Great technique - I like the way you combine close reading, individual response, writing, technology, and performance!

Tracy,

When I was in High School, we used this exact technique when studying poetry. Yes, it was very intimidating and difficult to get used to in the beginning, but most of us caught on fairly quickly. It is a great method that really brings out the creativity of the student. It's that pressure of having an immediate answer that scared most of us, but I found that the pressure caused the other students to give answers that they might have otherwise kept to themselves. It makes for great discussion because it causes one to open up to more than what they expected of themselves. I do, however, like the explanation of the technique in your classroom.

I agree that this type of close reading, with individuals being responsible for specific passages, can be intimidating, but I also think it's something that students can be trained to do. Maybe giving each student access to a dictionary and a thesaurus, and giving them a set amount of time, even just 3 or 4 minutes, to do some investigating before they have to share, would help.

Tracy,

I was also struck by how helpful and generative it was to assign words to students and let them tease out the meaning and also was thinking about how a less confident reader might be (at first) intimidated by the process. I teach poetry to freshman college students and my husband teaches English to high school students (we're in Georgia, USA), and I was wondering if it would work to, as we're working through poetry, to assign a select number of students a word or phrase for homework, let them go home, look it up, look at its possible meanings, and know that the next day during close reading, they'll be responsible for reporting what they'd found. That way they wouldn't be responsible for teasing out meaning on the spot when they aren't used to doing that kind of mental work. And then, you can make sure each student in the class has to be responsible for this at least once....What do y'all think?

I think your idea might be an excellent first step, Katy, a bridge to using this technique in a more impromptu way later on. I’ve also been thinking I might ease my most reluctant readers into the process by assigning the most accessible words and phrases to the least confident students ... at least until they get their sea legs.

Hi Katy,

I think your idea for easing the kids into this technique is brilliant as it will allow them to build confidence in sharing their ideas and answers. I was also thinking it would be a good idea to check the internet before assigning a particular poem to make sure it is not on sites like sparknotes. This will help in eliminate all your students presenting the'model or correct answer' and will help to hearing their own opinions. I also think Paige's idea of giving them a minute or two with a thesaurus or other resources will work just as well within the classroom.

I also wanted to share a technique of my own in dealing with the negative feelings kids have when they find out today will be a poetry lesson. I have found that it is better to take away the author and title from the poem at times and start the class by stating how I have found this interesting piece of writing that I want to share with them. It has worked really well for me. The kids don't tell me how difficult poetry is or how they don't like it since they are focusing on the writing and words with open eyes and taking the time to figure out what the piece of writing is about.

Otherwise I think this is a great thread and I'm looking forward to following it and sharing other idea as the course continues.

As a high school English teacher (I've taught grades 10-12 in Canada for several years), I found that this type of close reading in a collaborative format was highly effective. It is a bit intimidating for students at first, but as they begin to recognize that they have valid ideas and a voice, they become more confident and willing to participate. I found that this confidence in their own analysis of poetry seeps into other areas of their education as they begin trusting their own ideas. I highly recommend trying this with students of all ages; the results are worth the effort.

This has been so great! I personally like the activities you employ in your poetry class. Thanks for sharing this with us.

I am new to this and so don't know how to make a "new" posting of my own here instead of just a response. First, Al--I cannot imagine how you are keeping up with all the responses this forum (online, with thousands of people registered) is generating. And yet you seem to be doing just that. I cannot imagine how-----but bravo.

As a consequence of the sweeping theory battles of the seventies and eighties (which died down, but which did make us aware that we all DO have a "theoretical" perspective, whether we knew it or not), I assign specific theoretical perspectives that "force" a reading as an introduction to reading poetry. Specifically with Stevens' "Anecdote of a Jar," I give 2 minute "mini-lectures" on what is expected of a reading by New Criticism, Deconstruction, New Historicism, Freudian, Gender/Feminist, socialist/economic, linguisitic (etymologies of the words in the poem-----quite fascinating). This poem turns out to be "about" poetry, about the inability to mean, about a particular canning jar in Tennessee called the "wide mouth special", with "Dominion" on the glass itself, about sex, about partiarchal domination, and captilist intrusion and destruction, about the displacement of native americans............and all of these (as Dickison's poem so well notes) spill over and take us into other places, but they all come back largely to the same waters in which all these readings actually affirm each other and lead us back to the same but deepened waters......... IF, after that class, a student asks "Which one is right?," I have failed!

