Poetry Is...

Today, my freshmen English classes dived into our study of poetry. Actually, we jumped back into it. We have examined poetry through the year, from Shakespeare to songs, metaphors to meter, but this is our actual focused "unit" of study into poetry.  As an English nerd, I am excited. It is my goal to pass some of that excitement on to some girls who lack confidence when they should be proudly speaking out and some boys who can easily shatter the stereotypes so many young people allow themselves to fall into. 

We looked today at the quote, the verse, above from Thomas Gray. I came across the line while looking for something else last week (I have no idea what I was looking for now), and it grabbed my attention.  "Poetry is thoughts that breathe..." So simple, and yet it fosters such an image. So cool. First, it prompted my students into a discussion of whether a plural or singular verb was needed based on the structure of the clause. We have the pleasure of studying that part of English as well. Then someone pointed out the activeness of the verb, the personification. It's alive! Alive. In a freshman English class, sometimes alive is an admirable goal. Usually, my guys and ladies step past just alive, and often, they impress me with what breaths those thoughts exhale. 

I like the second thought of the piece even more: "...and words that burn." The kids saw so many ways that this line can be read. Some resurrected the classic "That 70s Show" exclamation uttered so many times by Kelso, bringing up the idea that words can destroy a person. Others focused on words filling the role of candle wax, wood, or gas, serving as the fuel that allows the flame to ignite and grow. Some equated words with the flame itself, spreading and growing on the page and in the mind. One even pointed out that you can burned by, of all things, water, which led to being burned by dry ice, which is on the other end of the spectrum, and yet no less painful in its effects. We examined how flame and water, while so often seen as opposites, actually have so much in common, symbolically. In the 1997 version Romeo and Juliet, water is used throughout the film, and the young minds in classes settled on the fact that water is necessary for life, and it allows us, and everything to flourish. However, if uncontrolled and in excess, water can drown and destroy. Love, or in R&J, lust, is the same type of force. So is fire. Without it, we would shiver and die in the cold. Some people would shrivel and waste away without fire to cook our food. The stench of adolescence would become unbearable in our classroom were it not for the flames that heat the water needed to bathe. However, if that flame escapes and grows unchecked, it will consume everything it licks with its flickering tongue. One student hearkened back to the words of the Friar and paraphrased that advice he gave Romeo concerning passion, using as his example honey, which, though sweet and nourishing, becomes loathsome when taken in excess. In the end, one young man took the conversation all the way to milk, or as he said, "malk" (thanks Julian Smith).

All of that discussion sprang from a nine word verse. That is one of the qualities of poetry that I love. It feeds thought, and that feeds discussion, which in turn, feeds more thought. It also prompted some deceptively strong lines to be written in the form of parallel poems in response. That was even more interesting than the poem itself. I was proud of many of their shaky, hesitantly penned thoughts, which blossomed, morphed, and sometimes choked on the page. I know not all of my kids were enthralled by the exchange, but a several were, and most were at least listening, soaking it in. I also know that I cannot turn every kid in my room on to what poetry has to offer, but some will catch the verse virus, and it will incubate in their minds, in the souls, and someday, it will spread from them to others a well. I am not naive enough to think that every person who can read or hear will one day fall in love with reading or writing poetry. However, poetry comes in so many forms, there is something out there in the realm that can appeal to nearly everyone. As the saying goes, "If you don't like it, you must be doing it wrong." That was about reading, wasn't it? No, I think the saying is actually "If you say you hate reading, you just haven't found the right book yet." 

So, we will continue on, hoping to find the right poem, the right lines, that will hook each of my kids in its own way. In the words of Billy Collins, we will "press an ear to its hive", perhaps "drop a mouse into the poem and watch it probe its way out," or maybe even "walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch" (Collins). That would be neat.

*Collins, Billy. "Introduction to Poetry." The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.