SUGGESTIONS FOR INTRODUCING OR EXPANDING POETRY IN THE CLASSROOM. J. Patrick Lewis

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1 SUGGESTIONS FOR INTRODUCING OR EXPANDING POETRY IN THE CLASSROOM. J. Patrick Lewis First, a disclaimer: I would not presume to tell teachers how to teach. I taught college but that is not nearly as hard as teaching second grade. So what I am about to say is really by way of self-advice, vis., advice I hope I could take if I were embarking on a career as an elementary school teacher. Start every day with a poem and end it with a poem. Billy Collins Project 180. Get the whole school involved. Children will not gravitate to poetry naturally; poetry must gravitate to them. Read poetry out loud, even if you are all alone. Poetry is song. Poetry predates books and the alphabet. Reading aloud resonates through your entire body. Encourage children to imitate other poets. Imitation is not plagiarism. Remember: students are not writing for publication. Let students choose their favorite poems and write parodies of them. [Example: Joyce Sidman s book, THIS IS JUST TO SAY: POEMS OF APOLOGY AND FORGIVENESS. Ask your students to write a written apology to someone or even to some thing (an apostrophe poem). I have eaten and which Forgive me the plums you were probably they were delicious 1

2 that were in saving so sweet the icebox for breakfast and so cold Here s a quatrain from Emily Dickinson followed by two parodies: You cannot fold a flood And put it in a drawer, Because the winds would find it out, And tell your cedar floor. Emily Dickinson You cannot count the lightning bugs Of August till they re ready To fire up a festival ELECTRIFIED CONFETTI. You cannot climb a rainbow Unless the winds agree To blow in one direction north Towards Curiosity. Practice reading the poems you intend to read to your class. Children always read in a sing-songy way. Why? Encourage children to read poetry naturally, very much like normal speech. Encourage kids to JHF Just Have Fun! This does not mean that all poetry must be funny. If poetry is difficult/boring/painful, let them choose other poems that aren t difficult/boring/painful. Encourage the use of strong verbs, the basis of all good writing. Avoid to be verb forms as much as possible. Give students: [Subject] [ ] [direct object]. and ask them to fill in the verb. E.g., The bee staggers out of the flower. (Basho) Note the importance of writing with detail! 2

3 Seek to personify. Let inanimate objects do things that humans would do. Discourage the use of adjectives. Some forms e.g., diamante emphasize finding adjectives. Avoid them. Redundancy Most nouns contain the adjectives you d expect. Why overdo desire with burning desire? Is pesky necessary for insect? Avoid the nice and warm before a fire. Examples of Personification The foghorns moaned In the bay last night So sad So deep I thought I heard the city Crying in its sleep. Spring tried and tried, but could not make The water run beneath the snow, I took a little stick and scratched A way for it to go. Elizabeth Coatsworth Lilian Moore When sun goes home behind the trees, and locks her shutters tight then stars come out with silver keys to open up the night. Norma Farber The wind stood up, and gave a shout; He whistled on his fingers, and Kicked the withered leaves about, And thumped the branches with his hand And said he d kill, and kill, and kill; And so he will! And so he will! James Stephens Stuck getting started? Keep a mystery box of poetry prompts on your desk nouns, phrases, sentences. Keep a dream journal. 3

4 Use a cinquain and supply the first two syllables of line one. E.g., Thunder or Grandma or Breakfast or CT Scan. Try a group poem: One student volunteers to offer the first line; another the second and so on until you have a whole-class twentyline poem. Choose a metaphor for yourself: I am a cat; I am a Nascar car, for example. What does this new condition imply for your body parts? Ask students to make up secrets about themselves but not to sign it. Put all the secrets in a hat and let them choose a secret and write about it. Write a list poem: Things That Are Impossible to Do; Books I Wish Someone Would Write; What I Didn t Do This Summer. Ask a student to give you the three initials of his name, e.g., B L M. Then ask students to make word combinations using those three letters. They need not make sense. They might be appealing because of their humor or because of their beautiful sound. Babies Love Milk Blue Lion Mountains Black Lab Missing Be Like Mike Even better, tell students that it s time for Imagination Calisthenics. Yes, you can exercise your imagination by using NAME-LETTER STORIES. Choose a word and write it vertically like an acrostic. But now ask students to let their imaginations run by the look of the letter or any free association that comes to mind. ASK THEM TO DO IT AS FAST AS THEY CAN! E.g., MASCARA M arrests a boy scout for making fake merit badges A bristles at the sound of caribou galloping through Times Square S slinks around school passing out the lucky number 7 C tends to the elderly in a nursing home full of sixth 4

