2019 Post #17 -- Writing From a Lyric

by Brett Vogelsinger

I first used the song "A Long and Happy Life" by the band Delta Rae with my class to spark a Writer's Notebook piece about my students' roots.  "I was born to..." or "I was raised by... " make excellent starters for students to explore their heritage in words, perhaps even using quick images and figurative language as the songwriters do in the song.

Some of my students this year wrote lines like "I was raised by a strict Jewish mother and a free-spirited Catholic father" and "We were born to improve the world" and "I raised with brothers who tackled each other for fun" and "I was born to be everything my dad could not be." These lines are windows into my students' lives and afforded me views I might otherwise overlook.

This song is my Poem of the Day about a week prior to starting our personal narrative writing project, and it is the perfect way to start thinking about the stories that make my students the people they are today and the adults they are becoming. Try sharing this song or maybe one of your personal favorite. Find lines in the lyrics that empower new writing ideas for your students and help them to explore their roots.  In my classroom, we even begin to write as the song is playing.

I should also add here that Delta Rae often offers a free ticket giveaway for teachers on their summer tour, a drawing I won (thanks to some generous student nominations) for their Philly 2018 concert.  This band puts on one of the most phenomenal live music shows I've seen, and they have a genuine appreciation for the work of teachers.  I can't wait to see them in concert again in May! Much love to Delta Rae :)



Further Listening:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past six years and is the creator of the Go Poems blog to share poetry reading and writing ideas with teachers around the world. Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2019 Post #16 -- A New Lens for The Sonnet

by Carol Jago

Teaching the sonnet is a ubiquitous (and too often tedious) poetry lesson focusing on accented syllables and rhyme schemes. Most of us begin with Shakespeare. The next time around, consider starting instead with Terrance Hayes’ “American Sonnet for My Once and Future Assassin.”

In this sonnet Hayes reflects upon the structure and purpose of the form (much as Billy Collins does in his poem “Sonnet.”)

Before handing out copies of the poem, have students listen to the audio recording of the poet reading his sonnet.


1. Draw students’ attention to Hayes’ reference to Jim Crow as “gym and crow.”

2. Give students their own copy of the sonnet and ask them to read it and choose a line that struck them for whatever reason.

3. Have students share the line they chose with a partner explaining why it stood out, puzzled, or otherwise interested them.

4. Read the poem once more to the class.

5. Discuss: Where has Terrance Hayes conformed to the “rules” of the sonnet form? Where has he broken those rules for greater artistic expression, calling the form “part prison / Part panic closet”?

6. What do you think the “beautiful catharsis” entails? Who or what is changing?


Now read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.


Further Reading:

Carol Jago has taught middle and high school in Santa Monica, CA for many years and served as president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Her latest publication, The Book in Question: Why and How Reading Is in Crisis is now available from Heinemann (2019).

2019 Post #15 -- Sing That Poem!

by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

Click to Enlarge Image

Sometimes I find my way into a poem through the window of meter. I adore playing with meter, but when I find myself relying too heavily on the same syllable counts again and again, I turn to songs.

If you wish to write with meter but do not know where to begin, choose a song, any song: "Twinkle Twinkle" or "Happy Birthday" or "Three Blind Mice." Or don’t choose a song but instead, choose a poem with a meter you like and want to try. Write it out. Then, count out the syllables and mark the stresses.

Next or first, select a topic, maybe something new or perhaps something you have already written about but wish to try in a new form. Now, on a fresh page of your notebook, write the syllable counts down the left column of your page. Experiment with writing within this syllable and stress constraint. You may choose to vary a bit, or you may not, but either way, you will have tried something new. And to test if the meter works, sing your words to the tune of the song. Listen carefully and revise based what you hear.

In April 2015, I wrote from a different song meter each day. One of these poems ended up in my book With My Hands (Clarion, 2018). I always tell students that books have secrets, and one secret of With My Hands is that "Painting" (found in the image above) can be sung to the tune of "I’ve Been Working on the Railroad!"

Part of the work of a writer is stretching oneself. Experimenting with meter and song is one way to do this.

Further Reading:

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is author of books including FOREST HAS A SONG, EVERY DAY BIRDS, READ! READ! READ!, DREAMING OF YOU, WITH MY HANDS, and POEMS ARE TEACHERS. Amy lives in Holland, NY, blogs for young writers at The Poem Farm and Sharing Our Notebooks, posts on Twitter @amylvpoemfarm, and visits classrooms all around.

