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Novels & Poetry
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From: Dean Schneider <schneiderd>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 14:51:55 -0500
There are several novels I like written in poems or as narrative prose in "funny-shaped lines," as Virginia Euwer Wolff calls her lining, though clearly some such books work better than others. Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust and Virginia Euwer Wolff's Make Lemonade (and True Believer) are two of my favorite novels of any sort. And I like Cormier's Frenchtown Summer, and Woodson's new one, Locomotion. I like all of these in their own right and for what I can do with them in the classroom, from reading them to reader's theater to poetry and other kinds of writing. Using novels such as these makes it easy to teach poetry writing. Poems such as "Boxes" and Thanksgiving List" in Out of the Dust are good models for students' writing, as are certain scenes and descriptions in Make Lemonade and Frenchtown Summer. For this purpose, it doesn't matter to me if the model is true poetry or narrative prose poetically written; the sense of how to line a poem is what I'm after with young poets, and voice. And teachers can begin developing and inspiring these abilities with very young students with some of the books mentioned recently, the picture books or books of poems written for the youngest readers. An article I wrote in Book Links (Apr/May 2001) is all about using picture books for teaching poetry, and I'm working on one on using novels -- of all sorts -- for teaching poetry in middle schools.
There is a danger of too steady a diet of one type of book in a curriculum, though. As much as I like teaching poetry -- to second graders or eighth graders -- I wouldn't teach too many "poetry novels." Many are excellent, yet they are very simply and sparsely written, and I also want my students to be reading novels and nonfiction with a challenging prose style, too. I've used Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" and Langston Hughes's "I Dream a World" as poetry ideas when I finished reading Elie Wiesel's Night with my 8th graders, and William Carlos Williams's "Last Words of My English Grandmother" with To Kill a Mockingbird, so if the idea is to teach poetry writing from novels, regular old novels can serve, too.
But, as I said at the beginning, I like many of these "poetry novels" and like how they can work in the classroom. It's a fascinating development in literature, but there will continue to be plenty of room for novels and nonfiction of all sorts.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, Tennessee 37205 schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Wed 09 Apr 2003 02:51:55 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 14:51:55 -0500
There are several novels I like written in poems or as narrative prose in "funny-shaped lines," as Virginia Euwer Wolff calls her lining, though clearly some such books work better than others. Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust and Virginia Euwer Wolff's Make Lemonade (and True Believer) are two of my favorite novels of any sort. And I like Cormier's Frenchtown Summer, and Woodson's new one, Locomotion. I like all of these in their own right and for what I can do with them in the classroom, from reading them to reader's theater to poetry and other kinds of writing. Using novels such as these makes it easy to teach poetry writing. Poems such as "Boxes" and Thanksgiving List" in Out of the Dust are good models for students' writing, as are certain scenes and descriptions in Make Lemonade and Frenchtown Summer. For this purpose, it doesn't matter to me if the model is true poetry or narrative prose poetically written; the sense of how to line a poem is what I'm after with young poets, and voice. And teachers can begin developing and inspiring these abilities with very young students with some of the books mentioned recently, the picture books or books of poems written for the youngest readers. An article I wrote in Book Links (Apr/May 2001) is all about using picture books for teaching poetry, and I'm working on one on using novels -- of all sorts -- for teaching poetry in middle schools.
There is a danger of too steady a diet of one type of book in a curriculum, though. As much as I like teaching poetry -- to second graders or eighth graders -- I wouldn't teach too many "poetry novels." Many are excellent, yet they are very simply and sparsely written, and I also want my students to be reading novels and nonfiction with a challenging prose style, too. I've used Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" and Langston Hughes's "I Dream a World" as poetry ideas when I finished reading Elie Wiesel's Night with my 8th graders, and William Carlos Williams's "Last Words of My English Grandmother" with To Kill a Mockingbird, so if the idea is to teach poetry writing from novels, regular old novels can serve, too.
But, as I said at the beginning, I like many of these "poetry novels" and like how they can work in the classroom. It's a fascinating development in literature, but there will continue to be plenty of room for novels and nonfiction of all sorts.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, Tennessee 37205 schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Wed 09 Apr 2003 02:51:55 PM CDT
