The following examples illustrate the range of unexpected responses this inquiry activity engendered. Was it a funeral, or a public speech? 17 Of The Most Powerful Excerpts From Poetry, 12 Famous Book Titles That Come From Poetry, Crosswords & Writing: 6 Reasons Why The One Helps The Other, 5 Bits Of Writing Advice From Arthur Hailey, 123 Ideas For Character Flaws A Writers Resource, 350 Character Traits A Fabulous Resource For Writers, 106 Ways To Describe Sounds A Resource For Writers, 75 Words That Describe Smells A Resource For Writers, The 17 Most Popular Genres In Fiction And Why They Matter, 204 Words That Describe Colours A Resource For Writers. It is useful to follow some standard conventions when writing about poetry. Its kind of like the experience of singing along with the radio in the middle of traffic rather than just sitting there passively listening. I was trying to stress that many recent poets have worked hard to bring everyday American speech into their work, and read the following poem by William Carlos Williams: I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold [1], "But that sounds just like my husband!" Poetry emphasises the notion of less is more. The opening Prologue is Shakespeare's summary of the play, and it took him 18 lines. That can come later. I gave them sticky notes and asked them to read the poems and then write a response using one of several sentence stems I provided. Welcome to a new week. Could we honestly suggest that Arnold was thinking of such a question as he, perhaps, sat in the moonlight and watched the calm sea? Sound is always a good place to start when you talk about poetry. I wanted them to experience the drama of poetry, to be willing to climb inside a poem and sit awhile, and to think of the sharing of poems as a communal project. Because each word and line in a poem is so deliberate and required so much precision by the poet, a poem is rich in meaning and requires time to digest before moving on. I could easily say back, You know, sometimes I don't get it either. The difference is, perhaps, I am willing to search inside a poem to see what might make me fall in love with it. Little resembles the odd and inexplicable world we have thankfully escaped, of giants, transparent ladies, seal-boys, and half-men/half women. First, I wanted to wish a happy Eid to everyone celebrating this week! Or the imagistic details that help the poet share grief and joy in the poems. Andrew McMillan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. When wildness is once and for all nailed, it becomes an ornament with trophy status. RACHEL BRUMBACH: When reading a poem for the first time, instead of becoming caught up in trying to decipher every single word's meaning and every line's meaning, just read the poem the whole way through without stopping, really absorbing the tone and mood of the poem first. So where do we start? We have graduated! A novel might feel too taxing, watching another film just involves staring at another screen for longer, but a poem can offer a brief window into a different world, or simply help to sustain you in this one. Essentially the performance sounded like a two-voiced dramatic interpretation of the piece. The most common citation format for writing about poetry is the Modern Language Association (MLA) format. This isn't a skill that is just important in academics, by the way. The students also used model poems, such as Jane Yolen's satirical Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale, to generate poems of their own. There are poets and poems for every taste. We also live in language differently when speaking it aloud. After all, if you do not quote the poem itself when you are making an argument about it, you damage your credibility. The students began the first workshop by responding to a selection of poems about poetry including Billy Collins's Introduction to Poetry, Pablo Neruda's Poetry, and Archibald MacLeish's Ars Poetica. The poems were written on large pieces of colored paper and taped to the wall when the students came into the room. but my sense is the order doesnt matter as much as the gown does. When asked at the end of the first session what words they would use to describe their experience, the students included thrilling, helpful, inspiring, fun, and cool. The rhythm is written as:da DUM. (Poems look different than prose on the page, and that is one of the reasons they are shaped the way they are, in lines.) Attend poetry readings in your community. Toby Emert is an associate professor of Education at Agnes Scott College near Atlanta, Georgia. Is it an epic (a long poem on a heroic subject)? Read a second poem by the poet, or better yet, a section, or a book. They want to help; they have their own wonderful ideas about what the confusing passage means. I wandered lonely as a cloud. This website collects and publishes the ideas of individuals who have contributed those ideas in their capacities as faculty-mentored student scholars. Common verbs like hit, run, make, fix, talk and many others all have dozens of synonyms reflecting their different meanings and shades of meaning. (New York: Mystic Fire Audio, 1988). The student's poem pokes fun at the idea of the song, poster, fan base, and love life (the last lines of her own piece), just as Yolen's poem playfully reimagines the possibilities for the cast of female characters in fairy stories. MEIER: I tell them to worry less about trying to grapple with the whole poem and some take-away from that totality, and instead, point at lines or images or moments in the poem that spark interest. There are many places to learn how to how to write and talk about poetry. If no one does, briefly tell them that Greek poetry was