I really like this pedagogical technique. It allows everyone to contribute and honors the experiences and knowledge that all students bring with them. It also keeps contributions somewhat equitable. In my experience as an English undergrad, seminar-style classes tend to have a few students who dominate the discussion with their version of the "truth." When I was in college, these students were usually males and the silent students were usually females. The women really felt silenced. I think your strategy of assigning everyone a word does a lot to squash that colonization of the speaking floor by any one person(s), making discussion more democratic (although in a "forced" way).

What about in case of a speaker of English as a second language?How easy is it for them in terms of unfamiliar words,ambiguity,use of simile?Any practical tips to get them started?Thank you for your time,anyway!(Really enjoyed you and your class using THIS method in"I dwell in Possibility"!)

I teach AP Literature at an international school in the middle east and nearly all my students are ELLs. They are not necessary more likely to not recognize different connotations of words than native English speakers -- consider "bark" for instance. I doubt any of my students in NY would have thought of a ship. . .

I think poetry is always intimidating at first, but I really like the idea of assigning words or phrases to individual students. In the videos, the participants didn't always make the right connection, and the prof coached them along in much the same way we do in every class. It's certainly less intimidating to be response for a word than for the whole poem. It's a great scaffolding technique, I believe.

One year in my AP Lit class, I started with song lyrics and had kids bring in the lyrics of some of their favorite songs. We analyzed them as poems. Once they saw that they were analyzing poetry every time they listened to music, they lost their fear.

Thank you for getting this generative conversation started, Julie.

I do reference poetic terminology and more formal poetic concerns as opportunities naturally arise in our close readings and discussions. Inevitably, students gravitate toward the richest, most metaphorical passages or are puzzled by allusions or respond to the sounds of phrases that are rich with assonance, etc. It’s then quite easy and not all that obtrusive for me to say, “Well, one of the ways that poets and readers talk about that idea is ...” or “You have located one of the most powerful tools in the poetic toolbox ....” I also teach a lot of formal concepts by requiring my students to imitate poetic models: I call it “pouring your content into someone else’s mold.” To do that, we have to figure out how those molds are constructed, necessitating conversations about formal matters like meter and figurative language. At the end of the year when I have to review content to prepare my students for our state’s standardized barrier test (do not get me started on that), I find they have internalized the language of poetics quite well.

I handle resistance to the idea that a close reading is open-ended just as you do. Over time, my students usually relax. I also lead up to our first full scale close reading by practicing with “safe” techniques like the “most important word strategy” (each student chooses one word he or she finds important, and we discuss students’ choices and sometimes map them in big webs on the board to show their interconnections). Assigning words and brief phrases as Al does with “I Dwell in Possibility” seems a logical outgrowth of this strategy.

I've had success getting students to relax during close reading by working through a fairly simple poem together. Having a graphic organizer really helps so students have something concrete to use as a guide later. Then, in small groups, I give them another poem, a little more difficult, by the same author. Like Al does individually, each small group has a task (one group might focus on imagery, while another focuses on word choice, for example). Then I jigsaw them and they share with each other what they came up with in their small groups. At the end, we all come together and share. I find the modeling at the beginning really gives them the tools they need to go off on their own.

Happy to help.

I've used blogs in several classes and find that they do empower quieter students and help to extend the classroom walls. I like the idea of workshopping blog posts. How does that work for you, logistically? Do they print out the posts and bring them to class, or do they make online critiques?

In a small class, I'll make copies and pass them out, and/or display them on the projector so we can read through them together. I'll put posts in dialogue with each other ("Joe, you say X, but Caitlin says Y. Does her comment make you rethink your position?") or do a writing activity that asks students to revise the blog posts into small essays by choosing one or two lines that could become arguments, then writing in response to those lines. I've also structured online discussions in which everyone has to respond at least once to everyone else's posts, and then post 2 third-tier responses to threads. (That's less of a 'workshop' and more of an asynchronous discussion model.)

