The Connections
I'm confused about the confusion around me this week. Yesterday I gave an assignment to the sixers, to analyze a poem by Barbara Kingsolver. I went over the criteria for the assignment before we chatted about the ways a poem can be analyzed by attending to images, feelings, patterns, possible purposes. We talked and took notes. Then it was time to write. Kids seemed to be writing everything except an analysis of the poem. I pointed to the overhead. "See all this stuff we just did. This can help you with your assignment."
They seemed shocked. "We're writing about that poem?" a sixer asked.
It took me awhile to get the breathing going again, but I finally did and I went back over the directions. This isn't an isolated incident. Come on little sixers, connect the dots here.
Comments
Bugged the crap out of me. Sabotage I say.
jw
Here's a Billy Collins poem:
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out.
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
cari, you've got the middle school mind down! This made me laugh.
Anon, thanks for the collins. Don't worry about us talking about what poems "really mean," but know that we are talking a LOT about a LOt of cool poems. writing some as well.
Some of my favorite moments in my grad program were when published poets came in and analyzed other famous poets. They so often had the most interesting and unusual ways to get into a poem's center.
I do think it's fun to poke around with poems. The kiddos come up with some interesting takes.
I would have liked to have attended the talks you mention.
Happy Spring to you.
Poetry Stands
They wanted to level
our favorite forest.
Our class sent the mayor
a swarm of angry verse;
we pelted the newspaper
with a blizzard of poems.
At my cousin's funeral
her family stood up
armed with nothing
but tears and poetry.
Poetry must wound
or heal those wounds.
When everyone else sits,
poetry stands.
Ralph Fletcher. From his book, A Writing Kind of Day
esp. the line about wounding and healing wounds.
it will be making the rounds of the sixers next week.
good on you, ralph.
and anon. merci,mon amie.