Poetry and the Meaning of Life [1 ed.] 9780887511066

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Poetry and the Meaning of Life Reading and Writing Poetry in Language Arts Classrooms

DAVID IAN HANAUER

Pippin

Copyright © 2004 by Pippin Publishing Corporation 85 Ellesmere Road Suite 232 Toronto, Ontario M1R 4B9 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, including photocopying and recording, or stored in any retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. Edited by Dyanne Rivers Designed by John Zehethofer Typeset by Jay Tee Graphics Ltd. Printed and bound in Canada by AGMV Marquis Imprimeur Inc. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development program for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Hanauer, David Ian Poetry and the meaning of life / David Ian Hanauer ; Dyanne Rivers, editor. (The Pippin teacher’s library ; 38) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88751-106-6 1. Poetry—Study and teaching. 2. Communication—Study and teaching. I. Rivers, Dyanne II. Title. III. Series: Pippin teacher’s library ; 38. PN1075.H36 2004

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CONTENTS

About Poetry 7 Why Poetry? 8 What Is Poetry? 10 How Does Poetry Work? 12 When Does Poetry Work? 15 Poetry with Emergent and Beginning Readers and Writers 18 Shared Poetry Reading 18 Poetry Writing 26 Summing Up 32 Poetry with Mature Readers and Writers 33 Reading Poetry 34 Writing Poetry 44 Summing Up 54 Poetry with English Language Learners 56 Learning a Second Language and Reading Poetry 58 Reading Poetry with English Language Learners 60 Writing Poetry with English Language Learners 70 Summing Up 78 Poetry, Literacy Instruction, and the Meaning of Life 79 Constructing Meaning through Poetry 80 Poetry and the Meaning of Life 87 Bibliography 89

To Dafna, Tommy, Taya, and Kimmy I would like to thank Professor Rick McCallum of the University of California at Berkeley and Professor Charles Elster of Purdue University for many hours of intellectual discussion on literacy education and poetry. Many of the ideas raised in these discussions found their way into this book. I also thank Professor McCallum for suggesting that a book like this should be written and for his encouragement during the writing process. I am grateful to Professor Elster for working with me on a series of poetry research projects and so generously offering me his insights into and knowledge of early and emergent literacy. He has had a profound influence on my understanding of literacy.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ABOUT POETRY

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recently observed a student teacher introduce the subject of her lesson to a junior high school language arts class. Standing at the front of the classroom, she enthusiastically announced that she was going to read poetry with the students. Although no voice was raised in objection, the students’ reactions made it clear that the proposed subject held no interest for them. Their perception seemed to be that poetry is difficult, irrelevant, boring, and out of date. In a later meeting with this student teacher, I suggested that, rather than starting, as she had planned, with the more traditional elements of the curriculum, she begin with the words of a popular song chosen by the students themselves. She followed my advice and, at the end of the third lesson, phoned me to report that the students had chosen a piece of rap and had enthusiastically read and discussed the piece. She added that some even planned to write and perform their own rap songs for the class. This vignette demonstrates the underlying assumption of this book: that classroom literacy activities should be meaningful for students. When literacy activities are connected to the students’ world, meaningful learning takes place. And of all the kinds of text, poetry — whether oral or written — has historically been the form used most often to express personally significant statements in writing, singing, or public speaking. As one young Korean American

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writer said to me, “In poetry, I can say what I could not say in any other way.” This book is grounded in the idea that poetry enhances students’ ability to understand and express personally important thoughts, feelings, and experiences. As a result, poetry should play a central role in the language arts curriculum, and the aim of this book is to help teachers ensure that this happens.

Why Poetry? Poetry is all around us. It is on television and the radio in popular songs; it is in political speeches; it is in religious services; and it is present at all sorts of public and family occasions. The great thing about poetic language — and the reason it is so often used — is that it draws attention to itself and makes itself heard above other competing kinds of discourse. Over the centuries, poetry is the genre people have chosen when they want to make a significant statement. These significant statements have communicated thoughts and feelings on the whole spectrum of human life, from love to war and from the personal to the societal. Students should be able to construct significant statements about their own lives using poetic language, and they should also be able to understand the significant statements of others when they are expressed in poetic form. By using poetry in the language arts classroom, teachers encourage students to make personal statements and become involved in meaningful literacy experiences. The world of popular music is a testament to the expressive potential of poetry in today’s society. Popular music is influential because it communicates experiences and emotional states that are meaningful to its listeners. Reading poetry in the classroom exposes students to the significant statements of other people’s lives and helps broaden students’ experience of different people, times, and cultures. Writing poetry also enables students to express their own thoughts on their life experiences.

