2021 Post #17 -- A Poem a Day (The Same Poem a Day)

by Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell

A year ago, at the start of the pandemic in the U.S., we wrote a guest post entitled “In This Together,” celebrating the teachers and administrators who have risen to do heroic things on a daily basis to help families in their learning communities. We praised families, too, for stepping up to comfort and educate children and lamented over the jumbled mix of emotions that we all were feeling over the COVID-19 situation. We urged readers to seek relief in poetry for several reasons, such as the way poems often point to the good things in life, especially the small good things, bringing us slivers of hope and joy when we are lost.

Fully a year later, we feel the same way about the ability of poetry to provide relief, but we’ll admit that the message of optimism might be wearing thin—especially for students. How many times can they hear “things will be better” before they tune us out?

More than we might think. A few years ago the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research released a study that shared the following: people often replay a favorite song hundreds of times. The study’s authors called this “extreme re-listening” and suggested that people do not tire of listening to songs that they choose voluntarily. We think it’s time to apply this concept to the sharing of poetry, especially with poems that incorporate movement and can provide a quick “brain break.” One exemplary poem for this purpose is “Everyday Use” by Zetta Elliot from HOP TO IT: Poems to Get You Moving, our latest anthology (featuring 100 poems by 90 poets). You can read the text of the poem here, but we hope you’ll also play the video of Zetta Elliott reading her poem. It takes less than a minute, so you can even play it daily for a week, or several times in a day—and then give the link to it to your students for them to play (when they feel like it) at home.

You might even want to give students a homework assignment simply to listen to a favorite poem—any poem—three times in a day. You can provide them with a list of audio or video links gathered from Poets.org, PoetryFoundation.org, PoetryMinute.org, or in the Poetry Video Library at No Water River; you can also find many poetry readings at our Pomelo Books Vimeo site. To give you a start, here are links to several additional poems from HOP TO IT, read by the poets themselves, that will lend themselves well to some extreme re-listening (and brain breaks) at home.


“Any Weather” by Rebecca Balcárcel https://vimeo.com/477187936

“At the Eye” by Padma Venkatraman: https://vimeo.com/477200215

“Chair Dancing” by Xelena González: https://vimeo.com/476495197

“Clear, Cool Blue” by Jacqueline Jules: https://vimeo.com/477197161

“I Smile with My Eyes” by David McMullin: https://vimeo.com/476499247

“The Artist” by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie: https://vimeo.com/504939468

As we said last year, if any of these poems resonates especially strongly with your students, please spread the word. We are still #inthistogether.



Further Reading:



Sylvia Vardell is Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University; her current work focuses on poetry for children, including the nationally recognized blog, Poetry for Children. Janet Wong is the author of more than thirty books for children and teens on a wide variety of subjects, including identity (A Suitcase of Seaweed & MORE). Together, Vardell and Wong are the forces behind the Poetry Friday books published by Pomelo Books.

2021 Post #16 -- A Meditation on the Wild Things

 by Brett Vogelsinger

Listing images, objects, and ideas in our Writer's Notebook is always a fun way to get the internal gears turning and ready to write. To introduce Wendell Berry's poem "The Peace of Wild Things," I start by asking my students to write "wild things" in their notebooks and take two minutes to list anything that comes to mind under that heading.  Under the document camera, I start my own list each period. 

A toddler throwing a tantrum?  A rushing river? Yellowstone?  Animal from The Muppets? A herd of deer?  A raucous concert? (And yes, I might be slipping in a review of our recent vocabulary word "raucous" on that last one!)

It's intriguing how the word "wild" can bring to mind things that are quiet or loud, outdoors or indoors, human or otherwise.  

We watch the video animation of Wendell Berry's poem, read by the poet:

We watch the poem a second time, and this time I encourage students to start a second list, this time capturing a few key words that they find striking in the poem.  Words like heron, grief, day-blind, and grace might make their lists. 

Briefly, we discuss this: Can things be at the same time wild and peaceful? How is it that the poem refers to wild things and is yet so still?  

It is not uncommon for Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are to come up in this conversation. 

Finally, in our notebooks, we take a few minutes to write about one of the wild things on our list.  There is no pressure to make our words take the form of a poem or sound anything like Wendell Berry's. His poem is a backdrop for our thinking.  

I do invite students to consider whether there is something surprising or ironic about the wild thing they chose to elaborate on in their notebooks.  Might they borrow one of Wendell Berry's words we listed to write about it? Do they find peace in their wild thing, or something else?  

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.

2021 Post #15 -- Moving Advice

by Ken Bui

Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” is an uplifting poem centered around a mother imparting wisdom and advice to her son. It’s about adversity. It’s about grit. It’s about courage. When I share this short poem with students, I always admire how much conversation can stem from its mere 20 lines.

