National Poetry Month Posters

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Poetry Month series to share with you some signs my students made to spread the word around school about National Poetry Month.

We were inspired by the Academy of American Poets' official NPM poster:

Is that not the best line of poetry ever? The poster rocks. Dowload a PDF of it here.

So using it as a model, students searched for great lines of poetry and made these signs that are now decorating the hallways of our school:




More to come from my students. Stay tuned and keep enjoying the series!

The Treasure Trove That Is The Poetry Foundation

My adoration of The Poetry Foundation is well documented. (I dream of my children saying one day, "Daddy, tell us again about the time you visited their offices.)

For my money there's no other organization out there as devoted to spreading the joys of poetry throughout the land as they are. What would I do without their brilliant Poetry Tool? My Poetry Mix Tapes might not exist! Or without their near-infinite number of poems that are made available to the general public for free? This blog itself might not exist! I have to stop imagining that before I get too upset to continue...

And then there's The Learning Lab. I think it's been a part of their site for some time, but I happened to stumble back into it today and it's definitely expanded. If you're a Language Arts, English, Literature, or Writing teacher, it's definitely something you've got to see.

You'll find essays and articles on poetry, a poetic glossary, discussion guides and over 50 poem guides--which include some combination of annotation, explication, analysis, and discussion. None of this is to be missed. (One thing that I hadn't noticed before were the Poetry Magazine Discussion Guides, which feature essays on reading poetry that have been published in their monthly magazine. Definitely something for me to explore.)

If you check it out, please let me know what you think and how you're using it.

I'll leave you with this poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. It's new to me and it has an accompanying Poem Guide in the Learning Lab. Enjoy.

kitchenette building

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,

Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong

Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

But could a dream send up through onion fumes   

Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes   

And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,   

Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

Even if we were willing to let it in,

Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,   

Anticipate a message, let it begin?

You'll find the final stanza here.

Banished Words

Living in Michigan, you would think I'd have heard of Lake Superior State University's annual list of Banished Words. LSSU (go Lakers!) is in Sault Ste. Marie way up in the Upper Peninsula and apparently every year someone there publishes a list of words that, in their opinion, should be banned from use forever. Having poured over this list and the lists of years past, I have to say, I can't really argue with them in nearly all cases.

From their website:

The "back story" on LSSU's popular list began on Jan. 1, 1976, when former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and a group of friends each contributed a few expressions that they disliked to form the first list. After that, the nominations stacked up for future lists and Rabe's group, known then as The Unicorn Hunters, didn't have to make up its own list again. LSSU receives well over 1,000 nominations annually through its website, http://www.lssu.edu/banished.

Why I've never heard of this, nor the history of the Unicorn Hunters, is unknown and is nearly unforgivable as a Michigander. However, I think I can get over it enough to share with you some of the words that are banished in 2011 so that you can stop using them in your daily speech, correspondences, and (heaven forbid) poems...

• VIRAL
• FAIL
• BFF
• MAN UP
• REFUDIATE

All of these definitely belong on the list, right? (My nomination for their next list is the use of "right" at the end of a sentence.) In fact, the list goes on--read it here.

And if you're like me and you've never heard of this list, you probably need to read their archive so that you can stop using words and phrases like czar, tweet, and teachable moment (2010); awesome (I'm in trouble on that one, big time), we're pregnant, and chipotle (2007); segue, road rage, and thinking outside the box (2000); target audience, jumbo shrimp, and vast majority (1995); dead meat, longer hours, and if you will (1991); and finally macho, meaningful, and scenario (the inaugural list of 1976).

That "awesome" banishment is really going to be a problem. I'll have to work on that. Until then I think I might assign students to write a poem from the point of view of one of the banished words. That prompt would be a designer breed (2007) of a prompt, one of epic (2011) proportions and so sweet (2008) that it would decimate (2008) even the red states' (2005) extreme (2003) standards of excellence and be a game changer (2009) into the foreseeable future (2002).

