Opening Their Eyes to Poetry – Starting with Contemporary Free Verse
Charm Griffin
The idea of writing poetry stops many students dead in their tracks. They associate the poetry with endless, ancient, formulaic rules; rules on style, rules on meter, rules on rhyme pattern and rules on form. This common perception of poetry is the reason many teachers shy away from teaching it with enthusiasm and interest and similarly, why many students approach the subject with contempt and exert minimal effort. There is an incredible way to interest students in poetry – free verse. To wet the palate of impressionable students, we should introduce them to poetry through the works of contemporary poets who write in free verse. The content and style of these modern poets will spark an interest in students and open the door to exploring more traditional poets and their forms.
Rationale for Teaching Contemporary Free Verse
We, as teachers, have a responsibility to model and inform students of the many avenues that can be taken in poetry. By easing students into poetry through the introduction of contemporary free verse, we can spark an interest in them to explore all the forms of poetry. Poetry does not have to be written as a sonnet or sestina or haiku; poetry does not have to follow a certain meter or rhyme pattern; poetry does not have to follow any form at all. But, poetry does have to come from the heart. This simple statement must be our mantra when we teach poetry in our classrooms.
Contemporary free verse emphasizes personal involvement and the teaching of it must also emphasize this. This is the main reason why free verse poetry is a great way to involve students in poetry without scaring them away with form. Without form and meter to follow, free verse focuses both the writer and the reader on the content of the poem. We future teachers need to see the incredible opportunity which contemporary free verse provides us; a way to naturally develop, first, an understanding of poetry without forcing students to simply memorize fed information, secondly, and most importantly, the students’ love and appreciation for poetry as a whole. Fred Barton, a teacher who has experienced with many approaches to teaching poetry found that students begin demanding form after they have experienced and experimented with poetry. Barton then finds himself teaching “not forms build around an academic abstract, but forms built around students’ goals as poets. Students learn that form enhances and extends their language, not the other way around” (55). By starting students with free verse, a teacher is able to spark a flame of interest in poetry that may have been extinguished if begun with the forms and rules of traditional poetry. Now some basic information necessary for us to know to begin our study of free verse poetry.
A Quick Definition & History
As defined in The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, edited by J.A. Cuddon;
Free verse has no regular meter or line length and depends on natural speech rhythms and the counterpoint of stressed and unstressed syllables. Though the origins of this form are obscure, there are signs of it in medieval alliterative verse and in the Authorized Bible translations of the Psalms and The Song of Songs. Many poets throughout history have experimented with this form, including, Milton, Goethe, Bertrand, Hugo, Baudelaire, Smart, Blake and Arnold. Walt Whitman is the poet commonly referenced for final development and implementation of the form. Free verse would be widely embraced and employed by many poets, including, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence and William Carlos Williams (331).
Free verse, which Whitman embraced in his pivotal Leaves of Grass (1855), was a rebellion against European influence. Whitman wished to distance himself from unnatural, imposed rules and Leaves of Grass served as “America’s great poetic Declaration of Independence” (Padgett 85). It must be emphasized that free verse does not simply throw traditional rules of poetry out the window, but encourages the poet to create his or her own rules. Free verse has rhythm; a rhythm created by the writer, within the writer. A short but wonderful poem that demonstrates this fact is William Carlos William’s The Red Wheelbarrow:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barros
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens. (Alison, et al. 945)
Free verse allows the poet to create with only himself or herself as judge as to how effectively every word, space and line length contributes to the meaning of the poem. Because of this, free verse, if instructed properly, can elicit a phenomenal, interested response among students who would otherwise be turned off and mortified at the mention of writing as well as reading poetry. Individuality and personal involvement are central facets of contemporary free verse, two traits that are bound to strike a cord among adolescents.
