Genre Approach to Teaching Lyric Poetry by Jessica Loomis
Nancie Atwell writes, “My students started to write good poetry when they started to read good poetry, learned to walk around inside it, learned that they wanted to walk around inside of it” (427). If this statement holds true for Atwell's students, then perhaps it can hold true for most students: expose them to a genre, give them the time to enjoy and study the genre, and their writing in the genre will almost naturally improve. Certainly the opposite cannot hold true. Imagine a student who has never before seen or read a poem being told, “Write a poem and turn it in to me on Monday.” The teacher will be quite disappointed with the results. The idea of assigning a student a poem without having first given the student the chance to see what poems look like and read them and experience them seems ludicrous. Yet, with many writing assignments, students are expected to write in an unknown genre. Consider the following example of such a writing assignment given to an eleventh grade class in upstate New York .
Choose ONE of the following assignments to submit for your first formal, revised writing assignment:
The students had to choose a genre and then write within that genre, with few or no models and little time to research. The assignment was given on a Friday and rough drafts were due by the end of Tuesday's class. The teacher who gave this assignment was most impressed by the short stories that were written, as the students had internalized Poe's use of tone and mood, which they were able to use in their own fiction. The other genres were a bit more mysterious for the students, however. One student decided to research on his own what a police report was like, using the internet as his guide. This student conducted his own genre study. More analytical students would obviously choose the compare-contrast essay, but are they going to understand how to structure this essay without models? Are they even going to understand the significance of writing a compare-contrast essay? What is the value of this essay? When are essays such as these ever written in the “real world”? A genre study is a way to solve many of the problems that an assignment such as this one presents; it answers students' two big questions: why and how.
“Why” is a large part of genre theory. Carolyn Miller states that genre study should focus not on what the genre is but on why it is (Jolliffe 182). From a literary standpoint, the sub-genres of poetry often overlap and blur: there are dramatic lyrics and dramatic narratives and lyrics with narrative elements and narratives with lyric elements. To focus merely on what the sub-genre is leaves a lot of poetry out in the cold, not to mention the confusion it causes for students who are new to poetry. Rather, according to Miller and other genre theorists (unlike the literary theorists), the question is not what but why. This question asks us to look at who we are, as a community and as a society. The rhetorical theorists are interested in genres as “socially active devices” (Jolliffe 279). A genre is socially constructed and repeated based on a particular society's need. “Genres have been come to be seen rhetorically...Genres [have] come to be seen not just as text types but as typical rhetorical engagements with recurring situation” (Freeman 3). Genres appear, evolve, and disappear. E-mail, instant messaging, blogs, and text messaging are all new genres, based on our society's need or desire for instant sharing of information. The lyric is a genre that has changed drastically, to the point where some scholars debate whether or not it still exists. Despite its mutations through time, however, the genre does still exist, not because of what it is but because of why it is.
So why lyric poetry? As Atwell points out so simply: “Poetry expresses our feelings, dreams, and needs: no other genre does it so well” (427). Humans are sensitive, creative, and social creatures who feel an urgent need to create in a self-expressive manner and to share these creations with others. We have a need to read these creations from others to reinforce our hope that we are not alone. We write for catharsis, and we write for therapy. Other than perhaps personal journals and memoirs, I can think of no other genre that has the power to heal like lyric poetry.
Many students want poetry as well. In a survey of thirty students at Newfield High School, thirteen mentioned poetry as one of their preferred genres. Many of them consider it a private and extremely personal way to vent their complicated and confusing feelings and emotions. Others feel poetry is useful in expressing their feelings to family members, girlfriends, or boyfriends. I would wager that the majority of these students are writing lyric poems: personal expressions of thoughts and feelings.
From a more practical point of view, students need to understand various language devices for the Regents exam in eleventh grade. Reading and writing poetry helps students develop an understanding of concepts such as similes, metaphors, personification, allusions, connotations, mood, tone, etc. The more students read and write poetry, the more they will understand these concepts.
A Brief History and Definition of the Lyric
The word lyric is derived from the Greek word “lyre.” A lyre is an instrument which looks like a hand-held harp. The Greek lyric was meant to be sung aloud, not read. With the Romans, the lyric was no longer centered on music, but it was still oral or choral. W.R. Johnson breaks the lyric into three different categories:
From what scholars know of the Greek lyric, as little survived, is that most of it was of the I-You variety, as was the Roman lyric, making the lyric a very audience-centered genre. However, this changed with the Romantics, notably Giacomo Leopardi, Goethe, and Alphonse Lamartine; the meditative lyric became the primary form. Johnson points out that “the poet now talks to himself or to no one about his experience, which may or may not reflect emotion in compressed story—and he finally tends to dispense with both story and emotion, even as he dispenses with the second-person pronouns, singular and plural” (7). The poets of the meditative lyric dispense with the first-person pronoun as well, as can be seen in this later example of “Harlem” by Langston Hughes.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode? (1267)
This short poem is the perfect example of a meditative lyric. As Johnson points out in regards to this type of meditative lyric, “the poet has removed himself (or has been removed) from the world into a private vision...At best, the audience is extraneous to this poetry; at worst, all sense of the audience has vanished” (6). The pronouns are absent, and instead, Hughes, through figurative language, meditates on what happens to people whose dreams are ripped away from them. The title “Harlem” helps specify whom he speaks of: blacks subjected to a life of poverty in Harlem, but the poem is simultaneously universal.
Using another example from Hughes, “Po' Boy Blues,” we see that the poem's persona in the lyric does not need to be the poet. As M.H. Abrams states in his definition of the lyric “...the ‘I' in the poem need not be the poet who wrote it” (108).
When I was home de Sunshine seemed like gold. When I was home de Sunshine seemed like gold. Since I come up North de Whole damn world's turned cold.
I was a good boy, Never done no wrong. Yes, I was a good boy, Never done no wrong, But this world is weary An' de road is hard an'long.
I fell in love with A gal I thought was kind. Fell in love with A gal I thought was kind. She made me lose ma money An' almost lose ma mind.
Weary, weary, Weary early in de morn. Weary, weary, Early, early in de morn. I's so weary I wish I'd never been born.
