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On Poetry from Dean Schneider
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From: Robin Smith <robinsmith59>
Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 21:58:49 -0500
I'm not sure we have to be too exclusive in what we call poetry. I first learned about list poems and concrete poetry -- two of the forms Lee Bennett Hopkins questions as true poetry -- from such Teachers & Writers Collaborative books as Poetry Everywhere and The Handbook of Poetic Forms, which also include sonnets, odes, and many others forms, and models from Shakespeare, Blake, William Carlos Williams, Whitman, and others. When I think over this school year and the poetry my students have written and read in 7th, 8th, and 2nd grades, I remember they've written lots of list poems and concrete poems and monologues; they have also read or heard William Blake, Kipling, Sara Teasdale, Marilyn Nelson, and Nikki Grimes, among others. Students seem to be open to it all, and I think that's the point: keep kids open to the idea of poetry and the enjoyment of writing. List poems -- the simplest of poetic forms -- can teach about lining and voice and imagery, which students can apply to more difficult forms later. Later this spring, when my 8th graders read Marilyn Nelson's A Wreath for Emmett Till, they'll write sonnets of their own, and read some Shakespeare sonnets -- an example of the contemporary leading to the classic.
I don't share in the slamming of novels in verse either. Granted the explosion of interest in the form has led to some that are not good or are lightweight, but Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust and Witness, for example, are superb novels, excellent for reader's theater in the classroom, with much food for thought in discussion. Whether they are written in "true poetry" or prose in "funny-shaped lines" (as Virginia Euwer Wolff has called her style), doesn't really matter; they are models of language artfully crafted, contributing to dynamic classrooms where such words are given voice, along with the classic, too.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, Tennessee schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Sun 03 Apr 2005 09:58:49 PM CDT
Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 21:58:49 -0500
I'm not sure we have to be too exclusive in what we call poetry. I first learned about list poems and concrete poetry -- two of the forms Lee Bennett Hopkins questions as true poetry -- from such Teachers & Writers Collaborative books as Poetry Everywhere and The Handbook of Poetic Forms, which also include sonnets, odes, and many others forms, and models from Shakespeare, Blake, William Carlos Williams, Whitman, and others. When I think over this school year and the poetry my students have written and read in 7th, 8th, and 2nd grades, I remember they've written lots of list poems and concrete poems and monologues; they have also read or heard William Blake, Kipling, Sara Teasdale, Marilyn Nelson, and Nikki Grimes, among others. Students seem to be open to it all, and I think that's the point: keep kids open to the idea of poetry and the enjoyment of writing. List poems -- the simplest of poetic forms -- can teach about lining and voice and imagery, which students can apply to more difficult forms later. Later this spring, when my 8th graders read Marilyn Nelson's A Wreath for Emmett Till, they'll write sonnets of their own, and read some Shakespeare sonnets -- an example of the contemporary leading to the classic.
I don't share in the slamming of novels in verse either. Granted the explosion of interest in the form has led to some that are not good or are lightweight, but Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust and Witness, for example, are superb novels, excellent for reader's theater in the classroom, with much food for thought in discussion. Whether they are written in "true poetry" or prose in "funny-shaped lines" (as Virginia Euwer Wolff has called her style), doesn't really matter; they are models of language artfully crafted, contributing to dynamic classrooms where such words are given voice, along with the classic, too.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, Tennessee schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Sun 03 Apr 2005 09:58:49 PM CDT