The Laurentian Great Lakes (more popularly known as the Great Lakes) were formed around 14, 000 years ago at the end of the last glacial period. Retreating ice sheets carved downreaching basins into the land and eventually they filled with meltwater. These interconnected lakes adjoin the Atlantic Ocean through the Saint Lawrence River.
The lakes named Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth. They contain 21 percent of the world’s surface fresh water by volume. Because of their sea-like characteristics which consist of rolling waves, sustained winds, fierce currents, great depths, and distant horizons, the Great Lakes have also been called inland seas. Alice Wellington Rollins, once wrote in Lippincott’s Magazine:
“To me, the Great Lakes will always mean Lake Superior. It is something unique in the geography of the world, and you have the consciousness of your actual height above the level of the sea as you rarely have on any elevated land that is not actually a mountain. There is something singularly impressive in the mere silence and vastness of our great northern solitudes.”
Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world by area, and Lake Michigan is the biggest lake that is in one country entirely. The lakes have been a significant highway for transportation, migration, trade, and are home to a large number of aquatic species.
Try It
Consider the magnificence of the Great Lakes. They can offer the joys of a relaxing summer getaway and they can bring treachery due to their impressive, ship-sinking storms. Write a poem about the beauty and majesty of the Great Lakes or the awe-inspiring and imposing storms born from them.
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Featured Poem
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a poem from Rosanne we enjoyed:
Fashioned Choices
The sleeveless dress leaves no place for a heart
There’s nothing there. No place to pin a part
so essential to red blood’s flow
let alone the seat of emotion’s glow.
The omission is barely smart.
While it gives the arm a fresh start
to face the summer air, to chart
its breezes, to thrill to the way it blows.
The sleeveless dress leaves no place for a heart.
And so a choice must be made beyond art.
Vulnerable metaphor will depart
when feelings rest on trends that go
with the changing seasons, the heat, the snow.
The sleeveless dress leaves no place for a heart.
—by Rosanne Osborne
Photo by Arden. Creative Commons via Flickr.
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How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.
“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland
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- Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018
- Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018
Rick Maxson says
Vanishing Point
Met you at Sandusky,
near the wooden coaster
I used to ride—you safe
along the ground, and I
round the tracks above you.
I knew you from school,
but there you seemed smaller,
much older than my eleven years,
and I loved your name.
One morning, in the minutes
before the sun would see us,
I moved across your body,
quietly, and drifted with you,
felt you lifting me as the light
spread over us and I saw
the ribbons you made from it,
until my sight vanished in your blue.
Erie, my first sea, my shores
are now many, my home
a faded memory.
Only you will remain,
boundless and bright,
with your courses of light.
Heather Eure says
Gorgeous imagery, Rick. I really like this.
Rick Maxson says
Heather you get 2 thanks! 🙂
Donna says
As a child, I spent every summer on the shores of Lake Ontario! I am currently at my parents’ home in upstate NY, where the lakebed once was long long ago. This poem …. I really want to write this poem. I’ll be back. 🙂 It’s hard on my phone.
Rick…. Wow, yours is beautiful.
Heather Eure says
I hope you’ll write a poem with us, Donna! Your childhood summers sound dreamy.
Rick Maxson says
Thanks, Heather
Rick Maxson says
Sometimes I do not know where I am. Thanks, Donna!
Sandra Heska King says
Lake Superior and Lake Michigan… they have my heart.
Katie says
When I married and relocated in 1980 I found myself 2 blocks from the shore of Lake Erie on the near-west side of Cleveland.
Talk about culture shock for this former southerner!
After having grown up on the east coast (SE NC) the lake shore of Erie was surprisingly similar but still quite different (horizon of water and sky, but no beach towns or fishing piers. Beautiful sunsets, though.
Rosanne Osborne says
Noreen Takes on Lake Michigan
Let’s walk on the beech, she says,
this midlife initiate to the empty nest.
Let’s search for meaning
in something bigger than ourselves.
Let’s pen our pace in new paths
to the familiar and beyond.
Let’s place a boot on the surface
of private moons and public stars.
Let’s put the wind of that city
behind us, step through factory waste.
Let’s stride toward the clean dunes,
camels through pine needle eyes.
Let’s reverse time as slack muscles
remember child-time pliancy, bounce.
Let’s circle this lake, the 1000-mile
strand of memory and mentality.
Let’s circumnavigate the margin of error,
the struggle between lake and land.
Katie says
Enjoyed reading this – and am drawn back by it again and again to puzzle it out.
Usually re-reading a poem several times helps me get more of/from it.
Thanks for sharing.