Langston Hughes (1260)
This lyric poem, although obviously not written in Hughes' personal voice, is still an emotional meditation on a life situation. While there are elements of narrative in the poem, it is a meditative lyric written in the blues tradition. One almost starts humming a familiar blues theme while reading it. The Greek tradition of the lyric as song is still alive and well; the blues is often a musical version of the meditative lyric. The tradition is also alive in pop music. Music is a fantastic way to engage students while simultaneously authenticating the genre. However, our main focus is on the written poem, and for this reason, students must see many examples of text. The lyric can be blank verse or highly structured (Reading Lyric Poetry 2001), but students must learn how a poem looks on the page, building an understanding of stanza form and line breakage.
Of course, this definition of the lyric is extremely brief. One should not make the mistake of placing the lyric merely in a Western context. The Japanese haiku, as Abrams points out, is “a lyric form that presents the poet's impression of a natural object or scene, viewed at a particular season or month, in exactly seventeen syllables” (88). Note this example of “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd, Petals on a wet, black bough. (Abrams 88)
This imagist poem, though not a haiku, was certainly influenced by the haiku, an ancient form of meditative lyric, in which the poet is observing the world.
You're probably asking how these literary categorizations of the lyric translate into the classroom. We are attempting to answer for students “why” and “how.” The “why,” as addressed earlier, becomes more apparent to students as we authenticate the genre through songs and touchstone texts that move us. This phase will never end. Students will constantly discover and rediscover why we read and write lyric poetry. The genre study also answers for students how to write a lyric poem. One step in this phase is a definition of lyric poetry.
Lyric poetry is:
Provide models for each of these categories to help students analyze the wide-range of poems that are considered lyric. It may be fun to use, as a model of an I-You lyric, a rock song, such as “Layla” by Eric Clapton. For an example of an “I” poem, “Otherwise” by Jane Kenyon, from her book by the same title, is excellent. For an apostrophe, consider “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, one of my favorite poems ever written. For a meditative lyric that lacks pronouns, use “Harlem” by Langston Hughes.
Students should also understand that lyric differs from narrative poetry, which has characters, exposition, plot, conflict, and resolution. While many lyrics have conflict and a sense of resolution, they lack plot. To model the difference between lyric and narrative, I would read with students a few examples of narrative poems, including Anne Sexton's funny “Cinderella” and Edgar Allan Poe's “Annabel Lee.”
Pursuing a Genre Study on Lyric Poetry
The beauty of a genre study is the way reading and writing become linked. Randy Bomer states that for him “a genre study is the most sensible way to unite reading and writing, which is so essential for those of us who have a single period for English/language arts classes” (127-128). He points out an obvious benefit to the teacher, but there is also the obvious benefit to the student. Ask any experienced writer how she learned to write, and one of her two answers will be that she read everything she could get her hands on. Writers read for pleasure, but they also read to learn. They study the author's craft so that they can use language with the same effect. However, high-school students will answer in quite another manner: many of them believe that a better vocabulary will make them better writers. In a survey of eleventh graders in upstate New York, many students felt that they would become better writers by increasing their vocabulary. Few students realize that reading more will naturally improve vocabulary and other writing skills. According to Nancy Sommers, the belief that better vocabulary produces better writing is not tacit (Sommers): students need to be taught that by reading more and by examining and understanding an author's craft, writing improves. The following genre study, designed after the models of Lucy McCormick Calkins and Randy Bomer, will take your students through a unit that combines the reading of great poetry and the writing of their own.
1. Gathering Touchstone Texts The first step in the genre study is to gather and read examples of lyric poetry. Atwell says, “Choosing poems that might take [the students'] breath away is a high priority for me. As I read books of poetry to myself, I mark the poems I like and think kids might like with Post-it notes” (423). Lucy McCormick Calkins looks for examples that are “fantastic” (364). The teacher and students need to become readers of lyric poetry first and foremost. I suggest the following poems to be used as touchstone texts:
Auden, W.H. “Stop the clocks, cut off the telephone” Brooks, Gwendolyn “a song in the front yard” Baudelaire, Charles “The Voyage” Bishop, Elizabeth “The Fish” Booth, Philip “First Lesson” Bukowski, Charles “me against the world” Collins, Billy “Budapest” Dickinson, Emily “Could I but ride indefinite” Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men”, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Espada, Marin “Niggerlips” Frost, Robert “The Road Not Taken”, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” Hall, Jim “Maybe Dats Yowr Pwoblem Too” Hamod, H.S. “After the Funeral of Assam Hamady” Heaney, Seamus “Digging” Hughes, Langston “Dream Variations”, “I, Too”, “Harlem” “Po' Boy Blues” Kenyon, Jane “Otherwise” Kunitz, Stanley “The Portrait” Mazziotti, Maria “Arturo” Millay, Edna St. Vincent “First Fig” Neruda, Pablo “The Drowned Woman of the Sky”, “Waltz” Oliver, Mary “The Kitten” Petrarch “Sonnet 90” Plath, Sylvia “Ariel”, “Cut”, “Daddy,” “Wintering” Pound, Ezra “Salutation” Riche, Adrienne “Poetry” Rilke, Rainer Maria “Solitude,” “You who never arrived” Sexton, Anne “The Bells,” “Cinderella” Shakespeare, William “Sonnet 130” Snodgrass, W.D. “Snow Songs” Wallace, Ronald “You Can't Write a Poem about McDonalds” Wilbur, Richard “The Writer” Yeats, W.B. “Those Images”
I compiled this list with several elements in mind: a love for the poems and a belief that students will love them as well, examples of all three types of lyric poetry, and a list that is multicultural. As a recent student of multicultural literature, I realized the power literature has to break down cultural stereotypes. A use of multicultural literature within the classroom exposes students to various cultures and societal norms. This exposure and education will take away fear of the unknown, replacing it with understanding, an imperative part of education in this post 9/11 world. As I gather and read my touchstone texts, I keep in mind key questions provided by Randy Bomer: “What do writers in this genre do? What are the conditions under which they do it? What are the main things they have to pay attention to? How can those things become part of my class, both in the physical room and also in the structures of time and activity?” (132)
2. Walking Around Inside of Touchstone Texts Next, the students must read lyric poetry. Margot Iris Soven points out the reciprocal nature of reading and writing. Readers become writers, and writers become better readers (171). I suggest beginning with a poem that is not about flowers or love, as all students think all poems are about. Rather, I chose “Time” by Louise Glück.
