Where I'm From

It was my second year of middle school, when my English teacher Mrs. Jackson introduced the poem "Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyon to me. After reading this poem, our class assignment was to create my own. Every since then this peom has helped me realize where I'm from and how my circumstances made me who I am.

Where I'm From

"I am from clothespins,

from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.

I am from the dirt under the back porch.

(Black, glistening,

it tasted like beets.)

I am from the forsythia bush

the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,
          from Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it-alls
          and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I'm from He restoreth my soul
          with a cottonball lamb
          and ten verses I can say myself.
I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
          to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces

to drift beneath my dreams.

I am from those moments--

snapped before I budded --
leaf-fall from the family tree."

Lyon's uses an informal and relax level of formality. When Lyon lists where he is from, "Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride," his gives a comfort feel to his words. Lyon repeats the phrases "I'm from..." and " I am from..." to continue the importance of the point he was trying to get across.

Resources: We Love Children's Books. George Ella Lyon. Where I'm From. Web. 24 May 2012.