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MichelleW
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| Posted: July 19 2011 at 12:36am | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
Once, for example, when we were studying "voice" (ie point of view), that same professor had us take a poem like "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," which of course "speaks" in the first person, rewrite it in the second and third persons, and talk about how that one seemingly tiny change changed the whole poem. Or we'd try well-known poems in longer or shorter lines than the original (break up "Stopping By Woods" into tiny little haiku-like lines; write "The Red Wheelbarrow" in two or three long lines; how does this change the entire effect of the poem? speeds things up? slows things down?).
Playing around with poems this way really helps, I think, to see how even these tiny decisions, which we don't normally think about as readers, contribute to the experience of the poem -- I think "experience" is maybe even a better word than "meaning," because to read a poem is to be appealed to in terms of not only your emotions and intellect, but also your senses and your ways of making associations . . . Anyway, these games are great for seeing how the poem is made and why it's made the way it is.
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One of the first exercises in the OOP book I mentioned above is to write a 2-word poem. I love this exercise for all the reasons you mentioned. It really forces you to pay attention to the relationship and juxtaposition of words. The first example given is this one:
Birds
Hands
That little poem gives such a strong impression. I always imagine my tiny Italian grandma talking when I read that poem. The two words together are unexpected, but the thing that really makes this a successful poem is the way the words are positioned on the page. This was an exercise my sons really got into and it became for us a gateway into poetry.
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Erin
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You are all so inspiring, helping me re-commit to read more poetry this term with my teens. One teen would rather write poetry than read it, but I believe reading helps inspire writing.
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4 lads mom
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Love that example, Michelle!
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4 lads mom
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One more thing...we had a great time this weekend, as we drove home from the beach, listening to Ted Kooser read some of his poetry and prose. My older teens really liked it! It occurred to me it is awfully hard to get them corralled long enough these days to listen to something together, but car trips and the fact it is so easy to download things on our Ipod make it easier to listen to thing like..POETRY!!! I would highly recommend listening to Ted Kooser reading his own poetry and prose, so enjoyable. I can’t remember where dh got his download for his poetry reading by Kooser, but I am sure you can do a google or itunes search and figure it out. I can’t think of any poems that are of adult nature, etc...but I haven’t listened to EVERYTHING of his, so you know the usual chant.....preview....for your own family....
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SallyT
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The Mary Oliver book does look really good, by the way. I haven't had time to read every single page, but thumbing through it today while doing this huge whole-house book overhaul that I've gotten myself into, I thought, "Wow, why haven't I used this?" It may be more a book to teach from than a book simply to assign, as it seems to be aimed at teachers of writing rather than at students. She deals with things like imitation, ie writing "echoes" of poems you admire; various devices of sound and how poems make use of them (including word choice -- the difference between "rock" and "stone," for example); the line in poetry (as opposed to the sentence as a unit of meaning and experience, as in prose); traditional forms; free verse; diction/tone/voice; imagery; revision.
It's a book about writing poetry, but introduces any number of wonderful poems from all over the poetic tradition, and would be a good book for teaching sensitive reading, as well as writing habits which would transfer all too well to other forms of writing (if you can learn to revise a poem, you can learn to revise a term paper).
The book again is A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver. You can preview it yourself here.
Sally
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Mackfam
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Adding another poet for consideration:
Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Catholic poet (Jesuit priest) of the 19th century.
List of works via Amazon.
Wikipedia bio and bio at Poets.org.
Hopkins wrote:
God's Grandeur
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. |
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juliana147
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Jen, I like Hopkins. Pearce has six of his poems in his anthology. I really enjoyed "Pied Beauty."
Thanks for the Oliver book review, Sally. I saw it on Amazon a while back and wondered about it.