More with Poetry Moves

In the fall, I posted about poetry "moves." This is the phrase I use (borrowed from teacher/author/poet Joseph Tsujimoto) for poetic techniques that make poems enjoyable to read.

I'm talking about moves constantly while I'm reading poems with my fourth grade students. My goal is to get them to notice how poets use moves so that they can incorporate moves into poems they write themselves.

When we talk about writing poems and using moves, I'll generally zoom in on one or two moves. They're young so I don't want them worrying about trying too many things. I don't want their poems to sound forced. By focusing on one or two, I think their poems become infinitely more pleasurable to read.

Another thing that helps is a model--we do a lot of patterning. I find a poem I like that I think they'll like AND that exhibits the move I want them to practice. We read and discuss it and then I basically say: "Write like that."

And for the most part it works.

This week we read "Things to Do If You are the Sun" by Bobbi Katz. This poem appears in one of my favorite anthologies: Falling Down the Page. (If you want to read more "Things to Do..." poems and read more about Bobbi Katz, check out this post by Elaine Magliaro at Wild Rose Reader. Elaine regularly posts her own "Things to Do..." poems and, like Ms. Katz's, hers are terrific!)

I can't find a published version of the Sun poem, but here are a couple of lines from "Things to Do if You Are the Subway," that Elaine shares the aforementioned post:

Pretend you are a dragon.
Live in underground caves.
Roar about underneath the city.


The moves I wanted students to practice with this kind of poem are: Surprise and Personification. When I say "surprise" what I'm really talking about is getting my students to write lines that are unexpected, lines that make me think "Wow, I never would have thought of that myself." As far as personification goes, I think these types of poems are great vehicles for bringing inanimate objects to life. 


One final note--this poem is a great example of a "list poem"(also called "catalog poems"), which are one of my favorites to read and have students write. I'll have to post more on these at a later date, I think.


I will say, in a final final note, that this writing activity provided one of the few instances where I wish I taught secondary school. I think older students could come up with much more poetic and creative lines for "Things to Do..." poems than my students have so far. We're still working on it, though, and maybe they'll surprise me. They've been known to do that. If they turn out, maybe I'll even share a few with you. And if you try them with your class, please let me know how it goes.

Poems I Love to Teach: Poems I Don't Understand

How's that for a title of a blog post? Maybe I should explain. I find (sometimes, not always) that I'm drawn to poems that are just a little out of reach, just a little too complex for me to truly understand the first time through. Maybe they're still even a little too complicated after five reads. Or ten. Sometimes it's that I enjoy trying to figure it out--but not always. Sometimes I just like to bask in the genius of the poet and recognize that he or she has created something beautiful, even if I don't know what it all means.

Take this poem I read today by Carey McHugh:

You will come first as a sound
and then      a breath

will come like a cold spell      a hipbone

    your lilt above the lake a crowcall
you will come as expected in

iron weather      will craft a blade

from the horse's winter stall

Please read the rest at Poetry Daily.

I don't really "get" this poem, but I like it. I don't even know if I can say why I like it right now. And for me, with poems, that's okay. It's so much fun to chew on a poem, ponder it for awhile. Come back to it over and over and discover something new about it each time. Even if I never find myself really grasping its "true meaning."

I don't react this way to all poems that I don't understand. Heavens, that would mean I'd be swooning in adoration over millions of pieces. But if I poem has some other amazing characteristics, other things about it that I enjoy, then I can give up on any desire I have to truly comprehend and instead just appreciate these poems for what they are.

There's another poem I love--it's called "Password" and it's by one of my all-time favorites, Naomi Shihab Nye. It starts out like this:

I have made so many mistakes
you might think I would sit down 

You really must read the rest via Google Books (and then run out and buy the collection it comes from).

There's so much I don't really "get" about this poem, including the title, but there are so many other things that are just so wonderful about it, like the first two lines, and her use of simple language, and the ending, and so on. I love it completely, but I don't completely understand it. Again, that's okay.