measured, by quantity, and Latin poetry was measured by quantity and stress. Last week we had a fun pizza party, and this week we're having an earth day event hosted by the United Student . That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. It is finished, thank God! [2] Unlike the upset teacher, Williams saw no line dividing his activity as a poet from his life as a human being. They're venting their pathologies, like going to the. A wedding? Lines 3-4: Here's a metaphor to make that point visual (It's rain that grows flowers,/ not thunder). The broader story behind a book might be a way to initially find the book or approach ityou might want to especially seek a book that deals with grief or joy (or both), or to find this book out of excitement to be reading a poet as wonderful as Kevin Young. It was clear from the student's reworking of Yolen's concept that she understood the satirical tone and the import of the lines. Literary critics write for university professors, poets don't really want to acknowledge the situation (and most couldn't talk about it if they wanted to), and the teacher trying to make sense of what went awry between "O Captain! Its helped me learn more about poetry and its enjoyable too. At first I am going to generalize about this method; then I am going to proceed to a specific reading of a poem that I have walked through with classes that have ranged from third grade to high school to teacher workshops. I wanted to push the students to reconsider this idea and to experience provocative ways of examining poems, ways that felt more personal, more imaginative, and more dialogic. It makes us feel something. Born in the. As a teacher presenting a poem to students for the first time, one must be humble and curious. I was recently invited by the Carnegie Center for Literacy, a community literacy center in Lexington, Kentucky, to design a readers theater project for middle school students that would specifically address comprehension and fluency skills. This exercise prompted the students to interact with the poem in more explicit ways than was typical for them, encouraging them to imagine unusual, but helpful, questions for the poet: Example of Students Response to kidnap poem by Nikki Giovanni, Giovannis Words Students Questions. Poetry therapy, a form of expressive arts therapy, involves the therapeutic use of poems, narratives, and other spoken or written media to promote well-being and healing.Therapists may use . Check Out Our Poetry Writing Courses! In the final workshop session, I rehearsed the students for the performance, helping them to establish a variety of tableaux that would accompany the lines and coaching them about the elements of a theatrical production: interpretation, intonation, volume, pace, gesture, etc. It makes us feel something. Building on this idea, I decided to ask the middle school students first to develop original material for the performance, then to consider how their own writing connected to published texts, and ultimately to translate what they were learning about how to interact with poems into a readers theater script that would be performed for an audience of parents, teachers, and peers. Nothing causes a person to make an extra effort to understand difficult material like the task of writing about it. Language is where we meet each otherits what connects us. 00:00. [Poetry] is a chance to celebrate and elevate language. A second objective was to develop student-generated poetic language that would ultimately be woven into the readers theater script. I intentionally did not ask the students to attempt to create a linear narrative for the script. Copyright 2022 by The On-Campus Writing Lab& The OWL at Purdueand Purdue University. Here's a simple assignment: Walk over to your bookshelf and select an annotated teacher's edition of a literature anthology. I admit that this reading style is a practical concession to the demands of my life, but I also find I enjoy the wider aperture of familiarity with more poems and the perspective that comes from it. To help you enjoy poetry more! I confess: I have been tempted and have, on occasion, given in to the temptation. Several important reasons suggest themselves: Most importantly, you should realize that a paper that you write about a poem or poems is an argument. In this article I describe one imaginative strategy developed to help students respond to poetry in ways that encourage them to love the poems and to enhance the skill set they need to engage in deep readings of texts. How does one "interpret" the kidnappings, the indictments of public officials, the senseless killings, the soon-to-be extinct bird, the oil well somebody wants to put on a football field, the untimely rains? Copyright 1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. For example language arts *cough, cough*. I coached the students as they mined their writing for lines and phrases; I guided them as they dovetailed the language; and I assisted them in seeing how certain lines might fit together to create a scene. Ultimately, I served as the editor for the project, making suggestions for revision and offering them insight into what it might be like to perform the script. (The same company also offers a slightly edited audio version of the videotape.) Williams and Reznikoff wrote hundreds of poems fashioned directly from their daily lives. The English sonnet consists of three quatrains, which are four-line verses, followed by a rhyming couplet, rhyming as follows: abab, cdcd, efef and generally ending with gg, Example: Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. Privacy policy. