2021 Post #29 -- Dive Into Unfathomable Life

 by Stacey Smith

In 1996, Wislawa Syzmborska won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her ability to ask existential questions of the world around her with deep empathy and untangled language. In a world currently shrouded by the unknown, Szymborska’s poem “Utopia” is a fitting dive into how a perfect place does not exist, and we should not only face, but embrace the reality of our now—and find meaning in the experiences we’ve had during this uniquely trying year.

It is easy for us and our students to focus on the what ifs, the ideals of what could be, the way the world was before the pandemic. In reading “Utopia”, we have the ability to both explore those ideals that we want to map out on our island, but also to address them as potentially unrealistic and detrimental to our real growth as people, as learners, and as a community. Sometimes our ideals crush our hopes because we have created a world that isn’t reachable.

We want Szymborska’s poem to allow students to explore their “unfathomable life”—What did we have to let go of in the pandemic? During quarantine? As virtual learners vs. in person learners? What freedoms did we have to give up and how did that sacrifice pay off?

Start by reading “Utopia” out loud once through. Deliberately.

Then, read it again, and as you are reading, have the students think about what they had to let go of that existed pre-2020 (the “Trees of Understanding” and “Caves where Meaning Lies”).

Have students read the poem again on their own. Once they have finished reading, ask them to write in their journal some individual hopes they found in Post-2020 life (and potentially model your own version for them as well)—What have you left behind and how it has maybe made life better? How have you had to slow down? What have you seen by doing this? Have you become closer to people without the distractions of the world? Have you learned to communicate better? What freedoms did we have to give up and how did that sacrifice pay off?

Szymborska’s poem does not end in despair, but rather reminds us that hope is not lost— in the words of researcher Brené Brown, we have to be “bravely vulnerable” and accept that life is flawed, but we can find our own meaning and purpose beyond the safe, yet false utopias our imagination sometimes creates.

Further Reading:



Stacey Smith is a Freshman English teacher at Lenape Middle School in Doylestown, PA. When she’s not encouraging her students to be bravely vulnerable, she thrives on new experiences with food and travel and discovering the stories of anything vintage. You can find her occasionally on IG @ihatetoread

2020 Post #27 -- The Stories of Tattoos

by Brett Vogelsinger

One of my favorite poets I have discovered in the past few months is Ariel Fransisco.  I've shared several of his poems with my classes, but one short piece that provokes some great conversation and writing is "Poem Written in the Parking Lot of a Tattoo Shop While Waiting For an Appointment."  Sometimes when sharing a poem that is brand new to me for our Poem of the Day routine, is simply put the question to students:  What do you notice?  What should we talk about in this poem?

They are experienced readers of poetry by this point in the year, and invariably they find something I missed in my own reading of a poem.

In this poem, we end up talking about the speaker.  Is this the speaker's first tattoo?  Why is he getting one?  Will he go through with it? The line "I'm in search of any kind of permanence" becomes central to our conversation.

I ask students "How many of you will likely get a tattoo someday?  How many of you think you never will?  Why? And why are tattoos so popular right now?"  This could be a conversation or a writing prompt, but in the course of talking as a class, students began to tell stories of family members and their reasons for getting tattoos, some of which opened my eyes to people's quest for "permanence," often using tattoos to record a painful loss or deep devotion.  These personal stories  looped us back to talking about the speaker in the poem again.

Further Reading (out 4/21/20):

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 ten years. He is the creator of the Go Poems blog and the author of Poetry Pauses: Teaching With Poems to Elevate Writing in All Genres.   Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2020 Post #14 -- We Lived Happily During the War

by Carol Jago

If you haven’t yet discovered Ilya Kaminsky’s play in verse, Deaf Republic, you have an extraordinary shock to your poetic system in store. No volume of poetry has had such a powerful impact upon me as a reader in a very long time.

Let’s look at the very first poem in Kaminsky’s play, "We Lived Happily During the War". Read it aloud to the class and then ask students to read it once more to themselves, noting an image or phrase that struck them as intriguing or perplexing.

Put students into small groups and invite them to:

1. Read the poem aloud once more.

2. Share the lines they noted.

3. Discuss what they think the poem wants us to know.


Together as a whole class, consider Ilya Kaminsky’s use of repetition. How does it affect our understanding of the poem?

Ilya Kaminsky was deaf until he came to the United States. Invite students to reflect upon the idea of a deaf poet. For further reading on this subject, see Kaminsky’s essay that appeared in the New York Times, “Searching for a Lost Odessa and a Deaf Childhood: A poet returns to the city of his birth.”

“I turn off my hearing aids and walk up to walls, touch them with my fingers. This is the act of a fool who touches the skin of time and walks through it.” -- Ilya Kaminsky

Further Reading: 

Carol Jago has taught middle and high school for 32 years and is past president of NCTE. She is associate director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA and the author of The Book in Question: Why and How Reading Is in Crisis. (Heinemann 2019).

2020 Post #2 -- A Participatory Poem

by Brett Vogelsinger

It is rare to find a poem for my Poem of the Day routine that barely requires any forethought about what aspect to admire, discuss, or interrogate as a class, but "The Alley Violinist" by Robert Lax is one such poem.

The poem concludes with a choice for the reader:

"Would you:
stand there and play?

Beat it?

Walk away playing your fiddle?"

This rare, multiple-choice closing chord allows us, the readers, to look inside at what we value and to wrestle with competing priorities in a situation none of us have personally faced.  There is something deliciously riddle-like about this short poem.

So invite students to share which choice they would make and why.  Students tend to enjoy defending their choice, and they pull textual evidence!

After years of sharing this poem with students, I have also noticed that no one usually chooses the final option.  If the same happens in your classroom, pose the question: Why is this option so undesirable?  What might this reveal about human nature?  When is compromise valuable, and when is it unwelcome?

Further Reading:





Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth grade English teacher and NBCT at Holicong Middle School in Doylestown, PA. He is the founding editor of Go Poems, facilitates his school's literary magazine, Sevenatenine, and contributes monthly posts at Moving Writers. You can follow him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2020 Post #1 -- What Is Worth a Swerve?

by Ken Bui

We know that poetry can be a wonderful way to provide students with the opportunity to truly think and dive into meaningful conversations. Some of the most meaningful conversations stem from poems that challenge students’ values and really ask them to reflect on what they feel, what they believe, and why that is. One poem that fully allows for this opportunity is William Stafford’s “Traveling through the Dark,”an iconic, short poem that captures a raw moment of moral dilemma.

By the end of the poem, following hesitation and self-mediation, we see the speaker make a decision, “my only swerving,” and are left with a chance to react and evaluate.

Optimally, I have found that this poem works well as a great whole group read-aloud, breaking it up into stanzas with multiple voices pulling us through the suspense. Often, I hear some students gasp to themselves when the reality of the final couplet settles in.

Challenge students to talk about the pros and cons of the speaker’s actions. It can be interesting to ask students if they agree with the speaker’s choice, or, conversely, what realistic action they would have personally taken.

Discuss the qualities of moments in life that make us “hesitate” and push us to “hear the wilderness” or the world around us “listen.”

Dig into the depth of that last couplet: “I thought hard for us all -- my only swerving.” It’s a splendid springboard for conversation. Invite students to think about how we “think hard,” make difficult decisions, and “swerve” in our own lives – as a society and as individuals. As humans, why do we swerve? What is worth swerving for?  

Further Reading:

Ken Bui is a former English teacher and administrator in the North Penn School District. 

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).