Fittingly – seeing as the poem features the image of a staircase – invite students to think about all the ways the speaker “moves” and “shifts” through the advice to her son. To do so, consider the following questions or quick activities to frame the conversation your students could have:

• What is the mother’s advice to her son?
• What imagery or figurative language drives that message?
• Alternatively, can students complete a quick doodle of any of the images that catch their attention?
• How do verbs capture not only the mother’s movement, but the movement of the poem’s lines?
• How do punctuation and line breaks contribute to the pace of the mother’s story/advice?
• Or alternatively, where does the poem pause? Slow down? Quicken or build?
• Consider if and where the speaker shifts the language. If you had to break up the poem into three parts or stanzas, where would you do so and why?
• Have students draw lines to divide up the poem!

While students appreciate and discover how the speaker “moves” through the poem, they may also be “moved” by its tender yet frank sentiment on perseverance. 

Further Reading:

Ken Bui is an English teacher at Central Bucks High School South in Warrington, Pennsylvania. He enjoys teaching a variety of courses such as English 11, AP English Language & Composition, Creative Writing, and Debate. He is also a contributing writer for Moving Writers. You can find him on Twitter @kenbuiCBSD.

2021 Post #14 -- Memories of Home

by Suzanne Dailey

Stories are hidden in the nooks and crannies of our home. Oftentimes, these stories happen when we are doing ordinary things.

I remember my family room growing up. Brown carpet with designs pressed into the surface, covering an original wood floor from the 1800s and dark paneling from the 1970s. And the little space near the downstairs closet that was the p-e-r-f-e-c-t hiding spot for jumping out at someone and scaring my brother – especially when he was carrying something in his hands!

My favorite room was our kitchen tucked in the back of the house. Yellow linoleum floor, cream colored stove, and cabinets that never fully shut, especially in the winter. Yellow linoleum floor, cream colored stove, and cabinets that never fully shut, especially in winter. It’s where I smelled apple pie in autumn, assembled gingerbread houses in winter, dyed Easter eggs in spring, and snuck popsicles in summer.

We spend a lot of time at home making memories that stay in our hearts forever. Some fill our hearts, and some break them.

What are the emotions or memories that live in your home? Maybe it’s a moment of love or a rainy day or the sound of music or a time you heard lifechanging news. Some of these emotions or memories may come to you easily, while some of you may need help accessing the stories in your minds and hearts.

As a class, read the poem "Daily" by Naomi Shihab Nye.

After sharing the poem, I might say to students, "Try drawing your house and jot down some of the memories you’ve created in the space you call home. Then find a story that’s hidden in the nooks and crannies of your home. Some memories may be seemingly insignificant at first glance, like my memory of sneaking popsicles in the kitchen each summer. But if you get still and really think about it, there are stories there."

I remember enjoying that popsicle sitting under our “snowball tree” dressed in terrycloth shorts, grass-stained bare feet, and a blue t-shirt from my Grandpa that said, I’m a Georgia Peach! Some of my favorite memories from home are in my backyard as a young kid. It’s why I find so much peace in nature as an adult.

Draw your home, get still, and find the stories hidden in the nooks and crannies. Your heart will thank you.

Using a document camera/blank document, model drawing a part of your home, and as you draw, naturally tell a summarized story that “lives” in those areas.

Set a timer for about 5-7 minutes, so students can draw their home. As they are drawing, create a quick write for one of the stories you shared earlier using the format of "Daily": 

These meals we eat
gathered around the garage sale refinished table

These games we play and play until there’s a winner
Tattered boxes with missing pieces in the living room


After students have drawn their home, share your quick write and invite them to do a 3-4 minute quick write as well. As they are writing, choose another story from your home and do an additional quick write.

Invite students to share their quick write, asking classmates share a question or compliment. Invite students to do an additional quick write for another space at their home (inside or outside!) to see if there is a possible story hidden in their home.

Further Reading: 

Suzanne Dailey is a staff developer in the Central Bucks School District.  You can learn more about her work at www.suzannedailey.com and check out her Teach Happier podcast.  

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 #12 -- Instagram Poems of Empowerment

by Allison Marchetti

In the age of social media, most of us have been the recipient of an unkind message or comment. Deleting or ignoring these messages can help take away the sting, but oftentimes the hurt from words lingers. In her incredible new book of poems, What Kind of Woman, Kate Baer takes the raw material of Instagram haters and transforms their disparaging words into new poems that empower, embolden, and better serve the recipient than the original message.