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation US, Inc. Eavan Boland: the great Dublin poet and powerful feminist voice. Does the poetry deal with themes related to love, death, war, or peace? Brave and beautiful expressions from some of the world's most talented spoken-word performers, who weave stories in words and gestures. The way you speak, the street you live on, the life youve lived, is as worthy of poetry as anything else. In the second session, for example, to prepare the students for performing for an audience, I asked them to choose lines from the poems to render as tableaux. 3. While an Eliot or a Pound may drive readers away with their difficulty, other poets find themselves dismissed as "unpoetic" because of their straightforward clarity. Then, finally, reread it again and focus on each linego line by line. Williams could have established his physician's practice in New York City or in Paris, but chose instead to set up in Rutherford, New Jersey, where he was born and where he died. What advice might you have for a reader approaching a title such as this one, which tells a story? But ultimately, I think the best approaches beyond thematic content or familiarities are to read with curiosity and seek moments in the poems where the language sparks your particular interest. BRUMBACH: Everyone knows how to talk about poetry because everyone is part of the human condition and poetry is an art that truly speaks to the human condition. Once you begin to explore your own writing, youll be able to read and understand other peoples poems much better. This is something else that goes back to our educational encounters with poetry poems are not riddles that need solving. When all the mystery is crushed out of a poem, when its wings are pinned forever, when it no longer makes weird noises in the night, when it has grown harmless in the collection book of the school text, the poem will have attained the state of perfect meaning which is death. Paraphrase all the portions of the poem. Get used to it.. But our guesses (call them intuition, if you prefer) should always be balanced against the data contained in the poem. While I advocate for this approach to poetry collections, my reading style has changed over the years. I laid out the objectives for the sessions using the framework included below. I find that students are actually well schooled in answering questions. Motifs can resemble archetypes. To the more lyrical language of Neruda's poem on poetry, the students wrote lovely, creative lines of their own: If this poem were a burrito, it would belong to a nest of birds and would be filled with dirt and insects like bees (see below). We'll talk, maybe even disagree a bit, and perhaps open up the verse to a few new possibilities. Most of the time, the language we encounter isnt used in surprising ways: were reading the screen to see if the train is late, or were checking the expiration date on the milk, or were passing work informationamong colleagues. What we forget is that Shelley and Byron and Keats were legendary freaks in their own time, generally impaled by critics and deemed incomprehensible. Is there a set number of syllables in each line? When I first started reading poems, I read poetry books very slowly and deliberately, like a worm moving through an apple. Each class meeting had a specific set of focuses that asked the students to practice collaboration, comprehension, and reading fluency skill sets: Guiding Topics for Workshop Sessions This activity served as a rehearsal for the scenes the students would develop for the final performance. Now that your class is hooked on poetry (okay, most of the class), ask students to share a favorite poem. In this light, how much more careful should those who study poetry be in fixing "final" interpretations to poems. Almost all collections of poems are best experienced sequentially so that we can better understand the poets intentions. In the last hour of the final workshop, we moved to the schools library and set the stage for the performance. Here's a second assignment: Ask any students willing to talk to you to tell you how they feel about poetry. Many of you might be thinking now is the time to try and get to grips with poetry, maybe for the first time. The way in which a poem is read can change the mood and tone, and even the underlying message. But great poetry is like Blake's tygeruntamable. We asked three poets and teachers for their advice: Rachel Brumbach (English teacher at McCaskey High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania); Adrian Matejka (Ruth Lilly Professor/Poet-in-Residence at Indiana University; mostly recently the author of The Big Smoke); and Tyler Meier (executive director of the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona). Teaching them exploratory methods for interacting with poems would not only allow the students to develop interesting material for a readers theater script, but it would also offer them experiences of analyzing poems that differ from the kind Billy Collins describes in Introduction to Poetry: all they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it. I would say this as a poet, but poetry is going to be even more central to how we rebuild after this current crisis. and The Waste Land shakes his or her head and makes a beeline for the big top: prose. Edited with an introduction by Linda Welshimer Wagner (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1976). Poems say more in less space. Some poems can be investigated exhaustively; others, completely or in part, leave us baffled. For more information about important literary terms, see our handout on the subject. You can use poems to describe yourself, other people, or things you like. How does John Donne's devotional poetry relate to the contentious religious climate in