2022 Post #19 -- What Do You Love?

 by Brett Vogelsinger

Alex Dimitrov's poem "Love" is pages long in The Best American Poetry 2021 anthology, but every stanza starts with the same two words:  "I love."  Some of these sentences are just three words long, while others spill into multiple lines of poetry.  

The poem was composed on Twitter, one little bit at a time, but read as a single piece, it has the momentum of a perfect piece of anaphora and a flow of ideas that feels a bit like an accordion to me, sometimes expanding on an idea, then contracting to a completely different one with the next "I love." 

To begin our poem of the day routine, I walk around the room showing my students the length of this poem, reminding them poems don't have to be short.  They can keep them rolling along for pages in their notebooks if they would like.  

Then I tell them, "I'm going to read the first twelve lines aloud, without you seeing this poem, and when I stop, just keep the ball rolling.  Start listing the things you love.  Ride the wave of this parallel structure Alex Dimitrov creates by starting line after line, stanza after stanza, with the same two words." 

The next moments in class are beautiful, silent but for the scratching of pencils in notebooks, and students never seem to finish before I stop them.  Within minutes, some students have even filled an entire page with a poem. 

Here is an example of what my student, Brooke, created:

This exercise is a golden opportunity to succinctly teach the power of parallel structure or anaphora because students have already built their own example of it, riding the wave of Dimitrov's original.  

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. Follow him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2022 Post #17 -- A Poem to Inspire Confidence and Swagger

by Jessica Sherburn

Patrick Kindig’s poem "Gum Patrick” is a humorous and relatable exploration of how even the smallest details -- in this case, the gum we chew -- can elevate our sense of self-esteem and inspire confidence.

NOTE: If you teach this poem, students will ask you for a piece of gum -- guaranteed. You have been forewarned.

After reading the poem (and reviewing appropriate gum disposal techniques) ask students to consider the following questions:

1. What can the speaker do confidently when they are chewing gum? How do they walk, talk, and move through the world with swagger?

2. Which situations in life make the speaker feel vulnerable, uncomfortable, or worried? How does chewing gum change this?

3. What would a perfect day look like for you? How would you walk, talk, and be in the world? What would magically go right? What awkward or confusing situations would you avoid?

In the past, my students have listed ideas like:

• Never pushing a pull door (or vice versa)
• Striding through the crowded halls without bumping into anyone
• Hitting every greenlight
• Getting all As
• Never draining their phone battery

What’s an item of clothing, accessory, situation, etc. that makes you feel extremely confident, even if only for a brief amount of time?

Students often identify things such as:

• Athletic uniforms, theater costumes, or other hobby related clothing/accessories
• A new outfit or pair of shoes
• Sunglasses
• Driving with the windows down
• Listening to the perfect playlist

Ask students to put all the pieces together to draft a “Gum Patrick” style poem, like “Fresh Haircut Jess” or “When I Wear My Ray-Bans.” Then sit back and enjoy the bustling, gum-smacking energy of the classroom as your students write their way to their best imagined selves.

Further Reading from Patrick Kindig

Jessica Sherburn lives in Chicago, Illinois where she teaches English at Stephen T. Mather High School. She has served as a Representative-at-Large within the Michigan Council of Teachers of English and a Teacher Advisory Group Member for the Zekelman Holocaust Memorial Center. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaSherburn.

2022 Post #16 -- Giving a Song A Second Read

by Drew Sterner

As I typically do with poetry, we look at it twice. I will often have students read it first to themselves and jot down their quick reactions in their writer’s journal. Then, I will read it to them. A question we often start with after doing this is “How did my reading alter your original interaction with the poem?” Students can discuss their reactions in small groups, or we can discuss it as a larger group.

With William Carlos Williams “The Fool’s Song” it makes sense to take a moment to have students identify the metaphor as well as the use of repetition and why Williams chooses to do this in his poem.

I tried to put a bird in a cage.

O fool that I am!

For the bird was Truth.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

And when I had the bird in the cage,

O fool that I am!

