. Just delightful, and really original. And I have no difficulty believing a child said that line about painting her ears and belly red!

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  2. How creative... to see through children's eyes. Looks like you had fun!

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  3. children have such definite symbols for things

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  4. What fun! Such a wonderful way to share your love of words with your girls.

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  5. I love the lyrical lullaby of this.

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  6. You certainly made these colors your own. I, too, saw children and possibly Joan Anglund Walsh here. You spun them off their usual meanings and that's good and original!

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  7. The sensory collections you and your girls make with colour are unusual and lovely.

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  8. This touched me to the core. Children and poets have a way of seeing things differently. Maybe as poets, we're just kids at heart. I'm soooo glad you took up this challenge. Happy, colorful poem and photo. Victoria

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  9. I am sorry I took so long to make it over to this corner, Liz. It sounds like you have some budding poets who inherited a wonderful talent from Mom. I really want to meet the one that wants to paint their belly red!

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