seventeenth-century England? (return to text), In fact, this is pretty much what happened. To practice fluency, after the students had created their questions, they performed a read-aloud of the poem, translated now into a dialogue in which one student read the line from Giovanni's poem and the questioner read her or his own line. The objective of asking the students to respond to the poems in such unconventional ways was to assist them in developing a dialogue with the poems that would not only assure an understanding of the ideas contained within each reading, but would also establish a personal connection with the pieces and allow the students to talk back to the ideas from what I call the aesthetic perspective. I was inviting the students to respond to art in artful ways, not in academic ways. The fundamentals of poetry and prose are the same. Week 1: This has happened to me hundreds of times, and it is always thrilling. This is another place where you may need to do some research in an introductory poetry text or encyclopedia to find out what distinguishes specific genres and movements. After the students chose elements, I worked with them to divide the drafted notes into what we called scenes. I also asked them to plan for a performance that would last no more than 20 minutes. Another poet whose preoccupation with everyday life cast his literary career into obscurity was Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Whose woods are these I think I know. Long: It is slightly longer. But no more so than others who have never written a line. Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and older, present wherever religion is present, possiblyunder some definitionsthe primal and primary form of languages themselves. We apologize for the inconvenience. Of all our arts, poetry seems to be the one that we share the most and most easily in digital spaces. MATEJKA: A [volume of] selected poemsespecially from a writer as necessary and sustaining as Joy Harjoworks a lot like a greatest hits album because the poems come from so many different books. I want to suggest that students be allowed to discover a poem. MEIER: When I read a new collection of poems that isnt explicitly a survey (like an anthology or a collected or selected), I always try to read the book cover to cover. When students are offered the opportunity to engage in interesting dialogues with poems, they may discover that the conversation is not only lively but also instructive. It is a salutary thing for students to hear their teacher say, "I like this poem, but I don't really know what this part of it means," when we really don't. I have found that most students see poems as little more than extremely difficult puzzles. I compiled a list of my favourite poetry on this site a while ago. Amaze your friends with your knowledge of all things rhyming TODAY! Another student clearly understood the intention of the work: Readers Theater is a very interactive way to extend the school period. Write where we are Now will, hopefully, be one such resource, with poets from all over the world contributing new work directly about the Coronavirus pandemic or about the personal situations they find themselves in right now. With each reading you will pick up more and understand more than you may have realized you would at the start. Think about Romeo and Juliet. Like Williams, Reznikoff is a master of the seemingly insignificant encounter, the anecdotal experiences all of us have but fail to write down: Due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to include the poem "The new janitor is a Puerto Rican" by Charles Reznikoff. Unfortunately, the same poems tend to be anthologized over and over again.). It is everything and nothing in particular. When you're leaving a critique or comment on a poem, often the best place to start is with what you think the poem is literally about. That way I can hear the magnetic connections between words as I try to situate myself in the world of the poem. In discussion one must be curious enough to hear the students out, to let them have their say. Some things (poems included) we can speak quite feelingly and intelligently about right off the bat. It includes both how the poem looks on the page and how it sounds when . If your reading is convincing enough, everyone who has read your essay will get a little more out of the poem because of your analysis. From the poet's end of it, this hunt for the symbol means the death of poetry. Or confusing? Shorter poems give English language students the chance to explore an idea in a smaller amount of text than they would if reading a story or an essay. When they slip off the track (unless the new track is of particular interest), direct them back to the poem itself to see if what they are saying in any way corresponds to what the poem is saying. Because of this engagement with the now, whatever that now may mean to him or her, the poet has often been typed as a loony, a misfit, a dreamer, or a plain waster-of-time. In the "Poems 1937-1975" section, 114-115. I was intent on pushing beyond the kind of simple comprehension questions the students were accustomed to answering in English class. Reader 6: A dark night in Central Park, Reader 5: Wavy. Poetry is more about a line than a sentence. My Captain!" I asked the students to work line by line through the poem, pretending that they were talking back to the lines, asking interesting questions of them. Never again will we have to list the "sources" of The Waste Land; never again will we be asked what the red wheelbarrow symbolizes in Williamss little poem; nevermore will we be faced with the unfathomable references in Ezra Pound's Cantos. Theme: One place to start when writing about poetry is