Why, it broke my pretty cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

And when the bird was flown from the cage,

O fool that I am!

Why, I had nor bird nor cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage.

I like this poem though more for its message and the use of Truth as a metaphor. Hopefully by this point, a student has observed that Truth/the bird cannot be restrained. It is rife with opportunity for students to write about or discuss the many things in our lives/world that resemble this metaphor of things that we struggle with or perhaps shouldn’t try to restrain, as well as the many “truths” that fly around us in our modern world.

Students can also experiment with free verse after looking at this poem and create a similar type of metaphor and then compose a single stanza that emulates Williams’s style in this poem.

Further Reading:

   

Drew Sterner teaches ELA at the middle school level and is an advisor to the student-run school literary magazine, Roaring Voices Review.

2022 Post #12 -- What Might We Spoil

by Nawal Qarooni

Sometimes when we read poetry, we leave with simply a feeling. The words feel less about meaning and more about emotion; the images conjured are raw and even very subjective. But with Hala Alyan’s poem, "Spoiler,” readers are left feeling some of both.

More than anything, the poem leaves us with a brutal truth as takeaway, a message I seek to elevate in the classroom.


I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.

I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.


This makes me think about intricate mandala art, sometimes crafted out of sand for hours and hours that then – poof– disappears in an instant. It reminds me of incredibly detailed nail art, that also takes hours to design, only to be chipped and removed before not too long. It elucidates the belief that journey is far superior to the destination; that there’s magic every step of the way.

Hala’s poem for me depicts a picture of truth across the board. There are sadnesses, nightmares, dying; trees planted in infertile soil. But the lingering image is one of building sandcastles so beautiful it doesn’t matter how intense the tide. At the end, she leaves us with the ‘spolier’ that in life, process is more important than the sum of those momentary products.


What Might We Spoil?

This lesson riffs off the idea that we embrace with open arms inevitable change.

With students in upper grades, you might use Hala Alyan’s poem as a springboard for writing their own ‘spoliers.’ To brainstorm, I suggest students draw a three-column chart - one with emotional moments that one might perceive as setbacks, one with life milestones they hope for, and another with potential lines to remix the idea of spoiling. What do we work so hard towards? What moments in our lives felt painful? What goals and life events are we seeking? What metaphors, like water destroying meticulously-crafted sandcastles, can we conjure to highlight the journey, and the idea that the steps along the way are important experiences worth painting positive?

With this mentor, students can organize their staccato sentences similar to Hala’s, maybe even leading with their own question, moving into moments of disappointment across time, to a final, purposeful metaphor at the end. After listening to Hala’s audio recording, I would have students record their pieces too.

There is beauty in ruins. There is beauty in the spoiling.

Further Reading: 

Nawal Qarooni is an educator and writer who works in education spaces to support a holistic model of literacy instruction. She and her team of coaches at NQC Literacy work with teachers and school leaders to grow a love of reading and composition in ways that exalt the whole child, their cultural capital and their intrinsic curiosities. She is the proud daughter of immigrants, and mothering her four young kids shapes her understanding of teaching and learning. Nawal’s first book about family literacy with Heinemann is forthcoming in 2023.

2022 Post #8 -- Writing Outdoors

by Sarah Gross

“Scratch” by Jody Gladding is a great mentor poem for students of all ages and teachers can use the poem either in the classroom or in the schoolyard. Spending time outside is beneficial to students’ health, both mental and physical, so if possible do this activity outside!

Hand out a copy of the poem. Ask the students to read the poem through once. On the second reading, ask them to mark up what they notice. Who is/are the speaker(s)? How does Gladding use fonts and bolding to tell the story of her poem? Have students highlight the two voices in the poem and read it out loud.

If students are not familiar with the junco, a sparrow common in most of North America, have them look up photos of the bird. Why might Gladding have focused on this specific bird in her poem?