Which brings me back full circle to the title of this post--why do I love to teach these kinds of poems? Well, for one, they stimulate some amazing discussions. If you don't truly understand parts of a poem, you're bound to hear some new ideas from your students. It's one of the reasons I sometimes (but not often) wish that I taught secondary school--the discussions could reach tremendous levels, more so than at the elementary level (which isn't to say we don't have some great ones in my classroom!).

Also, poems like this help prove to your students that poems don't have to be understood to be useful or great. In both the poems I've mentioned, for example, there are countless things that you could "zoom in on," regardless of whether the poem makes sense to anyone in the room. This, as I've said before, is an important poetry lesson to teach.

And on top of all of that, it helps get rid of that whole "teacher as all-knowing ruler of the classroom" sort of thing. When a teacher can admit to students that they don't understand something, I think that's a big deal.

I've gone on for quite some time on this topic. Thanks for reading. I guess it's been awhile since I posted and I had a lot of pent-up poetry energy. And before we go, are there any poems you love that you don't really "get?" Let me know in the comments.

Poetry Notebooks

The folks over at the Academy of American Poets have a terrific website. If you haven't explored it yet, you are missing out. It's a great resource for readers of poetry and for teachers, too. Their database of many, many poems is searchable both by title and poet. Also, they have poems grouped by occasion if you want to browse by category.

They have recently debuted an idea called a Poetry Notebook, which they describe as a way of "gathering and sharing your favorite poets.org poems with the poets.org community." Basically it allows you to create your own personalized collection, or "Notebook," of poems centered around any category you wish. Your Notebook is then viewable by the general public.

So for people like me who are always looking for new ways to organize and keep up with their online poetry collections, this could be a real gem. Might also make for a great assignment for the students of all you teachers of the genre out there. Check it out and let me know what you think.

And speaking of categorizing poems, keep an eye out for my next Poetry Mix Tape--Poems About the End of the World!

Old Words in New Poems

I was listening to NPR the other day and heard about a new website: Save the Words. It's a site created for people to go and "adopt" a word that has been dropped from the Oxford English Dictionary due to lack of use. Apparently words have do be dropped to make room for new words like "blog" and "tweet" and "defriend."

Anyway, when you adopt a word at this site, you commit to incorporating the word into your everyday conversations, thus resurrecting it and giving it new life.

So how about this for a poetry prompt...choose a word from Save the Words and incorporate it into a poem. Doesn't seem too difficult. And great poems make good poems even better. The list of words I first learned through poems includes such wonders as "cuneiform" and "chaparral" and "creosote."

So I intend to adopt my own word and incorporate it into my conversations AND my poems. Let me know if you try this, too, either by yourself or with students.

Our Poetry Walk

After posting my last Poetry Mix Tape, I decided to teach William Carlos Williams's "Between Walls" to my fourth graders. First, we read it. Then we made some observations and they answered some questions about it.

We focused mainly on the fact that Williams is taking something that may seem ordinary and noticing its beauty. That broken glass in that dirty alley might be something you'd walk by without noticing. Williams not only wants us to notice it, he wants us to appreciate it.

So after all this, I wanted to do some writing. But first, we grabbed a digital camera and went for a walk. There's an alley behind our school, which connects to a kind of unique dead end street. We stopped along the way to snap pictures and jot down ideas. Then we came back and wrote poems. Here are a couple:

The Branch of the World
by Jenna

The branch of the world
makes us wonder

Is it born in the world?
You are a very handy tool

The piece makes us happy
while it sits there and dreams

The branch of the world

-------------

Death  Of  A  Funeral  Home
     By  SUHMER

Down   in  a  small  black   alley
  you  see  trees and  plain   leaves

The death of  a funeral  limousine
with a skull  of a lady  inside
with red pedals  falling  on her head

And  down  in  a small  black  alley
you see  trees  and plain leaves
at the death of a funeral  home

--------

And maybe my all-time favorite student-written poem from a fifth grader last year after a poetry walk on the same street:

Monster Jaws

By Claire

In a lot

freezing cold 

a car

sits

It serves

no purpose

poorly rusted

 

its jaws 

agape

waiting,

wanting

something to

devour

 

Monster Car

----------

So I thought I'd try one, too. It's called "ice cold." Here's the picture I took that inspired me:

your non 

sequitur 

stenciled on 

the curb

confounds me

unexpectedly

puts me out

of synch

out of touch

with what

I know 

to be true

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.