Hey Julia! I like the pressure the blog format puts on the question of what counts as publication. Is the blog something that you host internally, or are the students' works accessible to an outside audience? How much do the questions of self-fashioning and of audience(s) come up for the students as they're writing their blog posts?

I've run blogs on Blackboard and Moodle, and am planning to break into WordPress at some point as a way to get students thinking about how to make their knowledge public and take risks with their work. I know a lot of teachers have had good experiences with that platform. It will be a different ball game, however: BB and Moodle are basically private, since they're university-hosted and you have to be enrolled in the class to view and post. OTOH, I've also created public Twitter feeds for my courses, which are public, and for the most part have had positive results: students seem to like the option of chiming in spontaneously on what they're reading, live-Tweeting poetry readings, and responding to one another on that platform. We've also returned to the feed during class discussion to refine and expand points made there.

I've used Blogger for class blogs. It's a bit more clunky than Word Press, but it's very user-friendly. I was initially worried about the public nature of the blogs, but so far haven't had any negative effects. In fact, it has in a few cases allowed people interested in a specific topic to find the blog and comment. Most recently I used the blogs with a Latino Literature class and a Mennonite Literature class. In the latter, especially, we got comments from people outside of the course because it is such a specialty area, so those interested are motivated to find like-minded souls. Blogger has a blog list widget that students and the teacher can add to their blogs in order to create links to the blogs in the rest of the class. This makes it much easier to navigate. I really like the ways in which publishing work on the blogs gives student papers an added purpose. Students have to take responsibility for their writing and opinions, and are more motivated to proofread (though not always).

I've used blogs in the past (although I'm from a very rural area where students don't usually have Internet access except on campus, so that wasn't as effective as I've hoped). I've also had students write in response to a poet's stance on a certain idea- love, war, honor, for example- and, after one student reads their response aloud, other students respond to that response. It's led to some truly great conversations with students engaging each other, which is something I'm still learning how to promote.

Blogs are great, and they get better as the students get more advanced. Unfortunately, blogger.com has gotten really glitchy here at UHM, where we now have gmail running the school email system. It mucks things up!

I use blogger.com, and for some time now for my poetry. I have noticed in recent months difficulties with access and glitches. Thanks for bringing this aspect of blogger up.

I too have used this strategy (derived from the same Folger volume) with both Macbeth and Hamlet. Thanks for leading me to think about how it might work with shorter poems (or perhaps groups of related poems). I’ve also asked students to rearrange or recombine the lines where their assigned words appear to create a new text, usually a poem.

I also teach "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and I've gotten a bit flat in my approach to teaching it...I'm interested in how you intend to use your close reading strategy for that particular book. It's rich with material, but we study it in the spring (with HS seniors), and I struggle to get the students motivated. Please comment back with your ideas! I'd love to have a conversation about it!

This exercise sounds effective to me for another reason too. I am working with ELL students whose English is beginning to tip to the point where we could actually discuss some of the modernists. I am excited to try this soon, as it would really help some students have some reading material besides other vocabulary-appropriate options like young children's books.

Assigning a single word or phrase to each student could be a more inviting way into the daunting task of simply defining the terms the poet could be using, along with setting the stage for the more complicated feats you're proposing, which sound quite fun.

This is also making me think of the Dickinson poem we're reading this week, "I dwell in Possibility", with the Windows and Doors poetry houses as invitations to entry. Because of the critical micro-level that readers expect to be allowed with a poem (down to the single word or sound or shape), there is naturally a need for more points of entry than the normal engagements one is given to expect in, say, prose. Thanks for the pedagogical connection here!

I teach high school as well, and I think this whole idea of focusing on a single word, or phrase, especially one that keeps being repeated, would be an excellent modification to do with students who have already read the plays or novels we're studying in class...to keep their brains occupied with the material while we read. It's also really excellent as a pre-AP strategy for AP Lang and Comp, where we emphasize so often how important each single word is.

For poetry, Emily Dickinson's brevity on language makes this a lot more accessible as introductory activity too....each word just seems to pack such a metaphorical punch. Love it.