After discussing the poem together, pair students up to write their own poem using Gladding’s text as a mentor. Students should pick a season and write two sets of lines: one set of lines should be from the perspective of a plant or animal they are familiar with and one set should be from the perspective of a human. Gladding focuses on the actions of the speaker and the junco in spring. What else can students write about? Challenge students to keep their poems short, like Gladdings’, and focused on small actions taken by the two voices in the poem. Students can also illustrate their poem.

This activity can be a lot of fun to do outdoors, whether sitting on the sidewalk outside the building or in a forest/field near school. If necessary, spend some time brainstorming a list of animals and plants in the area that students are familiar with to help them get started with the non-human voice in the poem.

Further Reading:

  



Sarah Gross is one of the co-organizers of NerdCampNJ. She teaches in central New Jersey and loves spending time outdoors.

2022 Post #1 -- The Magic of Ordinary Moments

by Allison Marchetti

Two years ago, I suggested the poem “The Return” by Jonathan Greene, for helping our students think about the grounding and comforting nature of rituals in times of upheaval.

This year, I offer “Abundance,” which contains a similar invitation. In this poem, Amy Schmidt argues that simple, everyday acts can evaporate loneliness and lead us to discover the bounty in our lives. I just can’t get enough of poems that zoom in on the magic of daily routines and ordinary moments. Plus, Schmidt dedicates this poem to Mary Oliver, one of my most cherished poets.

Here’s what working with this poem in your classroom might look like:


1. Read the poem out loud.

2. Discuss what you notice about the poem. Here are a few things that might come up, or that you might draw their attention to:

• The title is an abstract noun, followed by a concrete description.
• The poem consists of five very short sentences.
• The poem is directed at a “you” and contains commands (scrape, look).
• In one short sentence the poem illuminates how the simple act of zesting an orange can lead to noticing abundance: “Scrape…and the whole room fills…”
• "S" sounds
• Use of colon and fragments (“Always have”)

3. Then, encourage students to share everyday acts that could illuminate the big feelings we have. Could brushing our teeth somehow remind us to laugh? Wiping down the countertops bring a moment of clarity? How could some of the mundane acts of our lives inspire happiness, lightness, togetherness, courage – any number of positive feelings?

4. Finally, invite your students to write beside this poem, perhaps borrowing the frame:


It’s impossible to be ______________

when…


Look around: you

____________________________



You just didn’t notice

until now.




Further Reading: 

Allison Marchetti is co-author with Rebekah O’Dell of WRITING WITH MENTORS, BEYOND LITERARY ANALYSIS, and A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO MENTOR TEXTS (Heineman). She is the co-founder of Moving Writers, a blog for secondary writing teachers. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.

2021 Post #13 -- Diving Into Gratitude

 by Rebekah O'Dell

During "Pandemic School" -- a term my colleague coined to encapsulate the general chaos and turmoil we are all experiencing this school year -- I have been trying to model specific, concrete gratitude for my students.

“I’m so thankful I get to see your entire faces today,” I said in our first class meeting during a sudden virtual pivot.

“I’m so glad we’re all back together again, even if it’s behind plexiglass and masks,” I said our first day back at school.

“I’m excited we get to figure out together how to make our language field guides digital this year!” I feigned.

I do this because I need it. Because, this year, gratitude is not always my first language. Because I want it to become a language students start to practice when they need help, too.

Gratitude is a fake-it-’til-you-make it sport. We become more grateful and experience the myriad mental and physical health benefits that gratitude affords not because we are always feeling it but because it’s a discipline.

And, like any discipline, we sometimes do it through gritted teeth.

One particularly bleak winter morning, I came across the poem “Winter Thanks” by Marcus Jackson.

What struck me was the specificity. Unlike some other gratitude poems, this poem isn’t sweeping in its scope. Instead, it gets highly specific about one thing the poet is grateful for in the winter: heat. Jackson drills down, stretching and pulling his thankfulness apart to examine what it’s made of.

This poem provides a great lesson on zooming in and getting specific.

Here’s how I used it with my students:

First, we read the poem, and I asked students the question I always ask students about everything we read: What do you notice?