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SallyT
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Fr. Hopkins is marvelous! You might also explore Edward Caswall, many of whose texts we sing as hymns. And a really interesting "life" to study in conjunction with the Tudor era is that of Robert Southwell. Also, there's Richard Crashaw, a seventeenth-century convert from Anglicanism (he had been vicar of the Anglican parish which was our home parish in Cambridge, when we were Anglicans living in England), not to mention Blessed John Henry Newman.
Sally
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4 lads mom
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Guess where I went today???? We made a side trip to here as we took Pete to see doctors in the city.....and it was delightful. Check out the link above for The Poetry Foundation, they have the sweetest, touching videos of “A Child’s Garden of Poetry” brought alive through video.....the little girl signing Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope” is wonderful. Go check it out, you click on the “A Child’s Garden of Poetry” and it will take you to a few poetry reads.
There was a Whole Foods right next to The Poetry Foundation.....I have decided it is the perfect spot to retire, right up in those gazillion dollar apartments across from Whole Foods and across from The Poetry Foundation. I’m there!!! 
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MaryM
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I didn't have an opportunity to really delve into this great thread until this week, following our conference. Thanks for all the great ideas and resources. This has me excited to incorporate it into our sophomore year here, too.
Angie, are you planning to do "Casey at the Bat" as part of the study? That is what I was going to recommend to you since it is the classic baseball poem. There is a great story behind the poem - a whole study in itself. We really enjoyed this book and think your ds would too.
The Night Casey Was Born: The True Story Behind the Great American Ballad "Casey at the Bat".
We did a study on Casey this past year. I am of the mind that you are never too old for picture books so we found all the different versions of it we could and compared the illustrations and talked about how they influenced the reading of the poem. It was fun. Patricia Polacco's version is great one to include as it has an interesting twist to the story.
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SallyT
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Another interesting resource here.
Sally
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Angie Mc
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I'm back! I have my materials collected and the time carved out in our new schedule. Now I just need to get a macro plan together and work on some details.
Mary, we are definitely including Casey and I purchased Baseball anthology that I need to search for more gems. We attempted to memorize Casey a little while back and fizzled out. I'll let you know if we try it again.
God is so good. There is always something new to learn and He is so good to light a fire of interest, especially in areas that were previously perceived as dank (I thought that was a poetic word choice .) Hopefully I'll have a few of my newbie plans to share this week.
Thanks again!
Love,
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MaryM
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While looking for something else on the Smithsonian Folkways site, I stumbled on this poetry lesson. It takes the musical forms of ballads and blues and introduces students to the rhythms of poetry. It looks really intriguing and a different slant on teaching poetry.
Smithsonian in Your Classroom - The Music in Poetry
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| Posted: July 28 2011 at 9:23am | IP Logged
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Okay....I did it....I sent Ted Kooser some of my poetry. I got back this week a postcard...handwritten from him....”Thanks for your letter” and then (paraphrasing)-- I have a lot of poetry sent my way, SIster, I do not have time to read it all....read my book, I’ve said it all in there....read a lot of poetry, best of luck in your writing....Ted Kooser. Oh well....I thought he might be so inspired he would invite me and my family out to Nebraska to hang with him for a few days BUT, I am impressed he hand wrote the postcard.....with a picture of a local barber shop on the other side. There you go!
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SallyT
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Good for you! Broke the ice, anyway. And you can always drop him a line when you see a poem of his that you especially like, telling him what you like about it. I know that I too seldom think to do that kind of thing, but as a writer friend was reminding me not long ago, it is a gesture much appreciated.
That would be a good exercise for a student, by the way -- to find a living poet to admire, to study some of that poet's work, and then to craft a really thoughtful fan letter explaining why the student likes that poet's work. A lot of really famous poets are busy (at least in their own heads), and if they're really super famous, they probably do get inundated with mail, so a cool pen-pal relationship is not a guarantee. Still, that would be a way to motivate a student to make a certain poet "his" or "her" poet and to read carefully enough to sound intelligent when writing a letter.
Just a thought . . .
Sally
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4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond
Topic: High School Poetry