There was too much, always, then too little. Childhood: sickness. By the side of the bed I had a little bell— at the other end of the bell, my mother.
Sickness, gray rain. The dogs slept through it. They slept on the bed, at the end of it, and it seemed to me they understood about childhood: best to remain unconscious.
The rain made gray slats on the windows. I sat with my book, the little bell beside me. Without hearing a voice, I apprenticed myself to a voice. Without seeing any sign of the spirit, I determined to live in the spirit.
The rain faded in and out. Month after month, in the space of a day. Things became dreams; dreams became things.
Then I was well; the bell went back to the cupboard. The rain ended. The dogs stood at the door, panting to go outside.
I was well, then I was an adult. And time went on—it was like the rain, so much, so much, as though it was a weight that couldn't be moved.
I was a child, half sleeping. I was sick; I was protected. And I lived in the world of the spirit, the world of the gray rain, the lost, the remembered.
Then suddenly the sun was shining. And time went on, even when there was almost none left. And the perceived became the remembered, the remembered, the perceived. (87-88)
This contemporary poem with its simple language will be accessible to students. Read the poem aloud twice while students follow along in their texts. Encourage them to underline phrases or images that they like. Then have them take out their writer's notebooks to respond to the poem. Some ideas for prompts would be: Who do you think the poet is speaking of? How did the poem make you feel? What was your favorite stanza and why? What did this poem remind you of? Let students write for ten minutes, and then ask them to share their answers.
Now have students read the following three poems. Allow student volunteers to read aloud, but do not force students to read. The poems will sound flat and dull. Ask the students to look for similarities and differences between the three poems. Also, ask them to underline images, phrases, or moments in the poem that catch their attention.
Cinderella
You always read about it: the plumber with twelve children who wins the Irish Sweepstakes. From toilets to riches. That story.
Or the nursemaid, some luscious sweet from Denmark who captures the oldest son's heart. From diapers to Dior. That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy, eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk, the white truck like an ambulance who goes into real estate and makes a pile. From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman who is on the bus when it cracks up and collects enough from the insurance. From mops to Bonwit Teller. That story.
Once the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed and she said to her daughter Cinderella: Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile down from heaven in the seam of a cloud. The man took another wife who had two daughters, pretty enough but with hearts like blackjacks. Cinderella was their maid. She slept on the sooty hearth each night and walked around looking like Al Jolson. Her father brought presents home from town, jewels and gowns for the other women but the twig of a tree for Cinderella. She planted that twig on her mother's grave and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat. Whenever she wished for anything the dove would drop it like an egg upon the ground. The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, as you all know. It was a marriage market. The prince was looking for a wife. All but Cinderella were preparing and gussying up for the big event. Cinderella begged to go too. Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils into the cinders and said: Pick them up in an hour and you shall go. The white dove brought all his friends; all the warm wings of the fatherland came, and picked up the lentils in a jiffy. No, Cinderella, said the stepmother, you have no clothes and cannot dance. That's the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave and cried forth like a gospel singer: Mama! Mama! My turtledove, send me to the prince's ball! The bird dropped down a golden dress and delicate little gold slippers. Rather a large package for a simple bird. So she went. Which is no surprise. Her stepmother and sisters didn't recognize her without her cinder face and the prince took her hand on the spot and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she'd better get home. The prince walked her home and she disappeared into the pigeon house and although the prince took out an axe and broke it open she was gone. Back to her cinders. These events repeated themselves for three days. However on the third day the prince covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it. Now he would find whom the shoe fit and find his strange dancing girl for keeps. He went to their house and the two sisters were delighted because they had lovely feet. The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on but her big toe got in the way so she simply sliced it off and put on the slipper. The prince rode away with her until the white dove told him to look at the blood pouring forth. That is the way with amputations. They don't just heal up like a wish. The other sister cut off the heel but the blood told as blood will. The prince was getting tired. He began to feel like a shoe salesman. But he gave it one last try. This time Cinderella fit into the shoe like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony the two sisters came to curry favor and the white dove pecked their eyes out. The hollow spots were left like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice, never getting a middle-aged spread, their darling smiles pasted on for eternity. Regular Bobbsey Twins. That story.
Anne Sexton (255-258)
The Bells
Today the circus poster is scabbing off the concrete wall and the children have forgotten if they knew at all. Father, do you remember? Only the sound remains, the distant thump of the good elephants, the voice of the ancient lions and how the bells trembled for the flying man. I, laughing, lifted to your high shoulder or small at the rough legs of strangers, was not afraid. You held my hand and were instant to explain the three rings of danger. Oh see the naughty clown and the wild parade while love love love grew rings around me. This was the sound where it began; our breath pounding up to see the flying man breast out across the boarded sky and climb the air. I remember the color of music and how forever all the trembling bells of you were mine.
Anne Sexton (7-8)
Arturo
I told everyone your name was Arthur, tried to turn you into the imaginary father in the three-piece suit that I wanted instead of my own. I changed my name to Marie, hoping no one would notice my face with its dark Italian eyes.
Arturo, I send you this message from my younger self, that fool who needed to deny the words (Wop! Guinea! Greaseball!) slung like curved spears, the anguish of sandwiches made from spinach and oil, the roasted peppers on homemade bread, the rice pies of Easter.
Today, I watch you, clean as a cherub, your ruddy face shining, closed by your growing deafness in a world where my words cannot touch you.
At 80, you still worship Roosevelt and JFK, read the newspaper carefully, know with a quick shrewdness the details of revolutions and dictators, the cause and effect of all wars, no matter how small. Only your legs betray you as you limp from pillar to pillar, yet your convictions remain as strong now as they were at 20. For the children, you carry chocolates wrapped in goldfoil and find for them always your crooked grin and a $5 bill.
I smile when I think of you. Listen, America, this is my father, Arturo, and I am his daughter, Maria. Do not call me Marie.
Maria Mazziotti (82)
Students should form small groups to answer the following questions:
Each group should present their answers, while the teacher takes notes on a transparency. The points that should be highlighted during this discussion are that “Cinderella” is unlike the other two poems in that it has a fully developed plot; “The Bells” and “Arturo” both are about, in part, the poets' fathers: personal poems with an I-You structure. This begins the class analysis and definition of lyric poetry. Now students can read the following poems and discuss their similarities and differences to each other and to “The Bells” and “Arturo.”
