What do you wish you'd learned at school about poetry?

[Leanne]

In October I'll be delivering a 90-minute lecture/workshop to teachers of literacy at a conference and of course I've decided that my topic will be poetry -- specifically, ways that poetry can be used to engage students and improve their literacy (both functional, ie. how to write, and critical, ie. how to read/interpret/not believe everything that's presented at face value).

Many of these teachers have classes full of adults who have missed out on fundamental schooling, or 15-19 year-olds who have become disengaged from the regular system. I know that I've had great success with my students (both teenage and adult), but that's partly because I know poetry inside out and backwards. Many teachers -- indeed, most -- don't. I want to fix that.

Many people here comment on how much they don't know and what they learn from sites like this (well, really only from this site, since ours is the best ). I'd really appreciate input from you folks on what you think would have been interesting/useful/awesome to learn about poetry while you were in high school. What would have made poetry work better for you?

[Brownlie]

I've had teachers who never taught me about meter and I think they should have...

[milo]

When I went to high school, there was very little poetry taught, and it was taught by disinterested English teachers fulfilling some boring 2 chapter obligation. And it was taught like history - with the powder-wigged Victorians rolled out with their archaic language, strange diction and difficult to grasp skills. No wonder I detested poetry - for a decade, I would gloss over every time I came into contact with it.

Poetry is not history - you can't force feed the hard stuff first. Poetry should be taught by drug pushers trying to hook 12 year olds at the school yard: You don't start them with high-test smack and try to lure them back with the romance of vomiting and shivers and night sweats and track marks! You give them a little reefer to make them laugh and show them how fun drugs are, then wait for them to come begging for the hard stuff.

Students need to be started on fun poetry with modern language they can relate to, some salaciousness, some dirty words (oh my!!) some snickering and blushing and laughing until they are begging to learn what the fuck Shakespeare is talking about!!

Never mind me. I rant and reading back over what I wrote, I probably shouldn't even be allowed around students!

[billy]

the basic rules and devices in tandem with basic forms which include free verse and blank verse. punctuation. i never went to high school for more than a year in total. so it's hard for me to say what's what. a strong reading theme, i differ with milo in that i think many of the classics should be taught along with the current stuff. how can they compare if the don't know what it is. i think it is history. and like any other type of history we can see how things have developed. how do you teach people to write sonnet, one way is to show them some of the great ones. the main thing would be to make it fun. of course like milo i agree that you start off simple.

you could insert poetry into porn mags etc if any of the above doesn't work

[milo]

the basic rules and devices in tandem with basic forms which include free verse and blank verse. punctuation. i never went to high school for more than a year in total. so it's hard for me to say what's what. a strong reading theme, i differ with milo in that i think many of the classics should be taught along with the current stuff. how can they compare if the don't know what it is. i think it is history. and like any other type of history we can see how things have developed. how do you teach people to write sonnet, one way is to show them some of the great ones. the main thing would be to make it fun. of course like milo i agree that you start off simple.

you could insert poetry into porn mags etc if any of the above doesn't work

If I implied that classics shouldn't be taught, that is not what I meant. I just meant that it is more important to generate interest in poetry before getting to the 'heavy' stuff.

[billy]

that i do agree with, though how she walks in beauty can't move someone to want to write poetry ....
on reflection i'd say keep it light and add the classic stuff gradually. at all times aim at having the student write in the language of the current times.

[rayheinrich]

Looking back on it, I read a fair bit of poetry in my English
classes.

A few of the things I would have changed are:

1. Less (much less) memorization.

2. A broader selection. Nothing we read was created later
than 1900, not even T.S. Eliot or William Carlos Williams!!!!!
(And I would have liked to read a few slightly obscure
contemporaneous poets as well.)

3. Instruction in, or at least the opportunity to, write something
other than business letters, book reviews, essays, and 'what I did
this summer'. While those are important, we did NOT write fiction,
poetry, or, for that matter, either news articles or step-by-step
instructions. Writing step-by-step instructions, by the way, is
a very important exercise. Not because it's a specifically necessary
skill to have, but because we get to experience, first-hand, how
imprecise our written communications actually are.

And...
(Well, Ok, maybe that's asking a bit much, but you get the idea.)