Well, Scott, I just purchased your book on Amazon. I teach high school students and am always looking for creative writing exercises for them, so thanks. I also am an adjunct instructor at a community college right outside of New Orleans, LA and am co-director of the Greater New Orleans Writing Project. I'm excited about this course and glad to have something to focus on besides the hurricane that just passed our way.

Catherine, I guarantee you will love the ideas presented in Wingbeats--I was able to get some first-class poets who teach to write the exercises, and they all come with sample poems, something I insisted upon. In fact, work has started on a second Wingbeats. (You will also love the "alternate table of contents" that the book has, which groups exercises in unusual ways, like those good for groups, those that involve the outdoors, those that use computers, etc.). We've found that many writing groups have been using the exercises for generating poems, and I hope the Writing Project finds the book useful. Glad to meet you!

Scott, your book is terrific--I'm using it for inspiration now as I teach Intro to Creative Writing. Thanks for putting it together. (I bought it from you at AWP;-))

Thanks, Ann--good to meet up again in this most unexpected way!

Hi Scott,

So good to see you here!

I've taught a few exercises from WINGBEATS in my Intro to Poetry class, and they went over quite well. My students particularly loved the walking and writing exercise!

All best, Rachelle

Hi Rachelle--very cool to see you here. I have added the walking/writing exercise to my permanent list of "must do" exercises for all my workshops!

See you around.

Hi Scott - I'm an Australian children's writer and poet and regularly work as a Writer in Schools, teaching poetry at all levels. I also currently teach post-secondary students. I have found, like you, the poetry exercises I habitually use I can use with all ages. One of the things I like doing is to create a 'recipe' for a poem - that means that even the most timid of students can't actually fail to create a poem. And, just like with actual recipes, the more advanced or adventurous or imaginative will tweak the recipe to make their own brand new poetic exploration. A lot of my exercises have to do with experiencing the difference between poetry and prose - so most of them will centre on metaphor or sensory description, trying to lead the new writer away from telling a story. One I used very recently during a Children's Book Week tour was this recipe:

My favourite colour

what doesn't it sound like? what doesn't it taste like? what doesn't it feel like? what doesn't it look like? what doesn't it smell like?

what does it sound like? what does it taste like? what does it feel like? what does it look like? what does it smell like?

A lot of kids took the option of naming things that were associated with their colour when they could but they couldn't always do this, so the poems always jumped the literal - at the end, I always ask students to read their work out - as many kids as we can fit into the time structure - and they themselves decided they wanted it to be a riddle and have the audience guess their colours. It proved to be a great exercise!

Must look out for your book - I'm always interested in reading what other people do! Catty B

Hi Scott, I think you used to be my school librarian :D It's great to hear you're still doing things for poetry and the poetry community in Austin.

Hi Catty--I'm not sure about the availability of a physical copy of Wingbeats in Australia, but the book can certainly be downloaded as an ebook easily from the Dos Gatos Press website. And I love the idea of synesthesia being used to mix colors with sounds, tastes, and other senses--sounds like a great exercise. Thanks.

Hi Trevor--yes, I used to be your high school librarian. I'm retired and now devote most of my time to poetry, and it looks like now you're a teacher--how cool.

Hi Ann,

When did you receive your PhD from PENN? I was there from 1999-2005--just wondering if we might have crossed paths.

I'm curious to hear more about your online course from this summer. What was the course you were teaching, and what was your experience working with a smaller group? I'm especially interested to know if you developed any strategies to compensate for the loss of face to face contact / interpersonal interaction? One thing I've noticed so far is that the Coursera platform limits the amount of "warm fuzzies" a student receives from the instructor and peers. I wonder, how important is the role of praise--that elusive nod or expression of affirmation--to learning, and how might we implement it here?

Hi Julie, my Ph.D. is form 1996, but my actual on-campus time was in the 1980s. (OK, long story--children, a move or two , shifts in dissertation director, jobs, perseverance, etc. . . .). Alas, this was long before the Kelly Writer's House, etc. But I love the way the Writer's House has enabled me to stay in touch in a meaningful way through discussion groups, etc. About the online course--working with 7 students in Expository Writing was ideal. That way I could create structures for peer review, respond to student drafts, and have them create portfolios. The college has a Moodle interface that we used--not my favorite, but workable. I make short movies with photo booth on my Mac to introduce units, and I had students post drafts to forums, and then assigned them to download and read and comment on 2-3 other students' papers, and then CC me when they returned the drafts to their peers. For several students, I used Skype for conferences and this worked very well. The online work with a writing class was quite intensive. You need to be extremely organized and stay a few weeks ahead of the students. It's important to have a shell course posted before the class begins, and then you can add things in as necessary.