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Poetry also helps students develop language skills in a unique fashion. Reading and writing poetry involves learning a special way of using language to construct meaning. As a result, poetry broadens not only students’ experience of life but also their ability to use and comprehend language. Even a quick look at various poems reveals a mix of graphic forms, sound patterns, and semantic associations. Paradoxically, the language of poetry is both more controlled and more creative than other language forms. A successful rap song, for example, combines a nearly endless list of rhyming couplets with the content of the songwriter’s life experiences. This is a linguistic feat that requires a large lexical base and high levels of control over language production. In writing and reading poetry, students experiment with language and find new ways of expressing themselves. The unique characteristics of poetry are well suited to the various populations that teachers encounter in schools. Poetry is the perfect tool for helping children in the early and emergent stages of literacy become physically and emotionally involved with written language as it is read aloud to them. It helps them focus on the sounds of language and become used to constructing meaning from various viewpoints. Poetry is also the perfect tool for encouraging mature readers to express personal experiences and broaden their understanding of others’ thoughts, experiences, and feelings. It also helps enhance their ability to construct and comprehend various language structures. For English language learners, poetry is a medium through which their own experiences can be expressed and the intricacies of cultural interaction and understanding can be discussed. On the level of language learning, it is an authentic context within which the explicit negotiation of the forms of language can be openly discussed. This broadens their understanding of the subtleties of word usage and syntax while developing their comprehension.

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What Is Poetry? Though various schools of literary theory have offered answers to the question, What is poetry? there is little agreement on a definition. My goal is not to resolve the arguments among schools of literary interpretation, but to present a definition that is both useful for practicing language arts teachers and true to my own understanding. This definition draws upon and synthesizes theoretical positions and research from four distinct disciplines: philosophy of the arts, literary theory, educational literacy research, and (psycholinguistic) empirical studies of literature. I define poetry as a literary text that presents the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of the writer through a self-referential use of language that creates for the reader and writer a new understanding of the experience, thought, or feeling expressed in the text. According to this definition, reading and writing poetry is a process of understanding through which the reader or writer learns to see something new. This aspect of learning may also be true of other text types, including expository texts. What is special about poetry, however, is that the learning process relates directly to the way language is used in poems. The language of the poem directs and mediates the process of understanding. In poetry, language is not a transparent medium that merely transfers the author’s message; the language of the poem is the author’s message. The emphasis on understanding in this definition of poetry is based on the philosophical position on the social value of literature developed by Graham Gordon. Gordon’s position, known as aesthetic cognitivism, is that all art is a form of understanding. For Gordon, the social value of art is that it enables readers or viewers to reach a more developed understanding of the experiences of life. He claims that it is within the artistic world that the understanding of the complexities of life takes place. My definition also emphasizes the role of language. Various literary theorists have proposed the idea that poetry 10

uses language in a self-referential way. Formalist, structuralist, stylistic, and new critical schools of interpretation have long argued that poetry is defined by its use of language. The formalist critic Roman Jakobson proposed the most developed of these positions in his closing statements to a 1958 conference dedicated to stylistics. He said that writing poetry is a communicative act that uses language in a very self-conscious way that is different from other ways of using language. When words are put together, both their content and form are considered. This means that, when choosing a word, a poet considers its sound or graphic placement, as well as its meaning. The result of this double emphasis is that connections between words can be made on the basis of both their content and their form. While reading a poem, for example, a reader may notice that the last words of two lines rhyme, creating a connection between these two words on the basis of their sound. While writing a poem, a writer may rearrange the words to create graphic relationships among words. This process of making additional connections between words on the basis of form directs readers to use associative meaning, as well as denotative meaning, to create an understanding of the poem. The formalist description of language use in poetry and the philosophical position that the arts direct a mediated learning experience combine to create a strong and effective definition of poetry for language arts teachers. Poetry uses language that draws attention to its content as well as to its form to slowly direct the reader to a new understanding of an experience, thought, or feeling. When poetry works, the reader or writer feels an enormous sense of insight and wonder. Poetry has the ability to explain the inexplicable and to express the unexpressed. The reader or writer of poetry gains from this experience by seeing, as if for the first time, what she or he senses to be a meaning that had always been there but had not been known.