Students immediately noticed that all of the items discussed in the poem have to do with heat, which is something you would naturally be thankful for in winter. They smartly said it’s like Jackson “zooms in” on all the things that make heat, that give him heat in the cold winter months, and he describes each one very specifically.

They noticed the formal tone that “sounds like church” and the repetition of the word “praise”.

Then, I asked students to try their own, using these instructions:

• Think of something you’re thankful for right now.
• Now, zoom in. Break that down into 8-10 smaller aspects or elements.
• Describe each of those elements in a phrase that: describes its appearance, describes its function, describes its behavior, describes its feeling, describes its sound
• Now, string them together -- adding line breaks + repeating “praise” at the beginning of each new element you describe.

Jackson’s easily-recognizable frame provides a template into which students can fit their own thinking and quickly end up with a successful poem of their own in about 10-15 minutes.

Further Reading: 

 

Rebekah O’Dell teaches middle school English in Richmond, Virginia. She is the co-founder of MovingWriters.org and the author of a number of professional books. You can find her on Twitter @RebekahODell1 and at movingwriters.org.

2021 Post #7 -- A Contrafactual Hypothesis

 by Carol Jago

Contrafactual hypotheses have always fascinated me. In this poem Eve Ewing imagines that Emmett Till wasn’t murdered in Mississippi but lived, breathed, and shopped on the southside of Chicago. I love the details she depicts: Till’s porkpie hat, Roosevelt Road, and of course the candy bar. Among other things, the poem is an invitation to learn more about Till’s death and funeral, a landmark in the history of civil rights.

Eve Ewing’s 1919 is both a poetry collection and a history lesson. Drawing from events in the “Red Summer” when racial tensions erupted into violence across the nation she presents poems, photographs, and primary documents in conversation that invite the reader to reflect upon current events.

You can provide a print copy of "I Saw Emmett Till This Week At the Grocery Store" and then listen as a class to Jonny Sun read the poem for the Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica project.

Invite students to:

1. Read the poem identifying compelling details (“whistling softly,” “his hat, one of those fine porkpie numbers,” “Roosevelt Road,” “candy bar in hand”).
2. Brainstorm people from history or from the news (a celebrity, a sports figure, a politician, etc.)
3. Choose one of these people to learn more about.
4. Do a quick online search for information about the individual, looking for compelling details.
5. Write a poem modeled after Eve Ewing’s in which the individual is suddenly observed in a familiar contemporary place (at a bus stop, in the woods, on a Zoom call, walking down the street).

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 #30 -- One of Those Days

by Brett Vogelsinger

If you keep a writer's notebook with classes of young people, then you have heard the words "I have nothing to write" before.  Sometimes, we (in our heads) write this off to a bad attitude in our our writers. But as we know from our own writing experiences, sometimes there are days when the words do not want to cooperate, and the empty page mocks our attempts to find something to say.

Professional writers feel this too, and the new poem "One of Those Days" by Jason Reynolds, published as part of his National Poetry Month writing project, captures this feeling well.

When your students say they have nothing to write about, encourage them to write about that feeling. Try putting words down that convey the failures or weaknesses or cacophony of words that will not fall into line.  Students may even find it useful to borrow the opening lines of this poem: "There are days when . . . "

As I share this poem with my students this week, I realize that it will meet some of them finding relief from the pressures of school in their new, stay-at-home lives. Some will be having trouble staying motivated now that they know we will not be returning to our building this year.  There are others whose pressures at home are intensified by this isolation. There are those whose parents work in health or public safety, and they fear for their parents' lives.  There are some who will be deeply saddened by the sheer horror of a pandemic, and others who are trying to avoid the news entirely and escape into another world through reading, binge-watching, or gaming.

Every one one of them is navigating something new.  So am I. So are you. 

The words for this do not always flow.  Right now, our lives don't always flow. 

These experiences can steal our capacity to find  words to express ourselves, and they can offer new reflections about which to write.