Aaargh! Apologies for the three sentences in a row in the post above that end with "etc."

We would have missed each other, then (but kudos to you on your persistence... it's the name of the game). It's good to have your thoughts on the logistics of the online course. The smaller group seems ideal to be since I've always worried about quality control when I've taught online in the past. Peer reviews can fluctuate widely in their usefulness, depending on how they're administered and on individual student motivation, it seems, but I consider them an important way of sharing authority with my students.

I love the idea of starting a writing workshop with reading - your model sounds excellent. I do a little bit of poetry teaching online - I moderate a forum for young writers (all the members are in their teens or twenties) and occasionally I try to run a group workshop. This sounds like a good way to keep the workshop rolling and busy, even if the participants aren't feeling too confident about their writing or haven't been able to produce something they want to post for discussion. How do you work in what the poets in your workshops are writing? Do you let the poems you discuss together just do their magic, as poems discussed carefully will do? In a group of poets, does the conversation often turn to craft? Do you assign writing based off the stuff that you've read?

Bridget, I usually don't get the poets to share their own work with each other until very late in the workshop series, as it takes time for trust to build up, and it depends on who is attending if that trust can be built up early enough. Also I delay that sharing of their own writing as it often takes time for some of the poets to build up some new work to share :) Yes the model keeps the workshops rolling and busy in a productive way.

> Do you let the poems you discuss together just do their magic, as poems discussed carefully will do? Yes ...

> In a group of poets, does the conversation often turn to craft? Not always, it is easier to discuss the craft of a "famous" poet we are reading. But the conversation always turns to ways to get started or break through obstacles.

> Do you assign writing based off the stuff that you've read? Yes, each session ends with some homework. Like, write a sestina! So many people write free verse (myself included) that the constraint of having to write in a form is very invigorating. The point of the writing assignments is not so much to produce a new excellent poem as to stretch the poet into experimenting with form, or with some aspect of poetry they had not entered into before, as a way of extending them. I think a workshop cannot be relied upon to produce a good poem. I am suspicious of what I call "workshop poems". I think poetry workshops bear fruit in time but that the learning / process cannot be hurried.

Another thing I encourage is the use of the Progoff intensive journal process but that is a whole other subject ... Thanks for asking all these questions Bridget!

Hi Dorean--which poets do you teach? I'm always looking to add to my reading list!

Hi Dr. Burrow,

Hi, I'm Rachelle, and I used to work with a fabulous arts and writing organization in NYC called Community Word Project (CWP). CWP conducts plenty of both in-school and after-school workshops with a range of age groups, including younger students. Most workshops met once a week over a 8-10 week period, depending on school schedules, or the program's needs, etc.

I co-taught a a few second grade class where many of the students were just beginning to learn how to write. Every week, we introduced a new element of craft; for example, alliteration, simile and metaphor, anaphora, etc. Students wrote an initial line using the first element of craft, and week by week, added images, similes, etc., to their line (based on the element of craft covered that week). Later on, they excised needless words from their lines. This helped them to realize that writing IS revising.

The teaching artists and the classroom teacher did help with dictation with the students who needed further assistance with physically writing.

As a writer myself, I would argue that first drafts CANNOT be pure, because writing takes revision and plenty of hard work; a process we should pass onto our younger writers.

Oh, and if you're in the NYC area, you should definitely check out Community Word! They offer a free teaching artist training program for local artists.

http://www.communitywordproject.org/Hope this helps!

All best, Rachelle

Rachelle, I worked with WITS (Writers in the Schools) in Houston and CWP actually came down to do some collaborative workshops with us, so I am familiar with yall.

The instructional format that you use is very similiar to my own with 1st and 2nd graders.

