Take a look through the poems at the front of the room. One of them is going to be your new friend.
You will need to introduce them to us.
We all have quirky friends that we like but may not completely ‘get’. Friends that intrigue us, give us hope, frustrate us, or help make sense of life’s mysteries.
This is one exercise I’ve used to get students talking about poems. I was inspired by Stephanie Burt’s writing about very new poetry:
“The most important precepts are the simplest: look for a persona and a world, not for an argument or a plot. Enjoy double meanings: don’t feel you must choose between them. … Use your own frustration… as a tool …Ask what kind of nonpoetic speech or text a given line evokes: does the poem seem to quote, or remind you of, an adventure story? A tell-all memoir? A bureaucrat’s memo? A high school yearbook…?”
At this point in the year, we’ve just finished Romeo and Juliet. We’re feeling confident in our ability to spot different craft moves and make meaning. Overwhelmingly, students love reading Shakespeare when we approach the play through the lens of Early Modern gender dynamics. But that doesn’t mean that they’re ready to say that they like poetry yet.
When I have them speak in front of the class and introduce the poem as if the speaker in the poem were a friend, it’s a good chance to explain the difference between speaker and author, and to have students make an argument about what the speaker is like based on the way they talk. What do they care about? How do they feel? What do they want from life?
As students introduce their new friends, they point out the curious metaphors, rhyming patterns, and imagery they use. Their new friends often puzzle them and prompt questions.
It’s a short step from understanding the persona of the speaker to moving on to write thematic analysis or conducting some historical and contextual research.
I aim to choose a variety of poems that I think students will connect to. I give students some basic guidance: these poems are serious and have violent subject matter, these ones are fun, these ones are unusual… They pass them around and chat to each other. Some students put in their earphones and lie out on the floor with different colored pens. Some sit straight and tall in chairs and tap a soft rhythm with an eraser. Some ask their friends how do you say ___ in English? Once in awhile there is a laugh or a gasp followed by some excited sharing when they discover an especially provocative line.
When students introduce their new friends, each students brings something interesting. Some have invented names for the speaker and constructed a life story. They ask if this is ok. Some then have very formal presentations they want to read. Is this ok? Some disagree with other people’s interpretations. Is this ok?
YES! YES! YES!
Photo by João Silas on Unsplash