In this, the last Go Poems post of 2020, I'd like to thank you, our readers, for visiting the site, many of you on a daily basis, and sticking with us through the abrupt "swerve" of COVID-19.  Our first post of this year was called "What is Worth A Swerve?" -- how fitting that now seems!

Keep reading poems and sharing them with your students.  Words, carefully stitched and tailored as they are in poetry, can help us feel less alone, even when it is one of those days when we struggle to shape words into a poem of our own.

Take care, stay at home, and be safe.

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. Follow him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2020 Post #22 -- Poetry in a Time of Coronavirus

by Tricia Evans

For forty years, my spring break pilgrimage has been the same. But just like many other timeworn traditions, my spring break isn’t following the normal trajectory this year. Instead of hikes up craggy Baldy mountain, the soothing music of the Frio River, flame wrapped marshmallows, and family communion, we have chosen social distancing. This is a spring break none of us envisioned. With schools closing, sporting and entertainment venues shuttered, and a constantly shifting newsfeed, life has been disrupted and we find ourselves the subjects of a historic moment.

Recently, in his Twitter feed, Kelly Gallagher provided a reminder that each of us is a historian, and encouraged the chronicling of this unusual time.

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s When the World as We Knew It Ended is a powerful mentor text for this purpose.

Read the poem aloud,. Ask students to identify the moment in history Harjo is describing. Why is it important for writers to preserve history for future generations?

Consider why Harjo chose a poem as the vehicle for this historic accounting.

After reading the poem a second time, ask students to annotate the poem for structure and then do this collectively under the document camera.

Allow students to take a line, an idea, or borrow Harjo’s structure and craft a poem with the intent of capturing this historic moment for future generations. Some students might benefit from the scaffolded structure below.

Stanza 1
We were (Recount a moment before you heard of the coronavirus.) 

Stanza 2
Big picture showing this moment as it is witnessed on a large scale. Wow your audience with FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE & IMAGERY! 

Stanza 3
We had been watching (a noticing before this moment)

Stanzas 4 and 5
We saw it from (Zoom in. What do you notice? How is life around you different? The same? What are people around you doing?)

Stanza 6
We heard it. (What are you hearing from your family? Your friends? The news? Social media?)

Stanza 7
But then (Conclude with a shift that serves as a reminder of the good that continues to exist in the world today and in the future.)



Allow opportunity for student historians to publish on platforms like Padlet, Flipgrid, or in your personal classroom collection. Celebrate student voice!


Further reading:

Coronavirus Lesson Plan  compiled by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle

Tricia Evans works with curriculum and instruction at Palo Duro High School in Amarillo, TX. She believes in the power of words, classrooms, and positivity to change the world.

2020 Post #20 -- Rituals in Difficult Times

by Allison Marchetti

Rituals in Difficult Times

As a mother of two littles, I have been doing my best to keep our days at home as predictable and familiar as possible during these strange times.

We’re still getting dressed and brushing our teeth in the morning. Still taking the dog for a walk first thing. Still snuggling in my four-year-old’s bed at night for stories. Still making pancakes on Sunday morning.

My daughter points at the sky. “Airplane, Mommy!” Planes still fly. The squirrels in our backyard still take their share of the seed in the feeder. The rabbits still munch grass in the cool light of dawn.

This short, simple poem, “The Return,” by Jonathan Greene, reminds us that, despite COVID-19’s disruption to our lives, “some rituals/ of this good earth/ continue.” And what a comfort that is to both old and young.

Perhaps it will bring some calm to your students to think about the rituals of their lives that have not stopped, that will continue to ground them in the present and keep them focused on the good.


Here’s what working with this poem in your classroom might look like:

1. Read the poem out loud.

2. Discuss what you notice about the poem. Here are a few things that might come up, or that you might draw their attention to:

• 3, 4-line stanzas
• The poem follows a simple pattern: The first stanza explains, in simple terms, the “ritual.” The second stanza paints an image of this ritual. The third stanza feels like a refrain, or a mantra, that bears repeating.
• First-person. “We” and “us” could be anyone, observing this ritual. Anyone who is looking for this reminder.
• The simple, descriptive language: “They find their old nests / teach their young to fly”
• The repetition of the word “return”

3. Encourage students to talk (or email or Zoom -- however they might be communicating from afar) about the various rituals, both inside and outside of their homes, that continue during these strange times.