I think my question is geared more to 3 and 4 year olds (and maybe most specifically my own children). I am encourage them to write poems to family members by prompting them with questions that will elicit imagery-based answers. When the answers are then read together they weave to form a poem from their hearts. My fear is that I am "putting my own words" into their mouths when I prompt them to elaborate/revise/"give me more" and that the ppl in their lives would like to hear what their first impulse was rather than what they were "coached" to produce....

make sense?? or is that not the point of poetry?

"Tell me more" is often for the reluctant writer. The one who won't put pencil to paper at all unless the teacher is standing there coaxing.

Perhaps a better question would be "Do you have anything more to say in this poem?" That might encourage addition and elaboration, but leave the poet the option to stop when they are really finished.

Hi Candy,

As far as I know, the debate continues, and it's something on which each literary critic tends to take his or her own position. When we talk about poems, we are usually careful to make a distinction between the speaker and the biographical author of the poem. In part this distinction is made to acknowledge the poem's status as a constructed artifact, separate and distinct from the lived life of its author. In concert with this distinction, we try to avoid a pitfall called the "intentional fallacy," which is when a critic attempts to make a claim about what an author intended. In my experience, it's difficult, if not impossible, to make any convincing claim about what an author intended not only because I can't possibly have access to such privileged information, but because an author is unlikely (in fact, very unlikely, given my own experience as a poet) to have a full and complete knowledge of his or her own intentions. Finally, it's not ultimately of the greatest interest to me as a critic what the poet intended--whatever my own personal tastes may be, I much prefer to discuss the poetic material at hand and what work its accomplishes on its own (though even this distinction becomes more difficult when discussing, for example, performance poetry). But all of these convictions are conditioned by the fact that I do think the poet's life must have some bearing on the work, and by extension, on the criticism that follows. So ultimately, the way that I have dealt with biographical information has been to use its as context--a kind of working background knowledge--to help me locate my argument (i.e. to help me know I'm playing in the right ballpark, at least), and because I am fortunate enough to work with living poets, another important approach has been to use material taken directly from conversations and interviews. But even such firsthand accounts of poems and poetic making are, of course, subject to critical analysis.

See conversation above :)

Bridget and Anne, you may already have thought of this, but I've found it helpful to have students select a published poem (from an anthology or from among a handful I give them) and then imitate one aspect of that poem, such as an image, tone, meter, stanza structure, etc., when they write their own poem. Imitation gives those who are brand new to writing poetry a place to start instead of feeling like they have to start from scratch. When they peer review their poems, I ask them to start by comparing the original poem to the student's "imitation" poem and (1) identifying which element the student has imitated, and (2) explaining how the imitation works in the student's poem. Then, they have a conversation about those two things before going on to critique the poem in its own right. That seems to help break the ice and ease them into critiquing their peers' writing in a way that feels more comfortable; they don't feel like they are criticizing or "being mean" to the writer of the poem but are instead talking about its strengths and weaknesses objectively to help the writer make the poem as strong as it can be.

can you please educate me as to difference between poetry and prose ... i may be working under the same disillusion as your students

Here's a simply-expressed handout I use with younger students http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/p-as_docs/PoetryandProse.pdf. We also talk a lot about the history of poetry (origin in epics and ballads), attention to sound, and the purpose and role of a speaker in a lyric poem. Just hitting at the idea that the purpose of different genres and means of expression are different, and thus the strategies and approach to reading them may also vary.

Thanks for the readwritethink link. Eva Buyuksimkesyan

Thank you for that resource Sarah! I teach poetry to middle school students and this sheet will definitely come in handy.

i see. thank you

I agree, Joanna. Meaning belongs to the reader, not the writer. As long as a student can support his or her interpretation with textual evidence, the answer is right. This kind of freedom of interpretation is very intimating to students, especially high achieving ones who want to know what the one right answer is. Once they get the hang of it, it becomes liberating.

Do you have any specific poems or lessons that you particularly enjoy with your fifth graders? I teach sixth.

Paula, I'm so glad that you teach Longfellow and Carroll to 5th graders! I teach pre-service teachers in a YA lit course, and have the hardest time convincing them that Shel Silverstein (although his poetry is fun for younger children) isn't appropriate for young adults (ages 10-25).

