2019 Post #3 -- Near Rhyme

by Brett Vogelsinger

Gabriel Fried's poem, "Twilight Field" establishes a delightfully creepy mood with simple langauge and one short stanza:


Twilight Field

The spirits play a children's game;
they pose as trees in clover.
I look. They stay. I look. They stay.
I look again. They're closer.


The second read of this poem demands a choral reading from the class, which adds to the sinister overtones.  And if a student just happens to be open the door and come in late as you read the last word of the poem together as a class . . . well that's just perfect!  For me, this poem catpures that feeling we can sometimes experience when alone with nature, that something is watching us or drawing near, for in nature, we are never entirely in solitude. (Note: The Dr. Who fans in your class will impulsively want to point out a connection to The Weeping Angels at this point as well!)

I use this poem on days when I want to maintain my Poem of the Day routine, but I have limited time.  I write this statement on the board: "This poem has an excellent example of 'near rhyme.'"

After two readings, I ask students to defend this statement, even if they have never heard of "near rhyme" before.  In each class, someone is able to infer what that term must mean, and the student points out that "clover" and "closer" seem to rhyme, but do not excatly rhyme, and the repeated "a" sound (assonance) in "game" and "stay" create a similar effect.

While I do not make it a formal homework assignment, I invite students to pay attention to the lyrics the next time they listen to their favorite music.  Where in the lyrics can they spot an example of near rhyme?  Songwriters often employ near rhyme in order to fit the needed ideas within the rhythm of the music without compromising the overall rhyme scheme.  Put to music, near rhymes sound even more like real rhymes.

While literary terms can be dry when learned in isolation, taught in the context of a quick, enjoyable poem and favorite music they seem far less daunting.

For another Gabriel Fried poem to share, see this post from last year's 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 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 #2 -- Cultural Clues

by Brett Vogelsinger

Safia Elhillo's beautiful poem "first adornment" captures a moment that is personally meaningful but also culturally rich.  Elhillo describes herself as "Sudanese by way of Washington DC" in her bio, and much of the imagery in this poem highlights her Sudanese roots.

Challenge students to use clues from within "first adornment" to explore the cultural roots of its poet. In this poem clues such as Ramadan, the stones in the rice, the crushed hibiscus, the henna, suggest certain climates and regions of the world.  With guiding questions, you might see how close you can lead the class to Sudan.

After revealing that these images reference Sudanese culture, a question flood might be appropriate.  Ask the class to generate plentiful questions based on the poem, flooding its margins:  What does this poem make you wonder about this culture? What questions do you have about Sudan after reading this poem?

Sadly, many students receive too little exposure to cultures outside of their own.  I recently heard of an elementary school student who was given the opportunity to research the culture of any country in the world.  He chose Mozambique because he thought the name was fascinating, and it made him want to learn more.  He was redirected by his teacher to choose Brazil because he was told "no one has really heard of Mozambique," which, to me, seems even greater reason to research it and bring it to the class. (On a brighter note, he enjoyed researching and learning about Brazil.)

Poems give us the chance to introduce voices from all over the world.  By starting class with a new one each day, students experience inquiry into cultures they may never study in a social studies or history class, which is just one more reason to start sharing more poetry.

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 #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.

Welcome Back!

by Brett Vogelsinger

Welcome back to our third year of Go Poems.  Look for new posts here starting March 15, 2019.

For now, explore our collection of powerful poetry and teaching ideas. There are sixty here already!

Then, be sure to subscribe via email on our home page so you don't miss a beat this National Poetry Month.  Look for posts from some of our Go Poems veterans -- Carol Jago, Jason Stephenson, and Amy Ludwig VanDerwater -- and some from Go Poems first-timers like poetry powerhouse pairs Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger, Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell.  And of course, in year six of my Poem of the Day routine, I will have some fresh ideas and poetry approaches to share as well.

The countdown to National Poetry Month begins, and the time to start preparing for a poem to share each day in your classroom is now! Ready . . . set . . . go!

2018 Bonus Post -- Reckoning With Enemies

Thanks for following along with Go Poems this year.  Enjoy using the 30 new ideas (and 30 ideas from 2017) in your classroom, and look for new posts coming in March of 2019.  If you are interested in writing a post for Go Poems, please contact me on Twitter @theVogelman, as it is never too early to start planning posts for next year. 

For now, enjoy this special bonus post from Carol Jago to conclude our project this year, and help your students reckon with "enemies."



by Carol Jago

Public discourse has become brutally contentious. We seem to be losing the ability to consider those who think differently from us with any equanimity.

In his poem “Enemies” Wendell Berry reflects on this dilemma.

1. Before reading the poem, ask students to write for a few minutes about whether they think one should forgive one’s enemies.

2. Read the poem aloud and then have students read the poem once more silently. Invite them to talk with a partner about the apparent contradiction expressed in the first two stanzas.

3. How is forgiveness like “sunlight / on a green branch”?

4. What would it mean to think of enemies “as monsters like yourself”?

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. The Poetry Foundation website is her “go to” source in April and always.

