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Poetry out loud
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From: Mayra <mayra>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 05:29:26 -0500
It's interesting how we all react to poetry in such different ways. As much as I consider myself a lover of poetry (My students will say that to you!), I have to read a poem at the right moment for it to strike a cord with me. The same poem, at a different time might go unnoticed. Now once the poem strikes the cord, it's mine forever, jotted down in one of my many notebooks. I think of this as a version of Rosenblatt's ideas on the relationship of the reader and the book, but with poetry I add the feeling and emotion of the particular moment. To me it's those emotions that are evoked on the person by way of words that define whether a package of words constitutes a poem or not. And I don't mean to say that prose doesn't do that to us, but poetry just does that with a different level of intensity.
Regarding poetry listened or read, it goes both ways with me. I once heard Ashley Bryant reading some poems and kept his voice and rhythms in my mind for days. Last night as I read LBH's phrases about words in poems "hitting you like a blast of winter air" I was sent to my own Caribbean's experiences and transposed that to words in a poem hitting you like a salty wave of ocean water that overpowers your senses. Back to my point: it's all the feelings that the words evoke in you, by listening, reading them, or preserving them as you write your own poetry.
mayra
Message----From: Monica Edinger [mailto:monicaedinger at gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 4:33 AM To: Anne Oelke Cc: Subscribers of ccbc-net Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Poetry out loud
On 4/18/05, Anne Oelke wrote: I keep wondering visual
I have been thinking about this too as poetry speaks to me more when I am able to see it on the page, see someone reading/performing/reciting it, or do so myself. The performance aspect strikes me as taping something different than the aural or visual, the kinesthetic perhaps?
And I do think having had memorable personal experiences wtih poetry helps those of us teaching it (or teaching anything for that matter). I had a very old?shioned 6th grade teacher in 1964 Missouri who required us to memorize and recite poems every Friday. I do not recall her providing any help finding the poems or even a book of poetry in the classroom. (In fact, the only books I can recall in the room were textbooks, dictionaries, and atlases --- perhaps next to that cool instrument, the autoharp!) I don't recall anyone outside of school helping me either. I just went looking and found my poems in books I loved --- I can still recite most of Kipling's "Laws of the Jungle" and many of the poems from the two ALICE books. And then in 7th grade I was part of a choral group that recited Longfellow's
"Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" (in a Defense Department school in Germany, by the way) most of which I STILL know! This leads me to believe that for some of us, hearing a poem doesn't work as well as reading it or performing it ourselves. (Poetry Alive is great for this.)
For many years, inspired by this experience, I invited students to read their favorite poems to us to close our school day. Now, being fortunate to receive many new books, I often start our day with a poem from one of them and the children read favorite poems at our Friday Literary Salon --- sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs and sometimes as a class. (Like Robin I have a large collection of poetry books for my students to peruse.) At next week's Alice Tea Party I hope a few of them will memorize and recite some of Carroll's verse just as Alice Liddell would have had to (which is what Carroll parodies so brilliantly).
To my mind, any sort of learning in classrooms is heightened when the teacher demonstrates passion and enthusiasm for the material be it poetry or something else. And it is really, really, really important that we teachers honor tastes that deviate from our own. To give a non-poetry example (so as not to distress anyone here:), I am a life-long fantasy lover. BHP (Before Harry Potter) we debated, on child_lit, why there was such fear of fantasy among teachers. AHP we have fantasy books coming out in droves, but teachers still frequently tell me (as did two wonderful ones yesterday) that they don't like fantasy. Nonetheless, they respect that their students love for it and have the books in their classrooms. I think the same kind of situation happens with poetry. We need to show passion for what we love and also respect the range of poetry out there. What may not be one person's passion may indeed be another's. And similarly we need to be open to a range of poetic forms and to a range of poetic experiences.
Monica
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at gmail.com
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Received on Tue 19 Apr 2005 05:29:26 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 05:29:26 -0500
It's interesting how we all react to poetry in such different ways. As much as I consider myself a lover of poetry (My students will say that to you!), I have to read a poem at the right moment for it to strike a cord with me. The same poem, at a different time might go unnoticed. Now once the poem strikes the cord, it's mine forever, jotted down in one of my many notebooks. I think of this as a version of Rosenblatt's ideas on the relationship of the reader and the book, but with poetry I add the feeling and emotion of the particular moment. To me it's those emotions that are evoked on the person by way of words that define whether a package of words constitutes a poem or not. And I don't mean to say that prose doesn't do that to us, but poetry just does that with a different level of intensity.
Regarding poetry listened or read, it goes both ways with me. I once heard Ashley Bryant reading some poems and kept his voice and rhythms in my mind for days. Last night as I read LBH's phrases about words in poems "hitting you like a blast of winter air" I was sent to my own Caribbean's experiences and transposed that to words in a poem hitting you like a salty wave of ocean water that overpowers your senses. Back to my point: it's all the feelings that the words evoke in you, by listening, reading them, or preserving them as you write your own poetry.
mayra
Message----From: Monica Edinger [mailto:monicaedinger at gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 4:33 AM To: Anne Oelke Cc: Subscribers of ccbc-net Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Poetry out loud
On 4/18/05, Anne Oelke wrote: I keep wondering visual
I have been thinking about this too as poetry speaks to me more when I am able to see it on the page, see someone reading/performing/reciting it, or do so myself. The performance aspect strikes me as taping something different than the aural or visual, the kinesthetic perhaps?
And I do think having had memorable personal experiences wtih poetry helps those of us teaching it (or teaching anything for that matter). I had a very old?shioned 6th grade teacher in 1964 Missouri who required us to memorize and recite poems every Friday. I do not recall her providing any help finding the poems or even a book of poetry in the classroom. (In fact, the only books I can recall in the room were textbooks, dictionaries, and atlases --- perhaps next to that cool instrument, the autoharp!) I don't recall anyone outside of school helping me either. I just went looking and found my poems in books I loved --- I can still recite most of Kipling's "Laws of the Jungle" and many of the poems from the two ALICE books. And then in 7th grade I was part of a choral group that recited Longfellow's
"Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" (in a Defense Department school in Germany, by the way) most of which I STILL know! This leads me to believe that for some of us, hearing a poem doesn't work as well as reading it or performing it ourselves. (Poetry Alive is great for this.)
For many years, inspired by this experience, I invited students to read their favorite poems to us to close our school day. Now, being fortunate to receive many new books, I often start our day with a poem from one of them and the children read favorite poems at our Friday Literary Salon --- sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs and sometimes as a class. (Like Robin I have a large collection of poetry books for my students to peruse.) At next week's Alice Tea Party I hope a few of them will memorize and recite some of Carroll's verse just as Alice Liddell would have had to (which is what Carroll parodies so brilliantly).
To my mind, any sort of learning in classrooms is heightened when the teacher demonstrates passion and enthusiasm for the material be it poetry or something else. And it is really, really, really important that we teachers honor tastes that deviate from our own. To give a non-poetry example (so as not to distress anyone here:), I am a life-long fantasy lover. BHP (Before Harry Potter) we debated, on child_lit, why there was such fear of fantasy among teachers. AHP we have fantasy books coming out in droves, but teachers still frequently tell me (as did two wonderful ones yesterday) that they don't like fantasy. Nonetheless, they respect that their students love for it and have the books in their classrooms. I think the same kind of situation happens with poetry. We need to show passion for what we love and also respect the range of poetry out there. What may not be one person's passion may indeed be another's. And similarly we need to be open to a range of poetic forms and to a range of poetic experiences.
Monica
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at gmail.com
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Received on Tue 19 Apr 2005 05:29:26 AM CDT
