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From: Tattercoat_at_aol.com <Tattercoat>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 12:04:37 EDT
I've had technical troubles with the list this month, so if this aspect of poetry has been covered and I missed it, my apologies.)
Cheryl contributed Rita Dove's epigraph, "Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful ... like a bouillon cube: You carry it around and then it nourishes you when you need it," which brings to my mind that much maligned teaching strategy--the memorization of poetry.
It is those very poems--some that I had to memorize in school, others that I learned by heart because they spoke for my heart--that are always there for me, more nourishing than bullion cubes, even more compact and portable. Long car trips? Three weeks of wilderness canoeing? Middle of the night waking?
Poems by heart are always there, waiting to be heard again.
Do any of you teachers ask kids to learn poetry by heart? What is your experience?
Carolyn Carolyn Lehman STRONG AT THE HEART (FSG, 2005)
Received on Tue 19 Apr 2005 11:04:37 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 12:04:37 EDT
I've had technical troubles with the list this month, so if this aspect of poetry has been covered and I missed it, my apologies.)
Cheryl contributed Rita Dove's epigraph, "Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful ... like a bouillon cube: You carry it around and then it nourishes you when you need it," which brings to my mind that much maligned teaching strategy--the memorization of poetry.
It is those very poems--some that I had to memorize in school, others that I learned by heart because they spoke for my heart--that are always there for me, more nourishing than bullion cubes, even more compact and portable. Long car trips? Three weeks of wilderness canoeing? Middle of the night waking?
Poems by heart are always there, waiting to be heard again.
Do any of you teachers ask kids to learn poetry by heart? What is your experience?
Carolyn Carolyn Lehman STRONG AT THE HEART (FSG, 2005)
Received on Tue 19 Apr 2005 11:04:37 AM CDT