2018 Poem #30 -- Mythology Goes To the Hairdresser

by Kate Baker

Jehanne Dubrow’s “Penelope Considers a New Do,” published in her compilation Stateside, is one of my favorite poems to read with students who are studying Homer’s Odyssey as it puts a modern and alternative perspective on the mythology of circumspect Penelope, Odysseus’ long enduring wife. Dubrow’s poem is rich in symbolism and allusion as she channels Penelope’s tale, weaving it into her own story of being a military wife who is home while the husband is deployed overseas. There is even an audio version available, read by the poet.

Students can begin by close reading the poem, identifying the modern and mythical allusions, enjambed and end-stopped lines, and examples of alliteration as they discuss the implications of trying to change one’s hairstyle in attempt to better one’s life: how does one’s appearances dictate one’s mindset and perspective on life? Can cutting one’s hair really result in an improved outlook? Will magazines and hairstylists realistically offer solutions to one’s plights in life? Students can consider how Penelope has coped with Odysseus’ absence and compare/contrast her coping strategies to their own understandings of waiting and identity.

But the beauty of Dubrow’s poem is found in the structure: four stanzas of four lines each with each line indented so as to give the poem its shape -- anyone who has cut his/her bangs will recognize that the stanzas look like sections of hair that have been snipped on an angle. To extend the lesson, students can work in groups or individually to write or find other poems that are written in basic block format and rearrange the text so as to give it a symbolic shape or visual design. The rearranged and original poems can be presented to the class and students can discuss the artistic choices made in the arrangement. 

Further Reading:

English teacher, coach, and author Kate Baker is on the executive boards of the Flipped Learning Network and the New Jersey Council of Teachers of English. Adept at integrating technology in her classes using flipped-blended learning strategies, Kate has been recognized as a CEL’s TEacher Leader of Excellence for 2017, a PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovator, and an Edmodo Certified Trainer. Twitter: @KtBkr4 Blog: Baker's BYOD

2018 Poem #29 -- Bringing History Into the English Classroom

“Propaganda informed him that it was only a matter of time before a plague of Jewish tailors showed up and stole his customers” (Zusak 59).

While reading Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief with my ninth-grade Honors English classes, one question continually arises: How could people let the atrocities of the Holocaust happen? In order to help students better understand the power that Adolf Hitler held over Nazi Germany, I lead them in an exploration of propaganda, beginning with a poem written by Austrian children in the 1930s. Students are horrified to see “Thoughts on the Führer” elevate Hitler to a deity with the authority to lead—and cleanse—the people. I pose two questions to students as they consider the poem: How do the young people writing this poem feel about Hitler? How do you think they were stirred to feel so strongly?

Every class begins with Poem of the Day, which quickly engages students and directs their thinking to the day’s content, but this poem particularly sparks student interest. As the lesson progresses, I show pictures of propaganda in society today and in Nazi Germany, and students analyze the emotional impact of each example. The New York Times documentary  “From North Korea, with Dread” even includes an example of contemporary students singing a tribute that resonates eerily with this poem. I also include primary source images of indoctrination in German classrooms and Hitler Youth, bringing to life the experiences of main characters from The Book Thief, Liesel and Rudy. Students then apply their knowledge of propaganda to The Book Thief, combing the novel for evidence of how Nazi propaganda influences characters’ actions.

When studying a historical fiction work such as The Book Thief, poetry proves to be an insightful window into the past that simultaneously facilitates student understanding of history and stretches their thinking.

Further Reading:

Amanda Kloth is an English Language Arts student teacher and history enthusiast from southeastern PA.

2018 Poem #28 -- Introducing Students to Poetry Through "Introduction to Poetry"

by Will Melvin

Quite often when I “teach” poetry, students want to drive down to the root question: what does it mean? I sometimes struggled to show students that oftentimes poetry doesn’t have to mean anything. That an emotion, an idea, a moment can be just that, and that a poem can scoop up that emotion, idea, or moment and serve it to you in a delightful way without asking anything in return. Students struggle with that—heck, adults struggle with that!—and Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry” helps me work through this struggle with them.

I usually begin by asking students to generate subjects about which they care a great deal. I ask them to think about things that people “get wrong” about their subject. I discuss teaching and some of my pet peeves concerning the work we do as educators and how some things that other teachers do can pick at me a bit. The students generate their topics and their small frustrations, and we read “Introduction to Poetry.”

Collins’s poem is delightful in its simplicity. We read it a few times together in class and really discuss the poem’s form: how Collins uses personification and metaphor to talk to us about how he wants us to read poetry. We notice the severe shift in the poem’s finale, how Collins turns the tone through his final use of metaphor:

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


Those two stanzas provide a touchstone for our work with poetry for the remainder of the year: poetry just is; it needn’t be anything beyond that. And that lesson can be a powerful reminder for students.

Once we have unpacked the form and the use of metaphor, the poem provides an opportunity for us to write alongside Collins. We go back to our opening freewrite, and I sketch out my “Introduction to Teaching” while students compose their own “Introduction to ____” poems.

This exercise is a blast for three reasons. First, students toy with voice, metaphor, and imagery in personal ways. Second, they thematically practice what Collins preached, again in personal ways. And third, I get to know more about my students through this exercise. They introduce me to video games, traveling, important places, “letting go,” growing up, and on and on. Their topics inform me about their lives in ways only poetry can.

And that is always a nice reminder of the power of introducing students to poetry.

Further Reading: 

Will Melvin teaches tenth and eleventh-grade English at CB South High School in Warrington, PA. Follow him on Twitter (@CB_Melvin10).