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       I was a teenaged poetry hater.

       There. I said it.  I blame whoever threw together the literature curriculum for the many school systems I attended.

      Poetry was no big deal in elementary school. Maybe once a year our teacher would substitute writing a poem for a book report,  Yes, it had to rhyme.  Yes, it had to have rhythm.  Yes, I was awful at them. I think I recycled the same poem about a pretty kitty in the city every year.  

     When we moved to Mississippi when I was in fifth grade, I discovered we had a subject called "oral expression." (You can't make this stuff up.) Every Friday we had to memorize and recite a poem, the longer the better. That brought the natural ham out in me.  You haven't lived until you've heard 10-year-old me doing "Christopher Robin is Saying His Prayers"...complete with British accent copied from Herman's Hermits records.  I could always count on an "A" in "oral expression." I read a lot of poetry those years, looking for unusual choices (I just remembered another one..."Sea Fever" by John Masefield. Yep....another British accent.) I enjoyed the poetry because I could read whatever I wanted. However, all that reading didn't improve my poetry writing skills.  I was still using my "Pretty Kitty in the City" poem.

   Middle school let up on the poetry writing requirements except for the short and snappy (haiku and limericks). But oh the reading assignments. Someone on the curriculum committee had a thing for Longfellow and narrative poems.  We read "Hiawatha."  "Evangeline." "The Courtship of Miles Standish." I loathed them all. We had to keep voluminous notebooks of commentary on each one. God bless, Mrs. Stokes, my eighth grade English teacher who appreciated my snarky take on "Evangeline." At least I could put "Pretty Kitty" to rest.

    High school was more of the same. "Kubla Khan."  "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." When the school switched gears and allowed students to take specialized literature course such as "Modern Drama" and "Modern American Novels" I immediately signed up for all the courses that didn't involve poetry.  Goodbye, Longfellow. Hello, Faulkner.

     Fast forward many years. I am a high school librarian. I learn that every student is required to put together a poetry notebook, the major grade for the semester.  I, the librarian, am to lead my flock of students to the deep wells of Great Poetry.  I discover that these students are also weary of Longfellow.

   Flipping through the library's poetry selection, I re-discover a book that I read toward the end of my own senior year of high school, Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle compiled by Stephen Dunning and Edward Luedders.  These weren't childish poems, or poems written for teens.  They were just poems that could appeal to a teen. They certainly appealed to poetry hating me. They used plain English, sometimes slang. Sometimes they didn't even rhyme!  The poems were about flying saucers, The Bomb (the book was published in 1967 and is still in print) as well as more timeless thoughts on strawberries, popsicles and water sprinklers.  That collection got heavy circulation during "Poetry Unit" time.

     My favorite poem, however, is not fromWatermelon Pickle. It's by Gwendolyn Brooks. This is the poem I always showed "the dudes"....the boys who thought poetry was for geeks and girls. This one poem usually made them a believer, and sent them in search of more Gwendolyn Brooks.

     "We Real Cool."

     We real cool. We
     Left school.  We

    Lurk late.  We
    Strike straight. We

    Sing sin.  We
    Thin gin.  We

    Jazz June.  We
    Die soon.

     Years of "Poetry Units" introduced me to other kinds of poetry...free verse, blank verse. Cinquains. diamantes, shape poems.  I have a whole new bag of poetry tricks that I use with my Young Writer's Workshops.  And oh yeah.  I have started writing poetry myself...the non-rhyming kind.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman
     



     

Aside from my picture book review of HI, KOO, last Friday, I haven’t been very active in poetry month this year. Before May is upon us, I wanted to rectify this and highlight a poet on the blog. Today’s interview … Continue reading →

It may seem to some like lazy thinking, but appropriating sayings, quotes, and proverbs can be quite handy in distilling complex subjects into something more immediate.  At the Harold Washington Chicago Public Library are a few quotes above the checkout:

Books are meat and medicine
and flame and flight and flower,
steel, stitch, and cloud and clout
and drumbeats on the air.

- Gwendolyn Brooks

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

- Groucho Marx

Books and reading are very personal subjects for most of us, and I was interested to find more famous opinions about our chosen profession…

It would appear that Maya Angelou would approve of a customizable kids book that peaks a child’s interest in books:

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

Comedian Mitch Hedberg seemed to think that we may be too specialized:

“Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read!”