Approaches to Inspire Creativity
Georgia Heard captures the essence of free verse poetry when she says, “beautiful music and rhythm alone do not necessarily make a poem. We also need to speak the truth” (65). The poet (both teacher and student) needs to realize that rhyme and rhythm alone do not make a poem, but neither does pure, unfiltered emotion. An effective technique to display emotion without being cliché is through the use of creative imagery, which a necessary skill in poetry and other writing endeavors. Instead of force-feeding technical information on form, meter and rhyme, Heard suggests that teachers begin with free writing to ease students into expressing their inner most (even random, seemingly meaningless) thoughts on paper. Emotional attachment and involvement provide a starting ground to teach poetry. A wonderful exercise suggested by Heard is to have students write about their favorite place, which they envision in their head. For younger students, simply drawing a picture of this place is a great place to start. Then after the picture is complete, ask the students to add words or phrases to enhance the meaning of the picture. These words will help readers understand and make a deep connection with this place, just as the author had. Some good questions to ask the students about the picture are: what are the images associated with this special place, can you remember a certain smell, sight, and taste or other sensory perception that affected your memory or vision of this place?
Continuing with an emphasis on sensory stimulation, your could present a sensory writing workshop, as Nicole Baart did, to incorporate details and stimulate creativity. She suggests workshops that address only one sensory function, as “too much workshopping can cause sensory overload” (Baart 98). In a scent workshop, you can place several various contrasting scents into unmarked, unidentifiable containers. Next prompt each student to smell each of the containers and then spend a few minutes writing about what the smell caused them to remember, think or dream about. You should encourage the students to use only the sense being addressed, if smelling, use only your nose, close your eyes and breathe the smell, and completely immerse yourself in it. This quick, loosely focused exercise “teaches students to look past the ordinary, be aware of the world around them, and find inspiration in perfectly normal, uninspiring places. The result is often a mixture of personal enlightenment and the expression of self” (Baart 98). You can focus on each sense similarly, with things to see (other students photographs viewed without explanation), with things to taste (described without using common words for tastes), with things to hear (songs that student may or may not know). Each of these senses will naturally evoke certain associations that will provide the students with inspiration to write.
Geof Hewitt has also created other methods we can use to inspire and provoke our students to write poetry. The first is the “Idea Wheel” (see Appendix A). This wheel consists of three circles placed on top of each other, all sharing the same center. The first circle prompts the student to pick a topic, any topic. The next larger circle asks the student to brainstorm attitudes or emotions she has about the topic. The largest circle probes the student even further, asking them to elaborate on circumstances associated with the topic. These three circles represent combinations of attitudes and emotions that the student could then transform into poetry. Next, provide students with a “Chart of Infinite Variables” (see Appendix B). Though the title seems a little paradoxical, the chart covers important variables a writer should employ while drafting his or her poem. The chart prompts the students to determine: voice, person, time of action, objects used as symbols, symbolic relationship of these objects, place, the senses. This simple breakdown allows the students to conquer what at times may seem a daunting task, writing a poem. To complete the writing process, provide your students with a template for making their own books (see Appendix C). Knowledge that their work is going to be published and public provides students with extra incentive, motivation and pride to really put effort into their work. The publication process finalizes, formalizes and provides the students with a formal audience. Now we need to discuss ways to move beyond inspiration and guide our students to creation.
Beyond Brainstorming…Creating
Students can be encouraged to put ideas into writing in several different, proven ways. Many writers on this topic have found that a great approach to getting students to put their ideas, emotions, dreams, etc. onto paper is by simply asking them to write a short sentence or paragraph about what has been inspired in them, possibly through the use of one of the above mentioned brainstorming techniques. Then ask the students to read aloud the prose they have written to find the natural rhythm in their speech. Tell them at each natural pause, a line break can be inserted. Hewitt provides his students with five ways to create line breaks: 1. Syllabics, 2. Rhythm, 3. For humor, surprise or other effect, 4. To undercut the meaning of the line that is being broken, or to establish an irony or contradiction, 5. For physical shape (69). Once again, we see that form can be part of the creative process behind poetry, but form in itself does not inspire creativity. Form should follow the creative, passionate drive that must be at the heart of any great poem.
A great example on how to transform prose into poetry through line breaks is provided by Fletcher’s “Waiting for the Splash,” which began as:
Last night after you hung up I wrote you a poem hoping it might change your heart. This morning I tell myself: Get serious, Man. Someone once compared writing a poem and hoping it will change the world to dropping rose petals down a deep well, waiting for a splash.
And progressed as (// representing line breaks):
Last night // after you hung up // I wrote you a poem // hoping it might // change your heart. // This morning // I tell myself: // Get serious, man. // Someone once compared // writing a poem // and hoping it will // change the world // to dropping rose petals // down a deep well, // waiting for the splash.