First Fig
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!
Edna St. Vincent Millay (49)
a song in the front yard
I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the ally, To where the charity children play. I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers, but I say it's fine How they don't have to go in at a quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman. That George'll be taken to Jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it's fine. Honest, I do. And I'd like to be a bad woman, too, And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face. Gwendolyn Brooks (1580)
Once again, have students, in groups, answer the following questions:
By examining these poems, students will be able to add to their knowledge of lyric poetry. Both poems, like the other two, are personal expressions. Neither poem is directed at a specific listener but is directed to a general audience or to the poet herself.
Next, break the class in five groups. Assign each group one of the following poems: “Otherwise by Jane Kenyon, “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, “In a Metro Station” by Ezra Pound, “Harlem” by Langston Hughes, and “Po' Boy Blues” by Langston Hughes. I have included the poems here unless they appeared earlier.
Otherwise
I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love.
At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.
Jane Kenyon (214)
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time---- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one grey toe Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene
An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gypsy ancestress and weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you , With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat moustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----
Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love for the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two---- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
Sylvia Plath (56-59)
Have each group answer the following questions:
Through this activity, students will be able to flush out their understanding and definition of lyric poetry. Each group will read their poem and report their analysis. Poets' crafts should also be discussed. You and your students should always take the time to share images, metaphors, similes, and other poetic devices that add to the over-all effect of the poem. During class discussions, always take notes, and when the definition has been flushed out, create a handout to distribute with the definition and list of characteristics. An example of this may be:
Lyric poetry examines emotions, personal experiences, or ideas. It lacks a fully developed plot. The voice in the poem can be the poet's or can be the voice of someone else (such as in “Po' Boy Blues” by Langston Hughes). There are different types of lyric:
• “The Bells” by Anne Sexton • “Arturo” by Maria Mazziotti
• “First Fig” by Edna St. Vincent Millay • “a song in the front yard” by Gwendolyn Brooks • “Otherwise” by Jane Kenyon
• “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath
• “In a Metro Station” by Ezra Pound • “Harlem” by Langston Hughes
3. Students Gather Touchstone Texts I suggest teaching the Greek history of the lyric, connecting the lyric with the tradition of music. For sources, see Reading Lyric Poetry at <http://academic.brookly.cuny.edu /english/melanc/cs6/read_lyr.html> or The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient and Modern Poetry by W. R. Johnson. Present students with an image of a lyre and ask them what common string instrument is similar. They will quickly respond with the obvious answer of the guitar. Give them an example of our modern day Greek lyric: music. Play your students a song that you love and think they will as well, perhaps something classic and familiar, such as “Layla” by Eric Clapton. Play an old blues song for them, such as one sung by Billy Holiday. Or, if you are musical, play them a song you have written as did a tenth grade teacher at Newfield High School. He handed out copies of the lyrics to his students, so they could follow along. After listening to the song, students analyzed poetic elements in the lyrics and complimented their teacher. Students love music, and they'll be impressed just by the fact that you can write and play. This whole exercise will further engage students. Every popular genre of music today has examples of the lyric, from hip-hop to country. Give students the opportunity to discover that they are already in love with the lyric.
As a homework assignment, have students gather their own lyric poems or songs. Students should present their songs or poems, explaining why they are lyrics. Through this assignment, students will discover their own touchstone texts, which will authenticate the experience of lyric poetry for them. As Randy Bomer points out, in having students gather their own touchstone texts, they learn that the genre exists beyond the classroom (124). The students will step into the roles of readers and teachers. Encourage students to continue to look for, read, and share poetry with the class. The class may discuss the poems: what makes them lyrics?
3. The Writer's Sketchbook Meanwhile, students should be writing in their writer's sketchbooks daily for a set period of time with a minimum of ten minutes. Have your students follow Natalie Goldberg's rules for the free-write:
These free-writes will hopefully provide them with what Calkins refers to as “seed ideas” (366). But students should not be limited to merely free-writes. Priscilla Adams points out how three different poets kept very different “sketchbooks”: Sara Teasdales's was like a diary; Emily Dickinson kept scraps of rough drafts in boxes and turned finished poems into volumes; Vachel Lindsay's notebook was filled with drawings and poems (3-11). Start your year off with a brief genre study of writer's sketchbooks/journals. Show students examples of writer's sketchbooks, including your own. While you may not want to pass your sketchbook around the room, you may have images or drawings that you can hold up and share. Read some of your entries. I would share with my students how my writer's sketchbook is part diary, part calendar, part sketchbook. I include everything from to-do lists to list of books I want to read to strange dreams I had. While you may want to mandate spiral notebooks because of the low cost and comfort of writing in spiral notebooks, encourage students to decorate their sketchbooks. Have students write daily in their sketchbooks. Provide prompts, which they should not feel compelled to use, such as “On days like these...” or “If only I could...” or “If I could have a superpower...” Ask students to share their entries with the class, but do not compel students to share. Give students the freedom to write whatever they want without the threat that their entries will be read. If you plan on grading students' sketchbooks, grade for quantity. Have students show you how much they have written or sketched. Encourage them to share entries with you, but their sketchbooks should be a place for them to feel free to be sloppy and silly. These notebooks will serve as the material behind the planning stage. Students should brainstorm and experiment in their sketchbooks.
Once the students have read models of lyric poetry, they will be ready to begin writing, and their sketchbooks will be their guides, their places to look back on old ideas, old thoughts, old phrases, and recurrent themes. Natalie Goldberg mentions the idea of composting, that we need time to process new sensations and heightened emotions before we can write about them (14-15). The writer's sketchbook will be a place for the students to let their feelings compost, and they should, as Calkins suggests, return to their notebooks often for ideas and topics and insight about their own emotions.