It was Confucius, however, who was the most complimentary of our endeavors:

“The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.”

What a wiseguy…

"A poem doesn't do everything for you," this NYC step-stone reads (words first penned by Gwendolyn Brooks). "You are supposed to go on with your thinking."

I remembered these words yesterday, when talking with a friend that I call Rachel's Bill about what it is that I try to do with my work–and how for some it's too much (too much language!) and for some it's too little (too little plot!) and for some it's nothing (why, she's practically mediocre!) and for some it is the thing that does somehow provoke or encourage a going-forward with their thinking. I was grateful to Rachel's Bill for letting me talk not about how books get published (and what happens to them afterward), but how I go about making mine—the muscularity of the experience (he understands, I promise), the discovery of the story inside the music of the prose, the eighty drafts, and the waiting to know.

I tend, in real life, not to talk too much, for fear of not being able to stop, once I get started. It's a special thing to have someone stand there at a dance party and nod his head and not make you regret yourself later.

Before we move on to our discussion of A Girl Named Disaster and the introduction of the next Tiger’s Choice, we want to talk about the latest comments in the discussion of how to turn children into passionate readers.

Parents who read to their children are an essential element in creating readers, and Jeannine and Marjorie both bring up new ways for parents to ensure that this happens. Marjorie, whose sons’ book reviews light up the PaperTigers blog this week, suggests a virtual book group as being a way for children with irrepressible physical energy to come together in a space that doesn’t lend itself to exuberant (and distracting) physical activity. “After all,” she points out, “they are growing up with an affinity for virtuality which we can only wonder at!” Providing a way to link the world of books with the virtual world seems to be a brilliant way to keep reading alive in the brave new world of the internet. If anybody else has ideas on blending these two disparate pastimes, please let us know.

Jeannine, who read three to four books a night with her son when he was small, says that talking about the books was as much fun as reading them. She observes that parents can encourage their children to be engaged readers who can eventually take part in intelligent book discussions by through questions (”Why do you think he did that?”) and through connecting real-life activities with books shared with children. “If you’re reading about a garden, go outside and dig in the dirt,” she urges. And she adds, in the same spirit as Corinne, “As for the TV–just say no!”

Suggestions that add to this conversation, previously posted to the CCBC-net listserv, (the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education), are reprinted here with permission. Megan Schliesman, CCBC Librarian, says, “When my husband, daughter and I gather together for a shared story (we are currently on book 3 of Suzanne Collin’s “Gregor the Overlander series), I am aware–as several have already mentioned–that we are not only experiencing a terrific story, we are also making shared memories.”

Lee Bennett Hopkins, a well-known poet and anthologist, echoes another poet, Sherman Alexie, in advocating The Snowy Day. “Read aloud The Snowy Day by [Ezra Jack] Keats; follow it up with “Cynthia in the Snow” where snow is “Still white as milk or shirts/So beautiful it hurts.” in Gwendolyn Brooks’ Bronzeville Boys and Girls….With every book you read aloud, find a poem to go with it. I believe we spend too much time TEACHING children to READ–and NOT enough time TEACHING them to LOVE to read. GET the difference.”

Let’s celebrate that difference and continue the discussion on how to make it become a vital part of the lives of children.

Here's a great contest that gets kids to read and write while connecting them to their favorite authors:

"The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, in partnership with Target Stores and in cooperation with affiliate state centers for the book, invites readers in grades 4 through 12 to enter Letters About Literature, a national reading-writing contest. To enter, readers write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre-- fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic, explaining how that author's work changed the student's way of thinking about the world or themselves."

Info here: http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/letters.html

It made me think about the books I read as a child and wondered who I would have written. As an elementary student, I read Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and books of similar ilk. But then I also read every book on World War II and being  a Catholic school girl, I read a lot of books about the saints. Then in high school, I read a lot of political fiction (Allen Drury, Fletcher Knebel), and then Arthur Hailey books plus sci-fi writers like Isaac Asimov. I also read a lot of scripts from Broadway plays, checking out the Best of Broadway book from the library each year. 

But I'm pretty sure the person I would have written would have been Gwendolyn Brooks. Her poetry really resonated with me, and as a student in the 1950s and 1960s, she was one of the few African American female writers I knew. Literature today is so much more diverse and I hope students will take advantage of this opportunity to tell the writers who speak to them how much they matter.

via storyopolis.com