And resulted in:
Last nightafter you hung up
I wrote you a poem
hoping it might
change your heart.
This morning
I tell myself:
Get serious, man.
Someone once compared
writing a poem
and hoping it will
change the world
to dropping rose petals
down a deep well
waiting for the splash.
(66-68)
Through this simple and amazingly natural process, Fletcher was able to transform a few sentences into a very powerful and thoughtful poem of longing and desire.
After the students have inserted line breaks, have them read the piece once again to make sure the pauses enhance the meaning and do not detract from what they are trying to convey. Fletcher says, “each line should suggest a single image” (68). The line breaks allow the reader to virtually hear the poet’s voice while reading the piece, as though the poet were reading it aloud. Along these lines, Heard states that “line breaks are a personal decision for the poet. There is no right or wrong. There is only what is best for the poem as a whole” (60). The rhythm of the poem holds as much meaning as the words themselves.
White space on the page has the same effect as line breaks – “it’s an issue of sound and silence” (Heard 61). Let students play with the space between lines, even let them go so far as to write poetry in a shape. Allow the students to choose a shape that emphasizes the meaning of the poem – lines do not even need to be straight! Fletcher provides us with an excellent example of white space, perfectly designed to enhance the meaning and tone of the poem, which he wrote, entitled Where John Curtain Drowned;
He was a tall kid,
a magician on the basketball court.
He could dribble with both hands.
I once saw him make a shot
from half court, perfect swish,
but he never learned to swim.
On my brother’s boat
we sail past the spot
where John Curtain drowned.
No buoy, no marker, nothing.
When we get closer
I stop talking
I hold my breath
and don’t breath again
til we’ve sailed safely past.
(71)
Even altering the paper size, style, color, etc. can add meaning to the work and encourage personal expression in the student. Poetry is and can be fun, at any age!
Encourage students to experiment with their work, try it several different ways, with different line breaks and stanza breaks. They will naturally see how arrangement can alter the emphasis and meaning of a poem. Heard suggests asking five questions while working with students during this revising process:
Do you like the way it sounds read aloud?
What’s the mood of the poem? What’s its rhythm?
Do your lines and spacing help the rhythm?
Is this the way you want your poem read? (64)
An example that Georgia Heard used in her classroom was to show students two different versions of William Carlos William’s “Poem”:
PoemAs the cat
climbed over
the top of
the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot
carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot
Poem
As the cat climbed over the top of
The jamcloset first the right forefoot
Carefully then the hind stepped down
Into the pit of the empty flowerpot
Heard’s students decided, after much deliberation, that the first form of the poem suited the content most appropriately. They stated that the first poem sounded more like “the cat’s movement, creeping around the room and into the flowerpot” (Heard 59). It is amazing how intuitive students can be if given the right material, motivation and encouragement. After such a demonstration, students will more clearly understand the meaning and importance that line breaks, spacing and physical form lend to the poem. They also now have seen how simple prose can be transformed into poetry.
A Poetry Workshop
The idea of genre study has been long applauded by innovators in the field such as Randy Bomer and Lucy Calkins. They have both found that introducing a genre through in-depth exposure and analysis assists students in understanding key elements, techniques and style behind specific genres. This knowledge and familiarity allows them to apply the knowledge learned about said genre by writing in genre they have studied. Such an approach was developed and applied by a group of five teachers in Santa Rosa, California, to provide students with a new and interesting approach to learning to read and write poetry. They had found that the traditional way of teaching poetry; teaching form and then having students mimic chosen forms was killing any interest in poetry among students. Together these five teachers created a unit where the goals “were to have students read widely in a variety of types of poetry and respond to what they read, to have them read poetry aloud, to have them recite poetry and interpret poems via performance, to have them hear practicing poets read their work, to have them write original poetry and share it publicly, and to have them respond to each others’ work” (Kammer 64). To begin the unit, you should present the students with a collection of poems, chosen by you and your colleagues (see Appedix D-K for ideas). Give students time to review the collection and make any initial comments or ask preliminary questions. Encourage your students to write comments, questions and responses in the margins of the collection. In this very simple fashion, your students began connecting with the poems in a more connected, personal way. You can even try to bring in practicing poets to read their own work to the students. Seeing adults, who were passionate about and committed to poetry, encouraged and engaged students with the act of writing poetry (Kammer 64).