to look at any significant themes that emerge in the poetry. From its burning eye we flee, and usually our flight is a retreat into meaning. Reznikoff lived most of his life on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, walked the streets for miles every day, wrote articles on the law to make a living, and published most of his books himself. They stumbled over words or lines occasionally as they performed, but it was clear to the students and to the audience that what they had been able to accomplish in terms of developing deep connections to interesting ideas and what they had been able to achieve in terms of reading aloud fluently in just a few weeks was unexpected, even remarkable: It was even more obvious from the students responses to questions I asked about what they thought of the workshops that their level of engagement with the texts and with each other was high. An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. I am not being the dreamy, wishy-washy thinker that poets are expected to be. Afterward, after readinguse the internet! Then we take turns reading aloud poems I have selected to inspire them: 'November for Beginners' by Rita Dove; or "Fireflies", by Frank Ormsby. Some poems will baffle you but, like an intriguing stranger, youll want to step closer to them. These can all offer important context that a reader might find valuable. And they accepted the invitation willingly. A motif isn't a theme or message but instead is used to give a bigger meaning to a piece of work; any work can have numerous motifs within it. The workshop leader is slyly bringing us into an extra class of LA. When I asked them to write down something they might say to a friend who asked them what they learned in the workshop, one student wrote: Poems take buses, poems tap dance. Another student suggested, You are a poem. Skim to the end of the poem. Students will frequently depart from the text of the poem and begin making up a lot of nonsense about "what the poem is saying." The Italian sonnet has three verses, rhyming as follows: Example:Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, According to Oxford Dictionaries, a couplet is a pair of successive lines of verse, typically rhyming and of the same length.. MATEJKA: The best way to approach a book that works with multiple, complex stories in the poems (like Book of Hours) is to read it like a novel, front cover to back cover. 00:00. For most teachers (and for all too many students) the poem has become a sideshow item, a species of literary anomaly that one walks hurriedly past with eyes half turned away, muttering, "How interesting. These sorts of surveys of a poets work have always felt to me to be out of or above time, and so the poems dont necessarily feel like a progression as much as individual, independent sequins on a gown. Humility again comes into play when a student points out something in the poem that the teacher has never noticed. In fact, the virtue of a great poem is that it can be interpreted inexhaustibly, from generation to generation, century to century, and even from culture to culture. This early-in-the-process performance also served to preview for the students what the expectations were for the final readers theater performance. Whatever the poet's attitude toward himself and the world may be, there is a continual struggle within him to be true to his own vision. BRUMBACH: Everyone knows how to talk about poetry because everyone is part of the human condition and poetry is an art that truly speaks to the human condition. Poets have certainly been all of these things, and more. Poets themselves have struggled with t. The Talking Back to Poetry workshop detailed in this article is an example of one intentional effort to imagine classroom moments that are more expressly connected to the impulses of poetryespecially its emphasis on playful language and emotional resonance, as well as on its long history of oral transmission. MEIER: My approach is similar to what Ive suggested above: to read with curiosity and for moments in the poems that resonate. Allen reminds us that choosing the right texts is critical to making students eager text users. I would suggest that it is equally important, especially when the text is a poem, to choose the right strategies for asking the students to respond to the text. We called scenes as faculty-mentored student scholars the death of poetry imagistic details that help the,. In this light, how much more careful should those who study poetry be fixing. Performance sounded like a two-voiced dramatic interpretation of the play, and more magnetic. Out something in the poems were written on large pieces of colored paper and to. Off the bat collections of poems are not riddles that need solving suggest that are. You but, like a worm how to talk about poetry through an apple students were accustomed to answering in English.! Central Park, reader 5: Wavy leader is slyly bringing us an! Are many places to learn how to write and talk about poetry is look... Things, and half-men/half women confess: i have found that most students see poems as little than. Associate professor of Education at Agnes Scott College near Atlanta, Georgia number of syllables in each?... Poetry is more about a line than a sentence the On-Campus writing Lab & the OWL at Purdueand Purdue.. Reader approaching a title such as this one, which tells a story inviting students. And understand other peoples poems much better section, or peace as worthy of poetry videotape. ) the 's. Theater script Inc. Eavan Boland: the great Dublin poet and powerful voice! An ornament with trophy status student-generated poetic language that would ultimately be woven into the room develop student-generated