Poetry Countdown: Women's History Month #2

Looks like we just might make it in time...#2 today and #1 tomorrow, as promised!

Jane Kenyon left us far too soon. She died in 1995 at the age of 47. But in such a short life, she produced some amazing poems. She had an uncanny eye for detail and an almost supernatural ability to capture a scene. Upon first read her poems very accessible However, repeated readings reveal hidden depth and complexities and therein lies the pleasure of reading Jane Kenyon. Read a Kenyon poem once and you find pleasure. Reread it a few times and you're in awe. I'm also drawn to the subtle spirituality of much of her work and also (not in a morbid way) to the several poems she wrote about death and dying. She seems so at peace in her writing.

Here is an example, "Let Evening Come:"

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving   

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles   

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   

go black inside. Let evening come.

Read the rest at the Writer's Almanac. As I've professed before, the use of repetition is a poetry "move" I really enjoy. She uses it splendidly here, almost melodically in a way that lulls you to sleep, and also in several of her other poems.

I also like "Happiness" (who doesn't?):

There’s just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

Finish reading here and you'll notice that wonderful repetition move come back.

I believe you'll see what I'm talking about when I say "eye for detail" and "hidden complexities" if you're able to take a moment to read these:

• The sprawling "Having it Out With Melancholy"
• The thought-provoking "Notes from the Other Side"
• The subtle "The Blue Bowl"
• The succinctly perfect "What Came to Me"
• The perfect litany of "Briefly it Enters, Briefly it Speaks"
• The vivid and emotional "Heavy Summer Rain"

Hopefully you'll find Jane Kenyon deserving of her #2 ranking. And check back tomorrow for the #1 poet in our countdown!

Poetry Moves I Love to Teach: Repetition

I try to share poems with my students that they'll enjoy. I don't always accomplish this, but I do a pretty good job, I think. I want them to discover the joy of poetry and the beauty of poems. And since I also want to help them become better writers of poems, I try to teach them to notice poetry "moves" in the poems that we read.

I stole the phrase "poetry moves" from a poet/teacher named Joe Tsujimoto. I had the pleasure of meeting Joe last summer at a poetry seminar. He said that he tells his students that "poets have more moves than Michael Jordan." A poetry move is essentially a common characteristic of good poems, a characteristic that makes a poem an enjoyable poem to read.

The list of moves is obviously long, but I do find that if I can expose students to them in their reading of poems that they will tend to try to incorporate the moves into their writing.

One move I introduce early in the school year is repetition. It's one of my favorites...I am drawn in by repeated elements and patterns in poems. Repetition is also a move that's easily imitated.

There are oh so many poems I could hold up as an example, but I think I'll choose one by Jane Kenyon:

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
by Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book, found again after two hundred years. . . . I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . . When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside me. . . . I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . . I am water rushing to the wellhead, filling the pitcher until it spills. . . . Please read the rest of the poem here. I realize this poem has so much repetition in it that it ends up reading  like a litany, but it's a pretty good example of what I'm talking  about. I also like to get students to notice poems with more  subtle repetition. Then I get to ask them, "Why do you think  the poet repeats that?" THEN, once they're on the look out for repetition and similar patterns, they'll be able to start noticing breaks in  those patterns and we can talk about why the poet would break the pattern. It  goes on and on.