Friday, November 21, 2014

Poetry Friday: Odes

I always do odes with my eighth graders at Thanksgiving.  I think I've started about four posts with that sentence so far on this blog.  (Here are my previous ode-related posts.)  We read several examples, and some of them write one. 

Here's a wonderful one, Ode to a Box of Tea, by Pablo Neruda.  It starts like this:


Box of tea
from
elephant country,
now a worn
sewing box,
small planetarium of buttons:
you brought
into the house
a sacred,
unplaceable scent,
as if you had come from another planet.

You can hear my brother reading the whole thing here.  

If you need some odes and don't have any Pablo Neruda books on hand, here's a link to a nice pdf collection you can start with, including the full text of the Ode to a Box of Tea:  Odes.

Why not write an ode to something you're thankful for?  And check out today's Poetry Friday roundup.

3 comments:

Liz Steinglass said...

Odes are perfect for Thanksgiving! I have that book upstairs. I think I'll go find it.

Becky Shillington said...

This is great, Ruth! I will have to read more by Pablo Neruda--thanks so much for sharing!

Robyn Hood Black said...

That is a beautiful poem - thanks for sharing! (My computer kept cutting off your brother's reading after the first line or so - arrgh. But thanks for the link to the full text.)