2019 Post #14 -- Pantoun Poems

by Kevin English

One of my favorite poems to write with students is the pantoum. The basic structure is as follows: ABCD, BEDF, EGFH, ACHJ. We read Carolyn Kizer's poem Parent's Pantoun.

Here is one that I wrote in front of my students:

On Public Announcements

If it can be said in an email, send it.

Announcements seem to interrupt my day.

The beep is an intruder that I can’t stop,

Robbing my students of focus.

Announcements seem to interrupt my day.

My blood pressure rises; I can’t make it stop.

Robbing my students of focus,

Me of valuable instructional time.

My blood pressure rises; I can’t make it stop.

It’s followed by chaos and the opening door,

Robbing me of valuable instructional time.

It’s a daily battle that I’m losing.

It’s followed by chaos and the opening door.

The class is now interrupted

It’s a daily battle that I’m losing,

A war of attrition on my patience.

And the concentrating class is now interrupted.

The beep is an intruder that I can’t stop.

A war of attrition on my patience

If it can be said in an email, send it.

What I like about pantoums is that they appear accessible to students. I share that you really are writing 9 lines and then repeating those lines. But repeating those lines is also what is complex, where the author must think about getting the lines in an order that makes sense. I do always begin by having students number (or letter) the lines on a lined sheet of paper. It helps the writer organize their thoughts and lines, especially when it comes to repeating them later.

I ask writers to think about a few things as they write and revise:


What line is the most important to begin on and end on?

As you brainstorm and draft, which lines are worthy of being repeated and which are not?

How can you leverage punctuation in a way that will introduce an idea in one line but have the same line conclude an idea later on?

Further Reading:

Kevin English is an assistant principal, former ELA teacher, school board member, avid reader, and NWP teacher consultant.  You can follow him on Twitter @KevinMEnglish. 

2019 Post #13 -- A Poetry Sampler

by Zach Sibel

Last year on Go Poems, I wrote about teaching poetry like an appetizer, giving students a number of poems to choose from to discover which taste best to them. With the success of last year’s “rappers as poets” sampler, I thought that this year I could tackle some more classic poetry, the Romantics.

Simply saying the word “romance” in a middle school can send a class into a frenzy of “Ewwww!" This, like many dislikes, is usually rooted in miseducation or misunderstanding. I decided to accept the challenge of “making old poetry cool again” and get students to realize that they can relate to these “old guy poets,” as one student so eloquently put it.

I start by asking students what they think “Romance” is and what it means. Here you get your standard “love” answers. I explain to students that romance in the Romantic era was more than that; it was a retreat to simpler means and the appreciation of nature. I ask students to think about the last time they took a walk -- just to take a walk -- or went outside with no rhyme or reason. After that, I pass out their Romantic packet, which features poems from Wordsworth, Blake, and Whitman; I ask students to read through them, picking one to annotate.

Giving student choice allows them to get more into what they are reading. By creating a sense of context with the explanation of the Romantic period, students are able to understand the poetry a little bit better. While analysis is nice and at times impressive, the best part of this is the opportunity for readers response. By giving choice, students do not feel forced to connect with a text; they feel that they can be more honest in the connections that they have, moving past what they think the “right” answer is and closer to what resonates with them.

Some questions you might want to ask are, “What do all these poems have in common?” or even “What seems ‘romantic’ about them?” I have come to realize in the past few years that these types of conversations about poetry spike greater interest than simply talking about figurative language or form.

The Fly

William Blake

Little Fly

Thy summer's play,

My thoughtless hand

Has brush'd away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance

And drink & sing;

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life

And strength & breath;

And the want

Of thought is death;

Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live,

Or if I die.

My Pretty Rose Tree
William Blake

A flower was offered to me,

Such a flower as May never bore;

But I said 'I've a pretty rose tree,'

And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my pretty rose tree,

To tend her by day and by night;

But my rose turned away with jealousy,

And her thorns were my only delight.

Other poems included in my sampler this year:


A Slumber did my Spirit Seal by William Wordsworth

O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman

Further Reading:

Zach Sibel is an 8th grade English teacher at Tohickon Middle School and a lover of poetry, hip-hop, and all things writing. For more about my class you can find me on Twitter @MrSibelENG . Please don’t hesitate to reach out!