I agree! I'm teaching an intro to poetry writing class and I have a couple of slam poets in class. It seems like hip hop, other lyrics, and the performative nature of slam helps students engage with and generate material.

Several of my students have talked recently about Amanda Palmer's work.

Do you use any particular pieces or artists in class?

Yes! I'm about to teach medieval ballads to my senior English class, and we take a good hard look at modern rap music. Some (carefully chosen) rap is poetic genius and lends itself to fabulous study of poetic mechanics and design. I'd be interested to know how you go about teaching it.

I just got through teaching ballads in my History of Poetic Forms class. My god, YouTube proved to be a great resource. I pelted them with Bob Dylan (not a known quantity!) and they came back with Israel Kamakawiwa`ole and other Hawaiian musicians. I really liked the discussion on the video of the Dickinson poem that's a ballad.

You might want to try "Hope is the thing with feathers". I think the meaning isn't difficult to grasp :))

You can also try "There is no frigate like a book." You may need a dictionary to look up a few words in advance, but once you do, it's an easy poem to understand. "Such madness is divinest sense" also is, I believe, accessible. Let me know if you have trouble with either one.

Hi Susan, nice to "see" you here--I've been following your work from afar for years (big fan of Tinfish). Can you say more about how your small group discussions run? Do you move form group to group and sit in, or are groups left to their own devices? Oh, and I agree--follow the pronouns!

Aloha Julie--I went to Walla Walla this year and was going to look you up until I saw you'd moved on. Sometimes I sit with the group and ask them questions. Sometimes (with a bit older students) I sit with the other students and ask the panel to direct their comments to everyone. Other times I ask students to spend five minutes generating discussion questions, along with finding a quotation from the text that's relevant, and once they're all up on the board we talk. If there are several groups at once (which report later to all of us), then I do roam around the room and try to help out or goad them as needed!

About images -- I've gotten my students to draw out the specific images in the poems when appropriate, and it's produced great results!

I also use visuals as a heuristic for teaching poetic imagery. I get my students to create PowerPoints using images they find online, together with the relevant lines of poetry, to explore the meanings of the text.

I then use the PowerPoint as a springboard for discussion of the poem.

Hi Garnet. I think that's a great way of posing the question for students--in doing so, you immediately throw into question the poem's status as a "given." The poem, indeed, could have been otherwise, and why not? How would it have been different? Is the poem as we have it today the best version? The most authoritative version? Or--gasp--could it have been improved? Is "chamber" better than "bedroom"--why, or why not? How are they different? Could the poem have been (and this is perhaps most relevant for Dickinson) edited differently? When we read Emily Dickinson, whose Emily Dickinson are we reading?

I have a similar activity, Garnet. I usually use Donald Hall's "Old Roses" to emphasize the importance of diction. Before we even read the poem, I'll choose some words from the poem and list them alongside synonyms. Then, I ask students to work in pairs to briefly discuss the connotative differences between each pair of word (i.e., the word and its synonym). Afterwards, as a class, we discuss those connotative differences. Then, we read the poem and discuss why Hall may have used the word he did.

Welcome, and thanks for sharing your website--I especially appeciate the section on museum collections for ekphrasis!

Show them how the poem works rather than what it means, and then have them write one. Found language exercises work well (my favorite has them wandering the halls of our building writing down words they find on the walls--course descriptions, advertisements, edicts, etc.--and then writing a poem using as much of the language as they can. Usually turns out "difficult," but the students can see certain words coming up again and again in each other's work.

First, I let them read the poem out loud, even a few times. That really helps with the meaning. I require students to read aloud for this reason.

Also, I let them know that poetry is not easy, and that the harder poems can be rewarding. I explain how many years I have wrestled with the poem, and how it shows me new things each time. This way they can see that it's a challenge for everyone and that it ought to be a challenge.

Building on a comment from a colleague about using historical references when reading the work of a poet (what they wrote during what period of time) I also like to use music/song lyrics for the same reason. Looking at the poetic messages in Beatles music (for example) is very telling of the period of time in which they wrote. Introducing song lyrics also engages some of my high school students on a different level. Particularly the young men that think poetry isn't cool....well, show them lyrics from one of their favorite music artists and you've slipped a poetry lesson under the door!