4. Getting Started At this point, students are ready to begin drafting poems. Soven points out that students “do not need a great deal of instruction about form to write poems, short stories, and plays, though they will need some guidance. But teachers must inspire students to use their imagination by giving them a great deal of freedom” (173). After dedicating a few classes to the reading of poems and presentation of found poems by the students, with little instruction on stanza, imagery, metaphor, etc., the students will be ready to begin drafting. Skeptical students will now realize that not all poems are about flowers and love. There are poems about McDonalds (Ronald Wallace's “You Can't Write a Poem about McDonalds”) and poems about Spider-man (Jim Hall's “Maybe Dats Yowr Pwoblem Too”). There are poems about every conceivable subject. To get students writing poetry, Georgia Heard offers these three guidelines: • It helps for a teacher to ask the whole class to set aside other projects for a while and focus on poetry. • The use of the image, the picture in the mind, is one useful way to help students begin to write poems. • Poems come from something deeply felt; it's essential for student poets to be able to choose their own topics according to what's important to them (14).
Students should use their sketchbooks to look for seed ideas: what topics are they writing about? Do they have any entries that particularly strike them? They already have, in a sense, dozens of very rough drafts of poems.
In order to answer for students what is expected, an assignment should be given to them at the beginning of the writing process. Understanding this assignment enables students to write with the guidelines in mind. According to Soven, a writing assignment needs to include the following variables: a context so students understand the reason for writing a poem; clear directions that spell out the audience, the purpose, the time limit, the word count, the number of drafts expected, and criteria that will be used for grading (137). Here is an example of a lyric poetry writing assignment that I wrote keeping these variables in mind.
Lyric Poetry Writing Assignment
Context: We have read quite a few lyric poems together, and now it's your turn to create one of your own! As you know, great poems use rich figurative language in order to capture our attention and elicit a response from us, the readers.
Objectives: These poems will give you the opportunity to be creative and self-expressive. They will also allow me to observe your understanding of lyric poetry and figurative language.
Audience: Anyone who likes lyric poetry, but specifically, your classmates. See below.
Publication: Your poems will be published in a class anthology. We will decide the title of this anthology as a class, and students will be allowed to submit artwork. We will also, at the end of the unit, be having a Poets' Circle. You will have the choice of memorizing and reciting a lyric poem we have not read in class (but approved by me!) or reading your own poem. We will also be submitting our poems for publication, but you will be able to choose where your poem should be submitted...We will discuss details later in this unit!
Guidelines: Your poem must include the following: __At least one metaphor. __A strong persona. __An effective use of tone. __An effective use of mood. __At least 200 words. (You can, if you like, write several short poems that equal 200 words) __Meet the class definition of lyric poetry. Lyric poetry examines emotions, personal experiences, or ideas. It lacks a fully developed plot. The voice in the poem can be the poet's or can be the voice of someone else. It is written as a first-person to someone else (I-You), a first-person reflection, an apostrophe, or as a meditation lacking first-person pronouns. __A self-evaluation and defense of your final draft. __Correct spelling and punctuation where appropriate.
Poems must be typed, single space, using Times New Roman 12 pt. font.
Deadlines: Draft 1 is due________________. Draft 2 is due________________. Final draft is due______________.
Revisions: We will be conducting a poetry workshop, during which you will be writing. You will meet with peers and with me, and we will share our poems, making suggestions for revisions. Remember, all good poets revise! Ted Hughes wrote of Sylvia Plath that “she never scrapped any of her poetic efforts. With one or two exceptions, she brought every piece she worked on to some final form acceptable to her, rejecting at most the odd verse....If she couldn't get a table out of her material, she was quite happy to get a chair, or even a toy.” (13)
A clear writing assignment makes life much easier for both the student and the teacher. The student knows exactly what is required, and the teacher can use the very requirements given to create a rubric to evaluate the poem. The rubric should be distributed with the assignment. Soven cites Rexford Brown from the National Assessment of Educational Progress who, in a speech in 1977, “used the term contract of vagueness to describe the relationship between teachers and students when teachers give writing assignments” (135-136). This vagueness is solved when the teacher designs and distributes a writing assignment and rubric that clearly state the expectations before the students even begin to write. Using “genre-specific criteria” for evaluating writing helps teachers clarify expectations to students (Cooper 31). Below is a possible rubric to go with the above writing assignment.
Rubric for Poetry Assignment
Name__________________________________
6-Excellent, above criteria 5-Good, meets criteria 4-Good effort, needs revision 3-Attempts to meet requirements 2-Does not meet requirements 1-Incomplete
Component Scale Score
One point deducted for every spelling error.
Total Score:_________________________
5. The Workshop and the Process Once students have been given the assignment, I would allow my students to write for the majority of the class. The beginning of the class would be dedicated to the reading of a lyric poem and a mini-lesson. For the rest of the class period, the students would write. In order to keep the students organized, I suggest that students create a portfolio, in which they will have three folders or sections. The first section should be a self-created anthology of their favorite touchstone texts. They can include as many lyric poems as they desire, but a minimum should be set. The second section will be a folder with their rough drafts of poems. The third and final section will include their finished works, with one paragraph written per poem in defense of this work as a finished piece.
The students need to understand and believe that they are, during the workshop, a community of poets. They need to respect each other and encourage each other. Throughout the workshop, students will be required to give and get a minimum of three peer review responses. Through peer review, students recognize what they lack in their own poems. Here is a possible peer review question handout.
Peer Review Questions
Name_________________________________________ Poet's Name_____________________________________ Consider the following questions. Offer encouraging and helpful answers. Be positive! 1. Does the poem include at least one metaphor? Does the metaphor fit with the rest of the poem?
2. Does the poem make strong use of persona? Can you describe some traits of the persona?
3. Does the poem make an effective use of tone? What is that tone?
4. Does the poem make an effective use of mood? What is that mood?
5. Does the poem meet the class definition of lyric? Which of the four types of lyric is that we wrote in our class definition is this poem?