2019 Post #12 -- The Mask

by Trevor Aleo

In a time where our students spend years crafting curated versions of themselves on social media, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” provides a context to discuss the growing dissonance between our inward and outward facing selves. Though the poem was originally meant to convey the double consciousness originally articulated by W.E.B. DuBois (and re-examined in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out”), the idea of hiding pain behind a veneer of happiness is an increasingly relatable one in our social media driven world. Though the symbol of the mask may not be a subtle one, Dunbar’s sing-song iambic tetrameter, spiritual allusions, and chilling refrain convey the inescapable universality of “the mask.”

After reading the poem, ask students why Dunbar believes people wear masks. Then, ask them which ones they wear and why. Does the anonymity that masks provide empower or isolate us? If we know we’re all in pain, why do we continue to hide it from each other?

To start engaging in some learning transfer fun, ask students to write out three situations in which people “wear masks” to hide their true feelings. Then, ask them to start looking for similarities and differences in each example. What do they notice? What are some emergent patterns that occur across all three examples? Based on the inferences they’ve made about masks, ask them to articulate the relationship between one or more of the following concepts: power, isolation, identity, fear, acceptance, empathy, and anonymity. For example, a group might note that “Anonymity helps people feel powerful and allows them to overcome fear,”

To test the mettle of their statement of conceptual relationship, ask them to provide an additional context that proves their statement to be true. In the group example stated above, students might cite Jack’s evolution once he put on the face paint in Lord of the Flies.

Further Reading:

Trevor Aleo is an English teacher in the DC suburbs. He has a passion for instructional innovation, finding the intersection of pop culture and pedagogy, and incessantly asking his students “Why?” You can find him pontificating on the state of American culture and education on Twitter @MrAleoSays.

2019 Post #11-- A Stack of Similes

by Michael Salinger and Sara Holbrook


EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been a longtime fan of Michael and Sara’s work, and I am thrilled to present a poem they have written (based on an experience in Ghana!) and a lesson plan from their latest professional book, From Striving to Thriving: Strategies to Jump-start Writing, which I highly recommend. Enjoy! -- Brett

© 2019 Scott Pickering, Dreaming BIG and Small, Steamline Press.

Bats!

Nocturnal
as a lightning bug.
Hanging like a tree fruit.
Beeping like a
smoke detector
Fuzzy as a hamster.
Face like a freeze-dried dog.
Tracking like a sonar.
Flapping like a novice in the deep end.
Megabat is me.

© 2019 Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger, Dreaming BIG and Small, Streamline Press. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

First, read poem "Bats!" and note it’s made up of a stack of similes, plus a last line that identifies the theme of the poem. Together, co-construct a list of action verbs to describe your classroom. Ask: What do you do (seventh) graders? Answers may include: read, text, chat, watch, dribble, run, laze, eat, etc.

Begin your co-construct by stating a theme: something like Room 206 is us, or eighth grader is me. Turn your action verbs into similes, adhering to the theme.

Label this Version 1. Remind writers that poets tell the truth; however, we also want to be a bit surprising. If a cliché turns up in the Version 1, indicate that we will want to revise that in Version 2.
Next, ask students to come up with a theme for their own writing: Creative is me, an athlete is me, funny is me, etc.

Students can divide their papers like so for a pre-write: 

Ask students to first make a list of actions that pertain to their theme. Invite writers to make a stack of similes from their action verbs. Remind students to try and be surprising. "Fast as a cheetah," may be okay for Version 1, but we will want to be more original in our next version!

Ask students to transition to an electronic device or their writer’s notebooks to rearrange their simile stack into a poem.

© 2018 Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger, From Striving to Thriving Writers, Strategies to Jump-start Writing, Scholastic.

Further Reading:

Learn more about Sara and Michael's work at www.saraholbrook.com and www.outspokenlit.com. 

2019 Post #10 -- Take Five for Poetry

by Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell

Sylvia: In our collaborations, Janet and I have worked with more than 150 poets who write for young people to create poetry anthologies with something extra—mini-lessons that make it easy to “teach” each poem. In The PoetryFriday Anthology for Middle School, you’ll find a poem-a-week for the whole school year for each grade level (6-8) along with a 5-step lesson we call “Take 5” activities. Here’s just one example:

What She Asked

    by Virginia Euwer Wolff

Remember that classroom afternoon,

every big and little thing

was wrong: Sleet outside, radiator clank within,

broken chalk, stubborn pens,

misbehaving software staring back.  

The wall told us in its blunt rasp

about another bus delay.

Minds lolling, girls moody, guys grouchy,

we’d have tried on dour if we’d ever heard of it. 