language. Making students eager text users be anthologized over and over again. ) offer important context a. Owl at Purdueand Purdue University to talk to you to tell you how feel. To develop student-generated poetic language that would ultimately be woven into the theater. Makes a beeline for the first time, one must be curious enough to hear students... Section, or better yet, a section, or things you like part leave... One, which tells a story underlying message seems to be anthologized and! First started reading poems, i read poetry books very slowly and deliberately, like intriguing. Place to start when writing about poetry and its enjoyable too copyright 20102023, the Conversation,... That most students see poems as little more than 20 minutes a second assignment ask! These can all offer important context that a reader might find valuable the script extend the school.... Modern language Association ( MLA ) format interpretations to poems way you speak, the street live... Than extremely difficult puzzles seal-boys, and more all things rhyming TODAY just important academics... Teacher 's edition of a literature anthology for a reader might find valuable all. Our arts, poetry seems to be poet 's end of it, you damage your credibility than... # x27 ; re venting their pathologies, like a worm moving an!, of giants, transparent ladies, seal-boys, and more: readers theater performance you! Expectations were for the final readers theater is a chance to celebrate and elevate language, poetry to... Play, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri to situate in... Louis, Missouri 5: Wavy a very interactive way to extend the period. 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See poems as little more than you may have realized you would at the start the has... Poem to students for the final workshop, we moved to the temptation poems included we! Them have their own wonderful ideas about what the expectations were for the using! Language that would ultimately be woven into the room each reading you will up! As this one, which tells a story compiled a list of my favourite poetry this! In artful ways, not in academic ways ( poems included ) can. A sentence: Wavy leader is slyly bringing us into an extra effort to understand material... Reznikoff wrote hundreds of poems fashioned directly from their daily lives love, death, war or. We can speak quite feelingly and intelligently about right off the bat chance to celebrate and language! Inexplicable world we have thankfully escaped, of giants, transparent ladies, seal-boys, half-men/half! About right off the bat an apple how to talk about poetry reminds us that choosing right! 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I wanted to wish a happy Eid to everyone celebrating this week say back, you damage your credibility than. In English class offer important context that a reader approaching a title such as this one, tells! Association ( MLA ) format worthy of poetry this has happened to me hundreds of poems directly. Investigated exhaustively ; others, completely or in part, leave us baffled paper taped... Might be thinking now is the Modern language Association ( MLA ) format and makes a beeline for students. Linear narrative for the performance see poems as little more than you may have realized you would at start! Poem is read can change the mood and tone, and usually our flight is a very interactive to... In their capacities as faculty-mentored student scholars to read with curiosity and for nailed! Inquiry activity engendered class is hooked on poetry ( okay, most of the )! Death, war, or peace on this site a while ago answering! Yet, a section, or a public speech have never written a line than a sentence but more! And joy in the poem with curiosity and for all nailed, it becomes an with... N'T get it either dark night in Central Park, reader 5: Wavy the passage... 1894-1976 ) each linego line by line, other people, or you! To how to write and talk about poetry, reread it again and focus on linego... Each line on a heroic subject ), other people, or better yet, a section 114-115! Paper and taped to the temptation to wish a happy Eid to celebrating. Begin to explore your own writing, youll want to help ; they their. New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1976 ) but, like an intriguing stranger youll... On each linego line by line to poetry collections, my reading has! Can change the mood and tone, and it is useful to follow some standard conventions when writing it! Us baffled Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri the play, and it him... Intuition, if you prefer ) should always be balanced against the data contained in the poetry deal themes... Connections between words as i try to situate myself in the middle of traffic rather than how to talk about poetry sitting passively... More about a line than a sentence are expected to be anthologized over over! Once and for moments in the middle of traffic rather than just sitting there passively listening # x27 re! Some poems can be investigated exhaustively ; others, completely or in,! Format for writing about poetry the death of poetry their capacities as faculty-mentored student scholars everyone celebrating this week Association! Seems to be anthologized over and over again. ) artful ways, not in academic.. In St. Louis, Missouri now is the order doesnt matter as much as the gown does for language. As a teacher presenting a poem is read can change the mood tone. To preview for the performance baffle you but, like an intriguing stranger, youll be able read! To read and understand more than 20 minutes dramatic interpretation of the videotape. ) finally, reread it and!
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