4. Invite your students to write beside this poem, perhaps borrowing the frame:


We are heartened

when…





They remind us,

for now, some rituals

of this good earth

continue.



Further Reading:

Allison Marchetti is co-author with Rebekah O’Dell of WRITING WITH MENTORS and BEYOND LITERARY ANALYSIS (Heineman). She is the co-founder of Moving Writers, a blog for secondary writing teachers. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.

2020 Post #19 -- Something You Should Know

by Rebekah O'Dell

If we English teachers could get together and dub a Reigning King of Poetry, I submit it would be Clint Smith. Smith, an English teacher himself, has been a favorite of many high school English teachers (especially those in the #TeachLivingPoets movement) in recent years due to both his incredible verse and his willingness to Skype with students and support teachers.

But let’s be honest: while Smith’s poetry is not difficult, it is heavy.

Teaching middle schoolers, my class needs scaffolding -- a strategy to help students make the figurative leaps of metaphor. And a scaffold to help students build confidence and write like Smith a little bit at a time. Naturally, the poem I chose to introduce Smith is his brilliant “Something You Should Know.”

Here’s how we did it in about 10 minutes of class time:

• Read the poem aloud (project it or give a copy to students so they can see the words on the page, too. They’ll love seeing the trick at the beginning with the title flowing into the first line!)
• Turn and Talk: The title of the poem is “Something You Should Know”. So, for the speaker of this poem, what is the thing that you, the reader, should know about him or her? What story does the speaker connect with this secret?
• Share Out: This is a great time to talk about the idea of metaphor -- the speaker reveals his fear (being exposed and vulnerable) by telling us a story about something different (hermit crabs). Smith builds the metaphor by combining his secret with an experience. 
• Grab Your Notebooks: Invite students to begin by building a metaphor in the same way that Clint Smith did. Give them a few minutes to try in their own notebooks.

I promise students they won’t have to share this, but they do have to try it. If a student or two finishes quickly, you can invite them to build additional metaphors!





Once everyone has built a metaphor, they are ready to try a bit of Smith-inspired writing. Most of my students are not ready to launch into a full poem at this point, so we build confidence by approaching it in a smaller chunk:



Students choose to either write the first four lines (which focus on the experience/story part of the metaphor) OR the last four lines (which focus on the secret or the “something you should know”). Trying four lines is usually relatively undaunting. For students who are ready for more, they can choose to try BOTH the beginning and the end of the poem, or they can just keep writing -- fleshing out their poem as a whole.


Here are a few samples of students in my 7th grade trying their hand at this activity.


Something that you should know

is that when I was younger,

I remember watching a movie about birds.

My favorite part was the scene about the owls.

The silent but powerful creatures that only come out for a short amount of time.


Mathias




Something you should know

is that when I was a kid, I would help my mom prune flowers

I snipped the dead ones

but observed the buds that were shut up tight


June




Perhaps that is why I'm afraid of forgetting.

Perhaps that is why, even now, when I so desperately want to share how I feel,

I don't, I lock it away.

Because the outcome can be even more upsetting than forgetting.

Magovern


You’ll notice that some mimic Smith and others riff off of his lead. Either way, this activity leads students to a greater awareness of how to create powerful metaphors themselves and gives them a bit of poetry they can build on later!

Further Reading:

Rebekah O’Dell teaches middle school English in Richmond, Virginia. She is the co-founder of MovingWriters.org and the author of a number of professional books. You can find her on Twitter @RebekahODell1 and at movingwriters.org.