Even the boy who was memorizing pi

had dimmed his lights. 

Marooned on the crust of that mopey day     

our teacher looked around at all 38 of us

and up at the sullen, pocked ceiling squares

and wondered softly, 

“Who in this whole room

can fly a paper airplane the highest?”

And every one of us did.

Poem copyright ©2013 by Virginia Euwer Wolff from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong (Pomelo Books); used with permission from Curtis Brown, Ltd.

1. Before reading this poem aloud, fold a paper airplane as your poetry prop. Then read the poem aloud and let your airplane fly.

2. Share the poem aloud again, and this time invite one student volunteer to read the lines in quotation marks spoken by the teacher in the poem (“Who in this whole room / can fly a paper airplane the highest?”). Invite the rest of the students to chime in on the final line (And every one of us did) while you read the rest of the poem as narrator.

3. Students will almost certainly want to fold and fly a paper airplane after reading this poem. Graph the results of whose airplane flies where and then post the planes alongside a copy of the poem. For help, look for Seymour Simon’s classic how-to book, The Paper Airplane Book, or The World Record Paper Airplane Book by Ken Blackburn and Jeff Lammers.

4. Sometimes poets use their imaginations to guess what it might be like if something that is not alive had a real personality; this is called the element of personification. Guide the students in determining which words or lines in this poem personify inanimate objects as living, breathing beings (stubborn pens; misbehaving software staring back; The wall told us; sullen, pocked ceiling squares). What does this element add to the tone of the poem? (Answers include heightening the sense that “every big and every little thing / was wrong,” even things without feelings.)

5. Share another poem about a stubborn pen, “Pen” by Nikki Grimes (page 93), or selections from Virginia Euwer Wolff’s Make Lemonade trilogy.

Sylvia: In just 5-15 minutes, we can engage in a meaningful poem, read it aloud multiple times, and zone in on looking closely at ONE skill (personification). We can even incorporate a simple craft and basic math—taking a poem across the curriculum.

Janet: We also featured this poem as one of twelve anchor poems by multiple poets in You Just Wait: A Poetry Friday Power Book, the first of three books in the Poetry Friday Power Book series.

The books in this series are interactive guides for thinking about and writing poetry. For each book, I selected twelve disparate poems and wove them together into a mini-novel in verse with twenty-four new poems of my own (written in the voices of characters). The poems are arranged into twelve PowerPacks—with prewriting activities and writing prompts created by Sylvia—that provide a focus on different kinds of poetry writing.

Sylvia: In our work, we try to make it as easy as possible for busy teachers to share a poem in a way that is engaging for students, while providing skill exposure, and opportunities to think and respond to poetry in open-ended ways. There are so many ways to invite young people into poetry; we like to offer a delicious menu of multiple possibilities.

Further reading:

Sylvia M. Vardell is Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University and teaches graduate courses in children’s and young adult literature. Her current work focuses on poetry for children, including a regular blog, PoetryforChildren.Blogspot.com.

Janet Wong is the author of more than 30 books for children and teens. Her most recent book is A Suitcase ofSeaweed & MORE, a reissue of her classic book on Asian American identity, featuring fifty new pages of prose and writing prompts.

Together, Vardell & Wong are the creative forces behind The Poetry Friday Anthology series and the Poetry Friday Power Book series. You can learn more about their books at PomeloBooks.com.

2019 Post #9 -- Structure in a Free Verse Poem

by Jason Stephenson

With great sadness I learned of Mary Oliver’s passing earlier this year. A thoughtful and insightful American poet, she plumbed nature for great truths. I shared her famous poem “Wild Geese” with my Creative Writing 2 students last school year. On the Brain Pickings website, Mary Oliver reads the full text of her beloved poem. (I always play a poem for my students if I can find an audio file of the poet reading their work.)

After a first reading / listening, my students know to number the lines of the poem to make our discussion and analysis of it easier. We keep things pretty simple. Two questions guide my students as they annotate hard copies of the poem:

What do you notice?
What do you wonder?

Once students have had enough time on their own to ponder the poem, they debrief with a partner and then the whole class. I mark up the poem on my SmartBoard with their comments and keep a running list on the marker board of the different writing craft moves they point out: poetic terms (free verse, metaphor) and invented terms (mysterious title, noun pairs).

Even though the poem is free verse, “Wild Geese” still contains some patterns that hold it together. Free verse poetry is sometimes unfairly characterized as being disorganized, but a closer look usually reveals some form of structure. Mary Oliver’s use of repetition, anaphora, and point of view breaks up “Wild Geese” into natural sections.