On the Cusp of Poetry Immersion

This is my last prep day before the school year starts. Tuesday I get a fresh new group of 17 fourth graders. I plan to engage them in a two year (I will teach them for both fourth and fifth grades) program of poetry immersion. This will include the reading, analysis, and writing of poems.

I taught poetry for the first time in my career last year and it was by far my favorite part of the school year. I just looked back at my list of poems and finally got around to typing it up--would you believe I read 102 poems with my fifth graders last year? Not sure about you, but that seems like an impressive number to me. They also wrote and published over 30 of their own poems.

So I'm trying it again with fourth graders, but not without some tweaks, of course. I will, however, be reading the same poem on the first day as I did last year: "Alligator Pie" by Dennis Lee. It's definitely a nonsense poem and it's got great rhymes and rhythm, so kids love it. It's definitely more silly than most of the poems we'll read this year (most poems written for children, don't do much for me, sorry...I mean they have a place in the world and all when it comes to getting kids hooked on poetry, but...oh maybe that's a topic for another post.). But I do think it's a perfect first poem to read to students.

Here's the first stanza of the real poem (read it all here):

Alligator pie, alligator pie,
If I don't get some, I think I'm gonna die
Give away the green grass, give away the sky,
But don't give away my alligator pie.

After reading the poem a few times, I ask them some questions about it. Then they write their own version. Here are some stanzas written by my students in the past:

Alligator paint, alligator paint,
If I don't get some, surely I will faint.
Give away my ice cream, give away my cake,
But don't give away my alligator paint.
--Claire


Alligator meat, alligator meat,
If I don't get some I think I'm going to eat.
Give away my arms, give away my feet,
But don't give away my alligator meat.
--Alex 


Alligator pajamas, alligator pajamas,
If I don't get some, I'm going to go to grandma's.
Give away my strawberries, give away my bananas,
But don't give away my Alligator Pajamas.
--Michael 


Alligator peas, alligator peas,
If I don't get some, I think I'm gonna sneeze.
Give away my crackers, give away my cheese.
But don't give away my alligator peas.
--Daijah

Stay tuned to see what my students come up with next week. And teachers, if you're out there, what is the first poem you share with your students each year?

Poetry Teaching Idea: Wordle Poems

It was a busy week last week. So, try as I might, I couldn't put together a poem for what I thought was an excellent prompt over at Big Tent Poetry. However, I will be using their idea as an activity for my students this coming school year. Here's how it works:

1. Choose a favorite poem, preferably one filled with rich language.
2. Select several words from that poem that someone else could use collectively as a prompt for writing their own poem. Their goal will be to use as many of these words as possible to create an original poem.
3. Go to Wordle.Net to create a "Wordle" using these words.
4. Share this Wordle with your friends or classmates and ask them to write a poem using as many of these words as possible. 
5. Once they've written their poem, reveal the original poem to them, so they can see how it compares.

The Big Tent prompt used the amazing poem "Last August Hours Before the Year 2000" by Naomi Shihab Nye. Click here to see how their Wordle turned out. 

I like this idea a lot. I think I'll present it to my fourth graders with a Wordle prompt of my own, and have them all write from that prompt. Then, I'll have them each choose a poem that they like, select words from that poem, and create a Wordle of their own. Then they can trade Wordles with a partner, with that partner writing a poem from this prompt. Finally, at the end, students can reveal to each other and the class the poems that they chose. I don't think I'll try this early in the year, but definitely sometime this winter, once we've read a lot of poems and have developed our poetry writing "chops."

As an example, I made a Wordle using of which this blog is a namesake, "Psalm" by George Oppen. Check it out:

Not the easiest poem for this type of prompt, and not the one I'd choose for my elementary students, but I think you get the idea. Let me know if you try this with your students. I'd love to see how it turns out.