2019 Post #28 -- A Concrete Clock Poem

by Brett Vogelsinger

When it comes to concrete poetry, students are often impressed with its combination of simplicity and cleverness.  And that's the thing about concrete poems: like masterful acrobats or skateboarders or dancers, they make artful maneuvers look easy.  As some people work on movement to play with gravity, the concrete poet plays with negative space, the blank page, and the shape of words in original and sometimes humorous ways. 

One of my favorite concrete poets is Bob Raczka and his book Wet Cement contains a poem that will ring true to students and teachers everywhere.  It is called "Clock" and the picture below comes from the Kindle preview on Amazon:  

Why not challenge your students to create a smiple clock poem that sets the hour and minute hands at a different time: wake-up time,  lunch, bedtime, game time.  Or you might challenge them to change the form and still write about time: a sundial, an hourglass, a digital clock, an iPhone.  This quick introduction to a sub-genre of poetry in a shape that students of all ages and artistic abilities can handle may do more than just inspire them to create a concrete poem.  Poetry is about moments, and this exercise moves them to think of a poemworthy moment.  Maybe the following day in class, that same moment can be crafted into a poem with line breaks and stanzas.  

The writer's notebook awaits!

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 #27 -- Still Life

by Allison Marchetti

One of the greatest lessons we can give our young writers is to pay attention. Nature walks, writer’s notebooks, guided imagery--all of these are wonderful tools for sharpening the writer’s focus. Another tool is the still life in words.

Jim Daniel’s poem “Work Boots: Still Life” describes a pair of work boots drying in the sun. Like an artist painting the tiny details of a thing, each line reveals the hidden layers and larger-than-lifeness of an ordinary pair of boots. The poem builds to reveal much about its wearer, to whom the boots offer the “promise of safety | the promise of steel.”

Daniels’ poems make holy ordinary moments. They are snapshots of everyday life--brushing your teeth at the sink with your sister, a pair of workboots left to dry in the sun, reading in bed with your littles close--written in beautiful, simple language, and they reveal a hidden beauty that is there simply if you pay attention.

Lead your students in an exercise that will help them pay attention to something ordinary and paint a still life in words:

Choose an inanimate object in your bedroom or home that has some significance behind it: that pair of shoes you always reach for, the old hoodie, the stuffed animal you can’t bear to pack away.

Make a two column chart in your notebook. In the left-hand column, describe what you see in plain language. Like a painter, look closely, making your way around the entire object, seeing it from multiple angles. What’s there that you’ve haven’t noticed before, even though you’ve likely looked at it thousands of times? A tiny rip at the seem, some dried chocolate smeared by little hands?

In the right column, make a list of “deeper meanings”: think about what this object means to you, where you’ve used it, or worn it, memories associated with it, etc.

Use Jim Daniels’ poem to think about how you might pair each description with a deeper meaning. Play around with interesting and unexpected similes and metaphors that breathe life and story into this inanimate object.

Consider borrowing Daniels’ syntax in the last three lines: A ____________ reveals a ________, a __________, the ______________ to tie it all together.

Offer the option of bringing in a picture of the object and pairing it with the typed poem for a beautiful still life gallery walk in your classroom.

Further Reading

Allison Marchetti is co-author with Rebekah O’Dell of WRITING WITH MENTORS and BEYOND LITERARY ANALYSIS (Heineman). She is the co-founder of Moving Writers, a blog for secondary writing teachers. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.

2019 Post #18 -- Where Are You From?

by Chris Kehan 

Where are you from? What makes you who you are? George Ella Lyon’s poem "Where I’m From" helps us get to the heart of that question. You can pose these questions to your students prior to reading the poem or after. Model on chart paper your list. Have them jot in their Writer’s Notebooks the answers. For students who may need more support have them split the page into 4 quadrants and label each one: family, friends, hobbies/interests, childhood experiences.

Have your students listen to George Ella read the poem aloud herself from her website. It gives authenticity and voice to the poem for your students to hear. Talk about how she "shows" rather than "tells" about where she’s from. Have a discussion with your students about what they think about where she’s from based off the stanzas. Point out the use of repetition (I’m from) at the start of various lines. 

