Approaches to Poetry in School

A teacher might open a book and read,

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxslips and the nodding violet grows,
Much overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk roses and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers, with dances and delight.
There the snake throws her enameled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a faery in.”

From William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

While the two students in the back might have something else in their heads:

“You wanna go down as a straight lunatic?
Underwire while you messin with my clic?
Cause I just figured out that I got to serve
These stupidfools that refuse to learn
That I’m stressed out caught up in the midst,
Tired of the man and his mad politics
Anything goes on the streets, that’s the trick
If you gonna get caught up then you gonna take a hit.”

“Goin Crazy” by SX-10 feat. Eric Bobo

This is the beauty of epistemology: how we know what we know. We acquire knowledge based on our points of reference. What your students are thinking may be far away from what you’re thinking. It’s not a bad thing. It just means that there’s an epistemological divide you must cross, and a lot of it has to do with awareness of class and its effects on identity by proxy.

The awareness of one’s perspective is crucial to a read of the poetic form of the perspective of another. In this way, poetry:

1) models the process of developing empathy,
2) facilitates the growth of examining other perspectives as an essential skill, and
3) connects learners, teachers and writers through a common medium.

Strategy: allow your students to bring in examples of poetry or songs that speak to them. Give clear guidelines for appropriateness of material in class (ie: free of hate, prejudice and condemning language) and urge students to share why they chose the poetic example they brought.

Use close reading activity to augment your discussion of the context of the pieces they’ve brought in. Though each of the four readings are relevant to the task, pay close attention to the third read, “reader response”: this goes beyond a simple personal reflection. When discussing students’ personal connections to the poem, this can be an excellent chance for transformative learning.

Butterwick and Lawrence, in their article in “Transformative Learning in Practice,” demonstrate two reader responses, “Speaking Truth to Power” and “Images of Oppression.” These reader responses reflect on close readings using anti-racism and LGBTQ+ perspectives. These social critiques are only two examples of how literature can be used to encounter social perspectives in close-read interpretive communities.

“Reading Canada” speaks to close reads as one tool for of fulfilling our KSAs for curriculum goals. Close reads are listed with conflict resolution, discussion, debate, presenting and representing as essential skills to meet student learning outcomes. In order to acquire their target knowledge, key understandings for class and social consciousness include conversation around the “pathology of hatred and ‘othering’”(46) Furthermore, key attributes relevant to close readings of class-conscious poetry and poetic forms include empathy and social location.

The rhythm of poetry, whether heavily metered or free-verse, is a performance art, and is meant to be heard. During my most recent practicum placement, students thumped a beat on their desks as I recited,

“Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality;
He slowly drove, we knew no haste, and I had put away
My labour and my leisure, too, for his civility.
We passed a school where children strode, at recess in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain, we passed the setting sun;
Or rather it passed us, the dews grew quivering and chill;
For, gossamer my only gown, tippet only tulle;
We paused before a house that seemed a swelling in the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible: the cornice in the ground;
Since then, ‘tis centuries and yet, feels shorter than the day
I first surmised my horses heads were toward eternity.”

“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily inson

I like to think every student in class that day was somehow impacted by this recitation. Of course the two at the back asked, “Mr. N, how about some real rap?”