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How Does Poetry Work? Over the past 20 years, psycholinguistic research into reading in general and the reading of poetry in particular has produced a body of knowledge that gives some insights into the way poetry works. In reviewing this research, my aim is neither to resolve disagreements among researchers nor to present a comprehensive overview of the positions taken; rather, it is to present what is known about how poetry is read in a way that is useful for language arts teachers. The definition given in the preceding section emphasized two different aspects of poetry: poetry as a learning experience and poetry as a self-referential use of language. Within the field of reading research, the issue of learning connects directly to the role of long-term memory, for “learning” refers to change that takes place within the reader’s long-term memory. As its name implies, long-term memory is considered to be a large store of relatively stable knowledge that individuals have acquired over their lifetimes. In studies published in 1995, Arthur Graesser and others supported the constructionist theory of reading by showing that comprehension cannot be achieved without the active involvement of long-term memory. In the reading process, long-term memory contributes to understanding by helping readers make connections between existing knowledge and the information presented in the text that is being read. Long-term memory also enables readers to fill in gaps in texts by supplying knowledge drawn from their long-term memory. This process of filling in gaps in information — of making inferences — is of central importance when reading and writing poetry. Poetry often presents a challenge to readers because it provides only minimal or indirect information through which to produce understanding. This requires readers to use knowledge stored in their long-term memory to create understanding. Making these inferences involves two main processes: 12

— activating a knowledge structure on the basis of a limited number of words that are directly related to the knowledge structure — extensive searching of a long-term knowledge structure to find more distant and associative aspects of the knowledge structure Because readers provide much of the information that is used to understand a poem, this understanding may involve many different interpretations. Language plays a special role in the poetic experience. Although some attempts have been made to blur the differences between poetry and other genres, most poems are distinguished by the creative use of graphic form, sound patterns, and syntactic or semantic patterns that are different from those associated with prose. My own research, as well as that of Petra Hoffstaedter, Willie van Peer and David Miall, and Don Kuiken, has shown that this creative use of language makes poetry highly visible and recognizable to most readers. In addition, psycholinguistic studies have shown that readers of poetry are very aware of the presence of these different uses of the components of language. While reading a poem, the reader pays close attention to the actual language of the poem. This slows the reading process and impedes automatic reading comprehension. The reader must make an effort to unpack and understand the experience, thought, or feeling presented in the poem. Essentially, the language of the poem creates for readers a mediated experience that focuses on very specific elements of the experience. Some readers — and even some teachers — find this poetic use of language annoying and frustrating because it runs contrary to the assumption that reading should lead directly to comprehension. The language of poetry seems to challenge the idea that making meaning is automatic. The combination of a creative use of the components of language and the presentation of minimal or seemingly indirect information makes reading poetry a difficult task.

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To overcome this difficulty, readers must use specific reading strategies. These can be as simple as considering the meaning of a word or as complex as defining a meaningful role for the syntax of a line of poetry in relation to its content. All poetry-reading strategies, however, enable readers to infer meaning from a poem. These strategies encourage readers to search their mind for ways of understanding the poem. Readers who are inexperienced at reading or writing poetry may try to paraphrase a poem without attempting to find a deeper and more personal meaning. More experienced readers use the language of the poem to create a personal understanding or interpretation of the poem. A poetic experience is achieved when the knowledge structures stored in long-term memory are activated and used to comprehend a poem — and change as a result of this understanding. Two kinds of change in these knowledge structures are particularly important. The first is a change in the importance of a specific element or elements within the original knowledge structure. In most cases, this change heightens the importance of an aspect of the original knowledge structure. This aspect may have been neglected, and what may have seemed like an irrelevant detail suddenly becomes the focal point of the experience or thought itself. Changing the hierarchy of importance of the elements of a knowledge structure focuses readers’ attention on information that they may not have been aware of before reading the poem. The second change involves creating new connections to the original knowledge structure or structures. These new connections, which are activated during reading, may involve adding emotional memories or introducing a new body of ideas that can be used to understand in a new way the experience, thought, or feeling described in the poem. Both these changes to long-term memory structures lead to a sense of insight and wonder at the sudden discovery of hidden meaning.