 
Model writing a stanza from your list. Then allow your students time to write their own Where I’m From poems using her framework. Have them partner up to see if they showed where they’re from rather than telling. (Example: Not, I’m from basketball - Rather, I’m from sneakers screeching on the shiny court.) 

Point out the metaphor ending she uses. Brainstorm other metaphors to which life can be compared (i.e. book, ocean, flower, etc.). Model writing one. Have students try writing different metaphorical endings in their Writer’s Notebooks.

This poem is great to use at any point in the school year as it gives you and your students an opportunity to get to know one another and work on the craft of showing and not telling to describe where they’re from.

Further Reading:

Chris Kehan is a Library Media Specialist in the Central Bucks School District and a proud fellow of PAWLP (PA Writing & Literature Project) whose passion is teaching reading and writing to all grade levels and ages. Follow her on Twitter @CBckehan

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 #1 -- Deleted Scenes from "Famous"

by Brett Vogelsinger

Welcome back teachers, poets, writers, and students to our first post of the 2019 National Poetry Month season!  Subscribe now via email so you can catch every post and add new selections to your repertoire of poems to share with students.  On this site, you will also find engaging methods, questions, and media to provoke powerful thinking in your classroom.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a familiar name to many teachers who share poetry in their classrooms. Her poems are accessible and profound. They balance provocative, relevant commentary on our world with a sense of joy and possibility that children need to hear in their reading at school.

Her poem "Famous" is one of her best-known poems, but the title is slyly misleading. Instead of celebrating fame in the red-carpet sense of the word, it turns an eye on commonplace things "like a pulley . . . or a buttonhole . . . because it never forgot what it could do."

After reading the poem with students, discuss this question: "What is she doing here with the title and the concept of fame?"  Then, in their notebooks, invite students to create an imaginary "deleted scene" from this poem that fits the spirit of the original.  They might begin with her refrain "The _______ is famous to the ________" to shine a light on a different sort of fame. The opening lines of the last two stanzas also work well for this prompt: "I want to be famous to _______" or "I want to be famous in the way ________." My students wrote about the "fame" of jeeps, staples, touchscreens, pen caps, and tree trunks in their notebooks, to name a few.

When you visit the link to today's poem, be sure to watch the film adaptation of Nye's poem at the bottom of the page.  The creative pairing of video imagery with lines from the poem could spark a discussion all of its own.  In a later post, we will look at another video from the Poetry Foundation's Poem Movie collection.

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 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.

2018 Poem #22 -- Poetry Imitations

by Oona Marie Abrams

Poem imitations are gateway writing experiences, in which student poets borrow the bones of a poem’s structure, but put on flesh of their own. First, I like to share an imitation, drawn from a poem that we have already studied.  In this, I embed links to the original texts and credit the original poets. “My Brother’s Nails” is an imitation of Stanley Plumly’s “My Mother’s Feet.” By this point in the year, my students know I have a younger brother on the autism spectrum, but I share with them that poetry is my genre of choice when writing about him. Depending on the class, I might not use that imitation, but I have others!  Imitating “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde planted me firmly back in my days as a heartbroken college student. And imitating “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur captured a precious snapshot of my own child. Find time to share one imitation of your own prior to introducing this activity to the students. If you feel vulnerable doing so, good! Now you know how your students feel every time they share their writing with you.

Natasha Trethewey’s poem “History Lesson” is ideal, since it provides both accessibility and challenge. Students can draft an imitation of one or more stanzas of the poem in ten minutes. Here is an example of one imitation from a student, adhering strictly to Trethewey’s original form. Another example is written by a student over a longer period of time. He used the poem more as “training wheels,” which then launched him on a longer poem. It’s worth mentioning that the two student poets above are both introverted. All the more reason why they should be given opportunities to discover (and quietly celebrate!) their own unique writing voices.

Further Reading:

Oona Marie Abrams (@oonziela) is one of the co-organizers of NerdCampNJ. She lives and teaches in northern New Jersey.