As you revise the poems, have students eliminate repeated words and substitute more specific words for vague ones.
Here are some examples of color poems to share with students:
"White" by Mark Strand
"Is White a Color?" by John Matthew
White by Meg Petersen
the
color of cold,
the
sliver that settles in the snow queen’s heart,
the
faint smell of bleach rising up from tired hands, and
crisp
school uniforms, hospital corridors,
sheets
on a line and most underwear, the straps of the beaters
against
my sons’ dark skin.
streaks
in an old woman’s hair
vampires
and clown faces.
White,
the skin which betrays me
the
history I wear and am never without,
the
legacy of privilege, aura of power
and
imposition, the presence of all
color,
emerging from a spinning color wheel
reflecting
back all the light in the spectrum
Aglow
with purple under the blackest of lights,
as
if revealing its own deepest secret,
how
it is not what it seems, more than fresh
diapers
on a mother’s shoulder or the erasure
of
winter which reduces the world
to
chiaroscuro. It is all color and it is
nothing—
the
paper before the poem.
And a simpler example, for younger children:
Green
Green
Green is apples, markers, and cool.
Green is the taste of vegetables.
Green smells like grass and rain.
Green makes me feel envious.
Green is the sound of a lawnmower and a sigh.
Green is a garden, forest, and a swamp.
Green is renewal.
Green is beginning again.