Baer’s Instagram rewrites look a lot like the newspaper blackout poems popularized by Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist), but instead of using newspaper and magazine articles, she uses the direct messages she receives. For example, in the poem “I hope this finds you,” Baer transforms a message in which a follower encourages her to take a detox cleanse to shed her extra weight. Using the same words in the same order, plus the power of erasure, she dissolves the original message into just 12 words that speak the power of learning to love the bodies we live in. Another poem, “It is unbearable” turns a message that criticizes Baer’s work into a feminist overture.

How might these poems of transformation help our students who are barraged by digital messages that might not be serving them? Here’s how a study of Baer’s work might go:

Pull up Baer’s instagram feed and share some examples of her Instagram blackout poems. You can tell you’re looking at a blackout poem because the post will contain two slides: the first slide is the new poem, the second slide is the original message.

Invite students to discuss her work: what makes these poetic responses so powerful? How do you think Baer goes about choosing which words to keep and retract?

Invite students to pull up or remember a hateful message they or a friend has received. Alternatively, allow them to scroll the profiles of Instagram influencers in search of hateful comments -- sadly, there is no shortage of them.

Give students time to talk in groups about the original message and how they might go about transforming these messages of hate into poems of empowerment. Give students time to write, share, and write some more.

The next day, students can share the original message alongside the new poem in a gallery style walk (either virtual or in person).

Further Reading:

  

Allison Marchetti (@allisonmarchett) is co-author with Rebekah O’Dell of WRITING WITH MENTORS, BEYOND LITERARY ANALYSIS and A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO MENTOR TEXTS (March 2021). She is the co-founder of Moving Writers, a blog for secondary writing teachers. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.

2021 Post #11 -- Discovering Juxtaposition

by John Waite

The poem “The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski features simple language but enough linguistic flourishes and ambiguities to put it in the sweet spot for high school students. His theme or message is stated immediately, so students should not have difficulty locating that.

In teaching poetry, my goal is to give students strategies that they can use as they approach any poem. Here are some of the strategies they would use as they worked with the poem.

Have students look for juxtaposition. For instance, the use of “dank” and “darkness” juxtaposed with the instances of “light” in the poem. Another instance would be the idea that you “can’t beat death but / you can beat death in life.” How does juxtaposition help Bukowski create meaning?

Have students debate which word in the poem is the “most important” to the poem’s meaning. They could choose their own word to argue, or you could give them options like “sometimes,” “delight,” and “life.”

Have students look for repetition (of ideas, words, images, forms, etc.) What in the poem repeats? What is the effect of that repetition?

Before giving the poem to students, the teacher replaces some of the important words in the poem with blank spaces (a strategy related to what is called “cloze reading”). Have students predict what words go in the blanks. Then have students compare and contrast their choices with the actual words, considering why the poet made the choices they made.

If you don’t want to do cloze reading as detailed above, have students try to replace words in the poem after they have read it. Why do different words not have the same effect as the ones the author chose?

Have the students mark the poem for lines or images that seem positive, negative, ambiguous, or neutral. What trends do they see? What do these trends tell them about how the poem works?

Possible discussion/investigatory questions specific to this poem include:

1. What does the word “dank” mean? Why did he choose that specific word? Over, say, “Dark.”
2. What do you think the author means by “light” in line 5? What different types of light could there be?
3. What do you think the author means in line 13? Why do you think he includes the word “sometimes”?
4. How do you relate the tone of the title with the rest of the poem? Why does he not repeat the word “laughing” elsewhere in the poem?

Further Reading:

John Waite is a teacher at Downers Grove North High School in Downers Grove, Il. He is a licensed Reading Specialist and National Board Certified Teacher. Reach John at jwaite@csd99.org.

2021 Post #10 -- A Miniature Autobiography

by Don Kemball

"Autobiography in Five Short Chapters" by Portia Nelson is one of my favourite poems for discussing the topic of hope.  

What captures me most is that it begins in despair -- but an ignorant sort. A place where you do not realize you are the problem. It builds slowly, finding the solution through struggle. Yet the poem ends with this incredibly powerful message -- that you can take any problem in your life and turn it on its end. You CAN find a way through and be successful.

Once my class has read the poem and broken it down using the SWIFT technique, I give them a short period to jot down a problem they are having -- one they truly feel is insurmountable. Then they look at it through the lens of the poem and look for a solution they haven’t thought of before. Do they keep walking down that same street? Can they find another?

Some years we extend the activity by sitting in a circle and sharing our problems in a general nature. We listen and reflect. Sometimes we give advice. But usually we just sit silently and appreciate each other and the courage it takes to share. Needless to say, this is not a September activity. I usually save this for the darkest part of the year when many people feel the lack of sunlight.

Further Reading: 

Don Kemball works as a teacher for the York Region District School Board just North of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been using a poem-a-day strategy for almost 10 years with his class and is not sure how he could live without it. Find him on Twitter @dkemball