6. What suggestions for revision would you make?
7. Are there any spelling or mechanical errors?
8. What is your favorite aspect of this poem?
In order to understand why they are doing this, they need to understand that poetry, like all writing, is a process. Atwell points out that “there's a myth about writing poetry, that it's an exquisite experience that comes on the wings of a dove and requires a kid-gloves response from the teacher. Good poetry is hard to write...Eventually, over days and months of reading poetry, they carry inside them a wealth of experience with poems and a wealth of connections between poetry and their lives” (454). Many students believe that a poem comes from the air, appearing on the page as it should appear. You can help students understand that this is not the case by modeling your own works in progress, even revising on an overhead in front of the students and asking them for responses and suggestions for your poems. Soven points out that “this opportunity will help them to understand the problems you face when you try to offer helpful comments to them” (125). By turning the students into evaluators, they can look at their own work with a more critical eye. Share your works in progress with students, and have them answer the peer review questions on your poems. I have gotten into the new habit of keeping, at a minimum, first and final drafts of all of my work so that I can show students how my writing grew through revisions. Sommers points out that “student writers [lack] the ability to ‘see' revision as a process: the inability to ‘re-view' their work again, as it were, with different eyes, and to start over.” They see revision as a process that requires “lexical changes but not semantic changes” (Sommers). Students need to be taught how to revise, and I believe that if they see the teacher playing with her own poetry, cutting stanzas, cutting lines, writing new ones, moving around, and experimenting, students will have a better idea of how this works. Students should also confer with the teacher so that the teacher can note students' progress and revisions.
Mini-lessons will become a key tool throughout the unit. During the first draft stage, mini-lessons should be given on poetic devices, such as simile, metaphor, allusion, alliteration, and personification. After the first draft stage, begin focusing mini-lessons on revision tactics. Peter Pfarrer, a teacher at Newfield High School, uses mini-lessons to instruct on rhyme scheme, meter, similes, metaphors, and a dozen other topics as he finds necessary. For example, he gave a mini-lesson on not using an overly repetitive rhyme scheme (A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A) when he discovered that some of his students were doing this. He uses the overhead frequently to project poems and to project notes that he takes for the class. When he finishes with his lesson, he turns on some music, perhaps some piano music or classical guitar, and the students make themselves at home in the classroom. Some sit on beanbags. Some stay at their desks. One student hunched in tight between two cabinets. And they all write, including Pfarrer. When class is over, Pfarrer collects nothing. The students pack up, put away their bean-bag chairs, and head to their next class. For the last fifteen to thirty minutes of the class, once Pfarrer has finished his mini-lesson, the class becomes a community of writers.
Here is a mini-lesson on the craft of lyric poetry, which can be given before the first draft is turned it:
Mini-lesson on Metaphor
Context: Students need to understand metaphor in order to appreciate poetry. They will be expected to include one metaphor in their lyric poems. Understanding metaphor will also help them on the Regents, as they are sure to be tested on this important literary device.
Pedagogy: Give students handouts on metaphor with the definition and purposes, which you should project, read, and explain. Students will be expected to take additional notes on the definitions of tenor, vehicle, and implicit metaphor. Project “Cut” on the overhead and read it aloud. Work together to find all of the metaphors in the poem. Have students find examples from the poem to fill out the handout provided. As students point out metaphors, underline them on the overhead transparency. The students may summarize what image is being created by the metaphor, and you should write this summary next to the metaphor. For example:
Clutching my bottle Of pink fizz. A bottle of champagne.
A celebration, this is.
Metaphor Handout
Definition: A figure of speech which makes a direct comparison to two unlike objects by identification of substitution without using like or as.
Examples:
Purposes:
Tenor: The subject of a metaphor. Examples: Vehicle: The metaphorical term, the comparison. Examples: Implicit metaphor: The tenor is not specified but implied. Example:
Cut For Susan O'Neill Roe
What a thrill— My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone Except for a sort of a hinge
Of skin, A flap like a hat, Dead white. Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim, The Indian's axed your scalp. Your turkey wattle Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart. I step on it, Clutching my bottle Of pink fizz.
A celebration, this is. Out of a gap A million soldiers run, Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on? O my Homonculus, I am ill. I have taken a pill to kill
The thin Papery feeling. Saboteur, Kamikaze man—
The stain on your Gauze Ku Klux Klan Babushka Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled Pulp of your heart Confronts its small Mill of silence
How you jump— Trepanned veteran, Dirty girl, Thumb stump.
Sylvia Plath (13-14)
The following mini-lesson (adapted from Mary Lynch Kennedy's seminar in the composing process at Cortland University) on revision should be presented between drafts one and two. Subsequent mini-lessons on revision should follow when necessary and should be based on the class's need. For example, perhaps students are having trouble with line-breakage, so you can present a mini-lesson on how and when to break lines.
Mini-lesson on Adding Detail
Context : The class is working on creating poems that are rich in figurative language. The following is the beginning of “The Fish” written by Elizabeth Bishop, with details and images taken out. This assignment has been designed to help students add details and images to their own poems.
Pedagogy : Hand-out to the class the edited version. Working in small groups, have them add details. Allow groups to share their new version. Then the class reads the Bishop's full and final version.
Prompts : Add images to describe where the fish is, what the fish looks like, how the fish feels. Look at the verbs and nouns. Can you make them more interesting or creative? Consider adding some similes or metaphors.
I caught a fish and held him, with my hook in his mouth. He didn't fight. He hung there, his brown skin in strips. He had barnacles and two or three pieces of green weed hung down.
After the class has created their own version of these lines, show them Bishop's.
I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper; shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through the age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. (42)
This mini-lesson will teach students to read with an eye for images, sharp verbs, and creative nouns. They will see Bishop's version and be astounded by her use of detail and imagery.
Here is a list of possible mini-lessons that can be taught throughout the unit, as needed or desired.
Mini-lesson Ideas for a Lyric Poetry Unit
6. Publishing Throughout this unit, plaster your bulletin boards with notifications of poetry contests and publishing opportunities. Encourage and require students to submit their work. Submit your own as well, and provide a mini-lesson on submitting a poem for publication. Search current literary journals and magazines, such as Ploughshares, The Paris Review , Bomb, The New Yorker for a contest that you can enter. Show your students how you gathered all of the instructions for submission, including the registration fee (which sometimes gets you a subscription to the publication, a nice consolation prize if you don't win) and completed them correctly.
Here are some places your students may want to consider publishing, depending on the grade level. The following websites either publish student works or have contests:
www.gigglepoetry.com/poetrycontest/contests.html
There are also many magazines for adolescents that publish student works:
Cobblestone is a magazine on American history, which publishes short stories, poems, and drawings. See www.CobblestoneOnline.net
Cricket is a magazine of folk tales, fairy tales, fantasy, realistic fiction, history, adventure, biographies, poems, science, sports, and humor...a little for everyone! They have poetry contests on a given topic, such as food or sports, and the contests are for all grades.