• Section 1, lines 1-5: The first three sentences all begin with You. Moreover, the first two sentences begin with the same phrase: “You do not have to…” This section is in second person point of view. 

• Section 2, lines 6-13: Three sentences in the middle of the poem all begin with the word Meanwhile. The middle section of the poem also contains multiple pairs of nouns: “the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain” (line 8), “the prairies and the deep trees” (line 10), and “the mountains and the rivers” (line 11). The noun pairs create a sense of unity. This section changes to third person point of view. 

• Section 3, lines 14-18: While there is no repetition in this section, there is a shift. The poem moves back to second person point of view: you and your are mentioned four times, but it is not exactly clear if this you is the same you from Section 1. 

Once my students have finished their discussion, I invite my students to pick a few of the craft moves from Oliver in “Wild Geese” to try in their own piece of writing in their notebooks, no matter the genre.

Further Reading:

Jason Stephenson taught high school English and creative writing for eleven years and now serves as the Director of Secondary English Language Arts at the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

2019 Post #8 -- "You Mean Line Breaks Don't Just Make a Poem Seem Longer?"

One of the first poems I use in 7th grade is "Ode to Enchanted Light" by Pablo Neruda. This poem is quite short, and I am sure to include a visual with the poem. Before reading the poem aloud, I make an observation to the class - “Did you know this poem is only 3 sentences long? As I read today, think about why the author chose to write 3 sentences over 15 lines.”


Next, I read the poem aloud to the students. As I read, students are marking up their own copies of the poems - either sketchnoting, or writing ideas in the margin. Students work in pairs to reread the poem, and I ask them to notice punctuation. How does punctuation help the reader to better understand the poem?

Students usually realize the punctuation reminds them to stop or pause as they are reading the poem. By this point, I am circling the room listening to the conversations students are having about the poem. Usually someone will notice the line breaks, and we will discuss them as well. Why does the poet use line breaks?

Students begin to see the repeated “l” sound in the first stanza, and soon we discuss how the poet uses 3 stanzas, 3 sentences. Then, I ask students to cut the poem and rearrange the poem into sentences. This physical transformation helps students to see how ideas are formed through the poem. My students enjoy cutting the poem and rearranging it. It helps them to see the poem as lines of text, which also helps them to understand the meaning of the poem.

Finally, we hold a discussion about the meaning of the poem and how the rearrangement helps us to truly comprehend the poem. We use this idea on other poems we read throughout the year to help us comprehend.

Further Reading:

Rose Birkhead is a Reading Specialist in Holland, PA. She teaches 7th and 8th grade Literacy classes and strives to create a positive learning environment where her students feel successful on a daily basis.

2019 Post #7 -- "How to Dismantle a Heart"

by Todd Nesloney

I once heard educator Angela Maiers say “If you really want to reach someone (child or adult) find out what breaks their heart and then start there”.  There is so much truth in that statement. When we have something on our hearts, something that stirs our souls, and breaks us from within, we move heaven and earth to find a solution. It can easily consume us to the point of desperation.

When working with students, I’ve seen first hand how passionate they become about causes that are personal to them.  And in my experience I’ve also seen the importance of issues that are timely and include children their age.

One important conversation educators need to be having with students today is the conversation around refugees.  Poetry helps us see difficult topics in a new light.

One such poem is “How to Dismantle a Heart” by Rodney Gomez.

I think this is a powerful poem to begin conversation with a question as simple as, “How does this make you feel when you read it?”  

An important video to show to go along with this conversation is “Home” by Warsan Shire.

When wanting to further conversation about the topic, the book Refugee by Alan Gratz is an incredible piece of literature that is easy to digest and will hook your students (and you the teacher) almost immediately.  It tells the story of three refugee families from three different time periods, all from the perspective of the children.

We can not shy away from difficult conversations. As educators, it’s our responsibility to make sure we have those conversations and use literature as a bridge into them. But it is important to remember to put the politics and your personal beliefs aside and allow the students to guide the conversation. You’ll be amazed at the depth that can arise.

Further Reading: 

Todd Nesloney is an award-winning principal in Texas, international speaker, and author of 3 books including the hit Sparks in The Dark which he co-wrote with Travis Crowder.

2019 Post #6 -- A Poem in a Picture Book

by Brett Vogelsinger

Former Poet Laureate of the United States, Juan Filipe Herrera, shares his memoir in the poem-as-a-picture-book entitled "Imagine."