Oops, my cats are about to tear the place up (including myself) if I
don't feed them. Hmm... maybe there should be a lesson about cats;
not just about fog coming in using their feet (IMHO they are rarely
that silent as they tend to crash into things or yowl at each other),
but about not attracting too many. I know this doesn't have much to
do with learning to write, it's just that learning this is so
important that it should be mentioned in every class, from math
to history. Now THAT's something I wish I'd learned!

[billy]

teach people not to cap every line

teach them (if it's possible ) to express themselves and not to express what they think is the poetic self is.
it's got to be hard for teachers don't know poetry, one way is to learn it together , let the teacher explain that's what they're doing, going down the road less travelled, (the road not taken)both teacher and students exploring something new and special. let the teacher learn as they teach. not as easy as it reads i know but it's easier to share new experiences than to teach old ones. ask them about nursery rhymes, use them as starting points, i love Carroll, had i learned of his poetry sooner i'd have been hooked on poetry a lot earlier in life. now i'm rambling.

[Leanne]

All absolutely excellent points and ones I intend to address. I have a particular soft spot for milo's ideas about showing the fun first, creating interest with the risque and silly. Perhaps not so much crack though.

---

and ray, just for you I'm going to use at least one example of catalexis

[rayheinrich]

I wish I had learned that it was OK for ME to write poetry.
That it wasn't something only famous people did. That it
didn't have to be hard or serious. I could write crazy stuff,
weird stuff, anything I wanted to, just for fun. It didn't
have to be homework or something I'd be graded on. It didn't
even have to rhyme. I could write about my bicycle or what
my sister did to me or dirt. I could write about dirt and mud
if I wanted to. All that stuff. It didn't have to be important,
it didn't have to be good. I was free, I could say the most
terrible things. I could kill people, I could say fuck any
time I wanted to. It was something just for myself that
teachers, adults, bullies couldn't stop me from doing. I didn't
need permission, I could do it even if they told me not to.
It was mine.

[milo]

I wish I had learned that it was OK for ME to write poetry.
That it wasn't something only famous people did. That it
didn't have to be hard or serious. I could write crazy stuff,
weird stuff, anything I wanted to, just for fun. It didn't
have to be homework or something I'd be graded on. It didn't
even have to rhyme. I could write about my bicycle or what
my sister did to me or dirt. I could write about dirt and mud
if I wanted to. All that stuff. It didn't have to be important,
it didn't have to be good. I was free, I could say the most
terrible things. I could kill people, I could say fuck any
time I wanted to. It was something just for myself that
teachers, adults, bullies couldn't stop me from doing. I didn't
need permission, I could do it even if they told me not to.
It was mine.

yah . . . I don't think we should encourage this type of behavior

[Leanne]

[milo]

I <3 you ray

I will smack milo now.

hey, I am all for pushing drugs on 12 yo's but freedom of expression in poetry? That is where I draw the line!

Will you be recording your 90 minutes?

[rayheinrich]

>< awww.


P.S. I just remembered an exercise that I did sometime in school.
It was just regular writing, but there's no reason it couldn't
be poetry. We were supposed to make up powerful stuff we'd done,
Superman stuff, and write it all down describing what we'd done.
I could throw cars at people, tear up houses, make bridges,
drive cars too fast and win races, lead an army, or ride camels
across desserts (I was always making that mistake). I loved
doing that and I remember talking about it with classmates
afterwards and taking turns adding things.

[Brownlie]