Encourage your students to submit their poems to a publication they feel will fit their work. There are tons of on-line literary websites that publish that may better suit older students.
Publication should happen for all students, and if it cannot happen outside of the classroom, it can happen in the classroom. Create a poetry anthology for your class. The artistic students can design covers and include artwork. Students should all include at least one poem. If you have the resources, create a class website, with a page for all of their poetry. Send letters home to parents so that they may see their son's or daughter's work in print on the internet. Through publication, the genre is again authenticated, and the work becomes worthwhile.
7. Reflections
Provide for your students a final, culminating project, which will give them the opportunity to share their work and reflect on their accomplishments. I suggest having a Poets' Circle. Allow students the choice of reading their own lyric poems or memorizing one they have chosen (and that you have approved) and reciting it. Here is an example of a culminating project that can be used at the end of this lyric poetry unit. If you find that grading is necessary, a rubric is included.
Poets' Circle
We have worked hard, and now it is time to share our creative endeavors with one another and appreciate how far we have come as blossoming poets and performers! We have written and revised our poems and collected them into our class anthology The Arrow . We have designed artwork to illustrate our anthology. On Friday, we will unveil the first issue of The Arrow and present our poems.
Since your presentation and behavior during other presentations will count as 5% of your final grade for this unit, I have attached a rubric. This rubric details exactly what I expect from you on Friday!
Some of you asked to not read your own poems aloud, and we agreed on a poem for you to memorize. Remember, I expect you to recite the poem from memory in a clear voice and using an appropriate tone! Imagine you are an actor and the poem is your part!
Here's how our Poets' Circle will work: Students will read their poems or recite memorized poems according to a schedule that I will create. When the student is done, each of us will write on a piece of scrap paper our comments, which I will collect. The comments should answer the following three questions:
• Persona • Allusions • Tone • Alliteration, assonance, consonance • Mood • Metaphor • Personification • Apostrophe
Name____________________________________
Rubric for Poets' Circle
5-Excellent 4-Good 3-Fair 2-Poor 1-Unacceptable
Task Score Weight Possible Points Total Points
Total Points:__________________
This culminating project gives the students a chance to reflect on what they have learned while enjoying the work of their peers. Students should be allowed to comment on each others work. Since lyric poems can be highly personal, students should not be compelled to read their poem allowed. However, they should participate. Both Bomer and Calkins point out the necessities of reflection at the end of a genre study. It gives the students an opportunity to look back on where they started and where they have landed. They will be able to think about and realize all that they have learned and accomplished.
8. Lesson on Regents Essay Writing
Another aspect of this genre study can be preparing students for the Regents exam which they will take their junior year. After the government passed the Federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, public schools are now held accountable for students who do not pass this exam. In order to graduate, students must pass this exam. For these reasons, time spent preparing students for this exam is worthwhile.
In one of the essays on the Regents exam, students are required to read two different pieces and write a “unified essay,” by creating a thesis and using both pieces to back up their thesis or “controlling idea.” A quote is given as a prompt, giving students a topic to base their controlling idea.
Below is a sample of an essay assignment that would help your students prepare for this section on the Regents exam. This assignment will enable students to create a thesis and synthesize two different readings.
As was done with lyric poetry, models of unified essays should be shown to the students. Most useful, in this case, would be models of high-scoring student essays. Have the students work in groups to analyze the writers' craft. As a class, design a definition of what makes a successful unified essay.
Allow time in class for students to brainstorm and create outlines. Not only do students need to have a thesis, but they also need to discuss literary elements from the works. Be sure to include this element of a successful essay in the class definition, and use the class definition in creating a rubric. For the actual writing of the essay, give them a class period to draft. Then, review the drafts based on the rubric, adding comments and questions where needed. Return the drafts, and give students another class period to complete the task. On the Regents, this essay is timed. Therefore, students should understand that they are being asked to write on their feet.
CRITICAL LENS WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Task: Write a critical essay in which you discuss the poem “Wintering” by Sylvia Plath and the excerpt from In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason from the particular perspective of the statement that is provided for you in the CRITICAL LENS. In your essay, provide a valid interpretation of the statement, agree or disagree with the statement as you have interpreted it, and support your opinion using specific references to appropriate literary elements from the works.
GUIDELINES:
BE SURE TO:
Wintering
This is the easy time, there is nothing doing. I have whirled the midwife's extractor, I have my honey, Six jars of it, Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,
Wintering in the dark without window At the heart of the house Next to the last tenant's rancid jam And the bottles of empty glitters— Sir So-and-so's gin.
This is the room I have never been in. This is the room I could never breathe in. The black bunched in there like a bat, No light But the torch and its faint
Chinese yellow on appalling objects— Black asininity. Decay. Possession. It is they who own me. Neither cruel nor indifferent,
Only ignorant. This is the time of hanging on for the bee—the bees So slow I hardly know them, Filing like soldiers To the syrup tin
To make up for the honey I've taken. Tate and Lyle keeps them going, The refined snow. It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers. They take it. The cold sets in.
Now they ball in a mass, Black Mind against all that white. The smile of the snow is white. It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,
Into which, on warm days, They can only carry their dead. The bees are all women, Maids and the long royal lady. They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors. Winter is for women— The woman, still at her knitting, At the cradle of Spanish walnut, Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.
Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas Succeed in banking their fires To enter another year? What will they taste of, the Christmas roses? The bees are flying. They taste the spring.
Sylvia Plath (75-76)
Mamaw back ups and snaps two pictures. Sam feels her face looking blank. Up on the ladder, she feels tall, like a spindly weed that is sprouting up out of this diamond-bright seam of hard earth. She sees Emmett at the directory, probably searching for his buddies' names. She touches her father's name again.
“All I can see here is my reflection,” Mamaw says when Sam comes down the ladder. “I hope his name shows up. And your face was all shadow.”
“Wait here a minute,” Sam says, turning away her tears from Mamaw. She hurries to the directory on the east side. Emmett isn't there anymore. She sees him striding along the wall, looking for a certain panel. Nearby, a group of marines is keeping a vigil for the POWs and MIAs. A double row of flags is planted in the dirt alongside their table. One of the marines walks by with a poster: “You Are an American, Your Voice Can Make the Difference.” Sam flips through the directory and finds “Hughes.” She wants to see her father's name there too. She runs down the row of Hughes names. There were so many Hughes boys killed, names she doesn't know. His name is there, and she gazes at it for a moment. Then suddenly her own name leaps out at her.
