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.
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