on teaching poetry

There's the glazed look that steals over students' faces when you tell them you are going to teach them poetry.
Or the panicked one.

I think that it's a personal sin to persuade students that poetry is boring. But I will admit that teaching poetry is a daunting task, even for a poet.

Especially for a poet.

Perhaps I should thank the fates that this unit is the last one I have to teach before summer holiday, and it coincides neatly with April celebrations of Poetry Month. I confess that each class leaves my soul raw, and that's not because the students are misbehaving.

It's my soul that goes through thorns. Discussing, dissecting, imbibing poems. Five classes a day. Teaching them that poetry is soul-speech.

There was the amused look on a girl's face while we were discussing a vocabulary expansion exercise, she shouted "Take it easy, Teach! Slow down."  Apparently I was getting all worked up and manic and joyful while they were building a communal poem.

Yeah, I talk about poetry like some other people talk about their personal saints.

But this post isn't about me. Or about teaching strategies.

See, I promised my students that I would show their poems to poets and writers I know.  And let me tell you, these communal poems are fine, fine work. Even if I do say so myself.

The activity was to guide them in the construction of a poem, but I didn't tell them what they were "building", so to speak, until we were under way. You should have seen them, shouting words, nodding, screaming out in frustration when I told them that words are like cars. I don't want a Hyundai, I told them, I want a Jaguar. Give me a Jaguar word I said, make me swoon with the language. Funnily enough, after the car analogy and a discussion of the poetic weight of words, they did get this. And the work shows.

So, here we go. Five poems. Five groups.

Howl

Shark moon
Stealth thief
Surrounded, armed marauders
Heart-stopping cold

Silhouette

Paper moon
Floating in the sea
Weightless sanctuary

Cerulean Freedom

A turquoise madness
Wild, furious peace
First, shock, then plunge
Alive between sand and sky

A Journey

Frog-tinted cage
Anguished labyrinth
Barren exploration
Listless soul

Darkness

Moon-colored loneliness
A small place
Shipwrecked mind