The book is beautifully written and illustrated, weaving some Spanish words into the English poem as it follows Herrara's trajectory as a child of migrant workers to his first experiences learning English to his post as Poet Laureate.  It concludes with the words "Imagine what you could do."

I tell my ninth-grade students that for today's Poem of the Day we are going to have an elementary school library class experience, and I ask them to gather around.  Some of them choose to sit on the floor just like they did for "carpet time" back in elementary school.  Nostalgia for this kind of reading runs deep and strong.

I make sure every student gets to ponder each page, reading it slower than most poems, for the format breaks it up into illustrated pieces we want to savor.

The last line, "Imagine what you could do," has landscape illustration paired with it that hearkens back to Herrera's youth.

In their Writer's Notebooks, students might take that same line and illustrate it in a way that inspires them and relates to either their early life or to their future goals and what they would like to accomplish.


Further Reading:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past six years and is the creator of the Go Poems blog to share poetry reading and writing ideas with teachers around the world. Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2019 Post #5 -- Snow Day Revolution

by Brett Vogelsinger

If you live in a region that gets the occasional snow day, you know how exciting they can be for students and teachers alike. Snow days offer an unexpected period of found time, the opportunity to slow down, push back a deadline, and catch your breath.

Billy Collins' poem "Snow Day" captures how it feels to be a "willing prisoner" to the snow. I love to share this poem with my students when we return from a snow day.  After our first reading, I ask students to keep an eye on something during our second read.

Collins mentions "a revolution of snow" in his poem.  Where do we see the language of revolution threaded through this poem?  How does he subtly build on this idea elsewhere with his imagery and diction?  Like tracking animal footprints into the woods, students enjoy the challenge of following the words that suggest revolution: white flag, government buildings smothered, anarchic cause, a riot afoot, a queen about to fall.

I should mention here that Billy Collins' exceptional Poetry 180 project advocates sharing poetry without much commentary or analysis at all, and this poem is ideal to share in that way as well.  It is the perfect invitation back to school after the welcome but unexpected interruption of a snowstorm.  And everyone loves that list of nursery school names at the end!


Further Reading:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past six years and is the creator of the Go Poems blog to share poetry reading and writing ideas with teachers around the world. Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2019 Post #4 -- An Ode to Food

by Joel Garza

I’m something of a romantic--that is, when it comes to poetry. I am drawn most quickly, most deeply to those poems that seem to be a recollection of a spontaneous and powerful experience, an overflow of emotions recorded artfully for a reader to taste. A poem, in these cases, happens to the poet and happens to the reader.

Here’s such a poem: “Ode to Cheese Fries” by José Olivarez. I think it’s an accessible and relatable and beautiful poem on its own. But if you’re interested in a full intellectual meal inspired by Olivarez’s poem, follow these steps.

Appetizer:

Ask your readers & writers to think carefully about one of their favorite things to eat. Start with the senses that surround and complement taste: What does it look like? What does it sound & smell like? How does its texture heighten its flavor? It’s okay to respond in single words--full sentences might come later, or they might not.

Now ask your readers & writers to look at what surrounds that food--take a look at yourself enjoying the food as if you’re above the action of you eating it. What setting do you associate this food with? (Your grandmother’s house, a local baseball stadium, a food court in a mall) Who is seated near you as you eat this delectable thing? What languages or decor or music provides the best foundation for your tastebuds? Finally, what’s the aftereffect / afterglow like that compels you to remember & return to this food?

First course:

It’s time to read the Olivarez poem. Ask your readers & writers to listen carefully while you read. Ask them to underline their favorite single feature of the poem--a word, a line, a turn of phrase, whatever. Read it out loud a second time, and have them say the underlined thing out loud with you. It’s really fun to see which lines pop for most readers, which images excite only certain folk.    

Main course:

Now it’s time for them to write their own ode. Congratulate them on all of the ingredients they’ve compiled in their prewriting: their reflections about senses and setting of their favorite food (the appetizer), their secret ingredient that excited them most about the first course (the Olivarez poem). The main course is their own dish cooked up their own way. ¡Buen provecho!

Further Reading:

Joel Garza is Upper School chair of the English department at Greenhill School. Here’s what he’s reading these days. Joel--in collaboration with Scott Bayer, Adrian Nester, & Melissa Smith--assembled this hyperdoc for #THEBOOKCHAT devoted to José Olivarez’s collection Citizen Illegal.