SAM ALAN HUGHES PFC AR 02 MAR 49 02 FEB 67 HOUSTON TX 14E 104
Her heart pounding, she rushes to panel 14E, and after racing her eyes over the string of names for a moment, she locates her own name.
SAM A HUGHES. It is the first on a line. It is down low enough to touch. She touches her own name. How odd it feels, as though all the names in America have been used to decorate this wall.
Mamaw is there at her side, clutching at Sam's arm, digging in with her fingernails. Mamaw says, “Coming up on this wall of a sudden and seeing how black it was, it was so awful, but then I came down in it and saw that white carnation blooming out of that crack and it gave me hope. It made me know he's watching over us.” She loosens her bird-claw grip, “Did we lose Emmett?”
Silently, Sam points to the place where Emmett is studying the names low on a panel. He is sitting there cross-legged in front of the wall, and slowly his face bursts into a smile like flames. (244-255)
From In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason.
The Lyric and Other Genres
After completing this unit, students will be able to easily move to narrative poetry or fiction or non-fiction. They can use their poems as “seeds” for memoirs, feature essays, or persuasive essays. Students will write poems about subjects and emotions that interest and excite them: these topics can be re-used. Bomer quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, and Donald Murray, who have all pointed out that “each of us only has a few central issues to which we return to again and again” (129). The students wrote lyric poems about issues that mattered to them, be the topic fishing or an eating disorder. To model how students' lyrics can be used again, turn your own into a memoir or argument or short story. A poem about euthanizing my dog could turn into a persuasive essay on why euthanizing is the right choice for pets, which can turn into a short story about a teenage girl and her sick dog, which can also be a memoir about my sick dog. The poem can be the jumping off place for future pieces.
But more importantly, the students will be familiar with the genre study. They will have begun the process of becoming habitual discoverers of genre. Students who study genre “...can always use their habitual ways of reading, thinking, collaborating, and composing to master whatever new forms they encounter” (Bomer 119). Through this unit on lyric poetry, not only will students (hopefully!) fall in love with poetry, but they will begin the process of understanding the relationship between reading and writing. They will also begin the process of learning how to discover and understand new genres.
Works Cited
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, Sixth Edition . Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1993. Adams, Priscilla B. Poetry Windows and Mirrors: The Sketchbook Approach to Writing and Reading Poetry . Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1995. Atwell, Nancy. In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning . Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook, 1998. Bishop, Elizabeth. The Complete Poems 1927-1979 . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983. Bomer, Randy. Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle and High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995. Brooks, Gwendolyn. “a song in the front yard.” Gates 1580. Calkins, Lucy McCormick. The Art of Teaching Writing . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994. Cooper, Charles R. Evaluating Writing: The Role of Teacher's Knowledge about Text, Learning, and Culture . Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English, 1999. Freeman, Aviva and Peter Medway, eds. Learning and Teaching Genre . Portsmouth, NH.: Boynton-Cook, 1994. Gates Jr., Henry Louis and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology: African American Literature . New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. Glück, Louise. “Time.” The Best American Poetry 2001 . Eds. Robert Hass and David Lehman. New York: Scribner Poetry, 2001. Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within . Boston: Shambhala, 1986. Heard, Georgia. For the Good of the Earth and Sun: Teaching Poetry. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1989. Hughes, Langston. “Harlem.” Gates 1267. ---. “Po' Boy Blues.” Gates 1260. Hughes, Ted. Introduction. The Collected Poems . By Sylvia Plath. New York: Harper Perennial, 1981. Johnson, W. R. The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes In Ancient and Modern Poetry . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Joliffe, David A. “Genre”. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. Ed. Theresa Enos. New York: Garland, 1996. 279-284. Kenyon, Jane. Otherwise: New & Selected Poems . Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 1996. Mason, Bobbie Ann. In Country . New York: Perennial, 1985. Mazziotti, Maria. “Arturo.” From the Margins: Writing in Italian American . Ed. Anthony Tamburzi. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1991. Millay, Edna St. Vincent. The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay . Ed. Nancy Millford. New York: The Modern Library, 2002. Plath, Sylvia. Ariel . New York: Perrenial Classics, 1961. Reading Lyric Poetry . 23 Sept. 2001. Brooklyn College. 6 Oct. 2004. <http://academic. brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melanc/cs6/read_lyr.html>. Sexton, Anne. The Complete Poems . Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983. Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and Communication . 31 December 1980: 378-88. Soven, Margot Iris. Teaching Writing in Middle and Secondary Schools: Theory, Research, and Practice . Needham Heights: Allyn and Bacon, 1999.
Further Reading:
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, Sixth Edition . Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1993. Adams, Priscilla B. Poetry Windows and Mirrors: The Sketchbook Approach to Writing and Reading Poetry . Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1995. Atwell, Nancy. In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning . Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook, 1998. Bomer, Randy. Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle and High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995. Calkins, Lucy McCormick. The Art of Teaching Writing . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994. Cooper, Charles R. Evaluating Writing: The Role of Teacher's Knowledge about Text, Learning, and Culture . Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English, 1999. Freeman, Aviva and Peter Medway, eds. Learning and Teaching Genre . Portsmouth, NH.: Boynton-Cook, 1994. Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within . Boston: Shambhala, 1986. Heard, Georgia. For the Good of the Earth and Sun: Teaching Poetry. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1989. Johnson, W. R. The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes In Ancient and Modern Poetry . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Joliffe, David A. “Genre”. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. Ed. Theresa Enos. New York: Garland, 1996. 279-284. Kennedy, Mary Lynch, ed. Theorizing Composition: A Critical Sourcebook of Theory and Scholarship in Contemporary Composition Studies . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Reading Lyric Poetry . 23 Sept. 2001. Brooklyn College. 6 Oct. 2004. <http://academic. brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melanc/cs6/read_lyr.html>. Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and Communication . 31 December 1980: 378-88. Soven, Margot Iris. Teaching Writing in Middle and Secondary Schools: Theory, Research, and Practice . Needham Heights: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. |