5 grade boys and tuna fish A plays Louie, Louie on a trombone made of candy wrappers and potting soil R hibernates like a polar bear dreaming of milkshakes on Aruba A runs for President on the Mothers Rule Party. Take the first line of famous poems: I heard a Fly Buzz when I died. So much depends upon. Oh, I m being eaten by a boa constrictor. Ask students to supply three more lines to each. Keep a poem in your pocket Beatrice Schenk de Regniers poem. Wonderful idea. But you should also keep a pocket in your poem. Keep A Poem In Your Pocket By Beatrice Schenk de Regniers Keep a poem in your pocket And a picture in your head And you ll never feel lonely At night when you re in bed. The little poem will sing to you The little picture bring to you A dozen dreams to dance to you At night when you re in bed. So Keep a picture in your pocket And a poem in your head And you ll never feel lonely At night when you re in bed. Keep a Pocket in Your Poem By J. Patrick Lewis 5

6 Keep a pocket in your poem Filled with every wondrous thing You can think of red hawk feather Silver penny, pinkie ring, Yo-yo, M&M s, a ticket From a rollercoaster ride, Pictures of your pug a pocket Is a poem s place to ride. So Keep a pocket in your poem For imagination grows From the deepest secret pockets Every pocket poet knows. Poetry, like life, is in the details. Resist rhyming. Rhyming is not what children do best. We don t tell children to draw between the lines, so why should we lock them in the box of rhymes and ask them to write their way out of it? Rhyming is far less important than writing. Just write! Encourage metaphor. Children are not natural poets, as Myra Cohn Livingston argued in her book, THE CHILD AS POET. but they have an uncanny ability to create unnaturally gifted metaphors, which is what we mean when we say Kids say the darnedest things. They will lose this ability at the age of 11 or 12. Examples of Weak Children s Verse by Children Cinquain Lizard Big, hard Diamante Cat Sweet, furry 6

7 Walking, eating, sleeping Lizards are really cool Reptile Haiku Horses running smooth Galloping fast in the wind Manes blowing, flowing The Daisy That Was Very Lazy Once there was a daisy It was very lazy It almost died 'Cause it lied So the daisy was very crazy Mean, rude Loving, purring, playing Litterbox, fish, bone, Growing, wrestling, Dog Write poems about the most outlandish things you can think of. No subject is immune to poetry. You can write poems about anything at all. (E.g., THE WORLD S GREATEST: POEMS.) Use abstract pictures, and ask students to write what they see. You don t have to leave your chair to write about everything under the sun. Practice reading the poems you intend to read to your class. Children always read in a sing-songy way. Why? Encourage children to read poetry naturally, very much like normal speech. Encourage kids to JHF Just Have Fun! This does not mean that all poetry must be funny. If poetry is difficult/boring/painful, let them choose other poems that aren t difficult/boring/painful. Encourage the use of strong verbs, the basis of all good writing. 7

8 Avoid to be verb forms as much as possible. Give students: [Subject] [ ] [direct object]. and ask them to fill in the verb. Note the importance of writing with detail! Seek to personify. Let inanimate objects do things that humans would do. Discourage the use of adjectives. Some forms e.g., diamante emphasize finding adjectives. Avoid them. Welcome into the home of your classroom a wide array of poetry book and anthologies. Let a hundred flowers bloom! Don t tailor your classroom library to your own tastes. Include formal poems (metrics and rhyme) AND free verse. Emphasize how critically important school libraries are and librarians! Team up with your librarian to develop projects for students to do. Discourage publication at an early age. Text is more important than blue ribbons or a student s name in a book they have to pay $75 for. [W.H. Auden quote: If a person tells me he wants to write to get published, then I know he will not become a poet. But if a person tells me that he wants to write because he loves words, then he has a chance of becoming a poet. If students (and their teachers) feel compelled that students should publish, let them do so in their own books. Show them how to make their own dummies. When you ask students to write a poem, write one with them. This is a great way to let students know that you care about what they are doing and you believe in the process. Stress that writing is not easy. If writing were easy, everyone would be a writer. 8

9 As painful as it may be for students to hear, insist on rewriting. Remind children that NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE FAILURE. What comes easy is cheesy. In writing children s verse, nothing succeeds like failure: Fail as much, as often as you can. How else to get it right? Again, rewriting is everything. * * * * * 9