I don't have much experience teaching children, but I suppose a lot of you are right that more should be done to get them interested in poetry. A teacher played Dylan Thomas as he read "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" and that was quite inspiring at the time. I'd like writing teachers who have already hooked students to help them realize that you don't have to be born a creative genius to write or read literature. I had a teacher tell me "you either get it, or you don't" which I thought was bull shit. The first time I read Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," I tried too hard to analyze it and walked away feeling stupid. I listened to a reading of it about a year later after I had tried writing and had read more and I thought it was beautiful. I had a similar experience with Robert Frost's poem "Birches." The teacher would get students to post an analysis of the poems in class online and that livened classroom discussions and we all really dug into Frost. But, I came back to "Birches" and heard the poem read out loud after getting some feedback on my writing and my jaw almost dropped. Creative writing classes tap into something different than math. People can discover parts of themselves when they begin to write and a dedicated writing teacher can really help students who are struggling in their lives. However, at some point it would be good to know that you can stumble sometimes and that doesn't mean you have to give up. Dedicating some study to poetry and even learning some technical aspects of the art can help people to enjoy their lives. One last thing, consider showing students Metaphysical poems like Donne's "The Flea" let students know that the poem can be seen facetiously. Not only is it an example of a brilliant metaphysical conceit but it is also a lecherous guy trying to get laid. He drags stupid ideas like honor and chastity and shows them to be ridiculous and from my experience teenagers are often quite jaded on antiquated morals. Also, exploring questions like: Is Milton's portrayal of Eve in "Paradise Lost" sexist, misogynistic, or even proto feminist? Either way students can use the story to learn about these topics and free themselves from the chains that they don't realize are binding them. For boys, Stephen Crane deconstructs masculine paradigms using naturalism which I feel is very effective. The short poem "War is Kind" would be good. In part literary canons are a history and it is often a history that is different than what we receive in history classes.

[Keith]

At high school poetry was a sign of weakness to be kicked, spat at, chewing gum stuck on blazered and twat chalked on your back. So I would discuss how to teach poetry that shows it for what it has become and how it links with song writting in our modern day culture and I would show example of poems like fucking a hipster with a hatchet, ie poems you will never find on an exam question, because its not about the second world war, yawn.

[billy]

looking at a couple of posts, i see they have a point, censorship, not being able to use profanity etc. if a kid could write a poem and use the word fuck in it, the make the kid take poetry to his heart. .

[Brownlie]

There is more to poetry than shock value. I loved Bukowski in my teens and when I am drunk I look to him for inspiration, but poetry is so much more than profanity communicates. It can be so much more eloquent. It has guided me through so much loneliness but I would hate if a teacher gave me false praise. Please be everyone honest and remember what art can give us in these times where god is dead. God was patriarchal this is true but now we live in times of scientific bleakness we need things like poetry to teach that we are humans prone to folly... I could go on but it would seem preachy.

[billy]

i totally agree but what 15 year old wouldn't love to write a poem using expletives. the idea is to get them hooked then teach them the refinements. the truth is; we don't need poetry, and that's the problem. like anything, if we don't need It we don't wont it, kids needs playstations etc (at least that's what they think) and poetry has to contend with such needs. poetry has to be pitted against such diversions. tell a kid it's okay to use what language they like in poetry and more than less will give it a go. often we learn life experiences by seeing first hand how nasty they can be. after that we see the true beauty of it, fire, when do you tell your kids it burns and hurts and not to touch it, when do we bring fire into the world of kids and how do we do it. poetry is like fire. it often burns us before we get to know how good it is. water is the same. i showed my kids how fun water can be and they loved it, their mum on the other hand was brought up to hate it. my kids used and abused it before coming to respect it. and see it in all it's refinements.
we need poetry to be fun, to be beautiful to be our window, we don't need anything to teach us that we're prone to folly, history does a good enough job of that deed. we need poetry to be an open door, or a cloud or ray's cat. we need poetry to be an adventure, an experience, a good wank. we need it to be whatever we we need it to be. we need it to be student and the teacher, sex, love and a cigarette after being dumped. if you can show the kids (not tell them) these things, you'll have a few poets from each class. so in summation i say
shock em then rock em.

[Leanne]

Is Milton's portrayal of Eve in "Paradise Lost" sexist, misogynistic, or even proto feminist?

I could just refer them to this essay: http://www.sgmhs.org/ourpages/auto/2011/...st_pig.pdf

Please, Brownlie, can you just comment on one thread without googling? I really do want people's own opinions -- though how in the hell anyone would think that sort of line of questioning appropriate for teaching literacy to at-risk, disengaged youth is somewhat beyond me. But hey, you did admit you know nothing about teaching children.

Profanity in poetry -- fuck yeah. Actually, I try to get my students to think of an alternative and use some creativity when it comes to their epithets, but sometimes there's just nothing you can replace a fuck with.