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When Does Poetry Work? As language arts teachers know, reading and writing poetry doesn’t always produce a significant personal literacy experience. In fact, many language arts teachers would maintain that bringing poetry into the classroom is a bad idea because it is so difficult to read and so distant from the students. As both a practicing poet and a former college and junior high school teacher of poetry, however, I can attest that poetry reading and writing is the most satisfying literacy experience of all. Resolving this apparent contradiction in perceptions of poetry requires an examination of the conditions in which reading and writing poems can produce a meaningful experience. If a poem is a literary text that presents the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of the writer through a self-referential use of language that creates for the reader and writer a new understanding of the experience, thought, or feeling expressed in the text, a poetic experience will be achieved when a reader or writer reaches a new understanding of an experience, thought, or feeling as a result of reading or writing a poem. As discussed previously, the role of language in this process is to mediate or direct the process of understanding. For a reader or writer to reach a new understanding, several conditions must be met. — The reader or writer of the poem must have a personal relationship with the content of poem. The experience, thought, or feeling presented in the poem must be connected to the reader or writer, and this sense of connection cannot be defined by anyone except the reader or writer. As language arts teachers, we cannot decide for others that the experience described is personally important to them. Personal understanding must come from the readers or writers themselves. Without this sense that a poem is connected to “my life and me,” a poetic experience cannot occur. — For a poetic experience to occur, the reader must have sufficient knowledge of the experience, thought, or 15

feeling described in the poem. In this case, knowledge refers to everything that an individual has internalized during his or her life. The role of knowledge is very important in both reading and writing poetry. This wealth of personal knowledge enables readers to fill in gaps in information and create a personal understanding of the poem; it also enables writers to choose what to present in the poem. Without sufficient knowledge, students can neither construct a meaningful understanding of a poem nor write a meaningful poem. If a poem is connected to an individual’s life, however, a sufficient knowledge base will exist. — Readers and writers of poetry must have the expectations and language skills necessary both to create a personal understanding when reading a poem and to write a personally meaningful poem. In some ways, readers are freer to create personal meaning based on their subjective knowledge when reading poetry than when reading texts in other genres. Reading a poem does not require an advanced degree in linguistics or literary studies; rather, it requires only the desire to find meaning and the patience to pay careful attention to possible ways of understanding a poem. If a poem uses language that is far beyond a reader’s linguistic knowledge, however, creating understanding will be impossible. A meaningful poetry experience involves negotiating the language of the poem. As a result, an individual’s language skills must relate to the linguistic content of a poem. If these three conditions are met, poetry reading and writing can become a meaningful part of a language arts program. Many of the “bad” experiences that language arts teachers have had when using poetry stem from lack of awareness of one or more of these necessary conditions. The choice to use poetry in the language arts classroom, for example, is often based on a desire to develop students’ awareness of the masterpieces of a wider society’s literary

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heritage. Literary writing, however, is not necessarily meaningful to individual students. If students do not see its connection to their own lives, the effort involved in producing meaning seems, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, like a very cruel form of literacy torture. When the three conditions are met, however, readers and writers of poetry create understandings that are tied directly to their own world. To create meaning in your own life and to present this to others must be the highest form of literacy activity of all.

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . POETRY WITH EMERGENT AND BEGINNING READERS AND WRITERS

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hildren begin learning to read long before they encounter formal reading instruction at school. The process starts when they are six to nine months old and develops gradually over the next seven or eight years. During this time, emergent readers develop an understanding of how written language works: the conventions of reading, the relationship between the graphic forms of language and its sounds, and the way meaning is constructed while reading. Unfortunately, this process is sometimes viewed in very technical terms as the mere acquisition of letterform and sound relationships. My own belief is that literacy instruction is most successful when teachers relate it to the children’s background, knowledge, and experiences. This chapter presents ways of using poetry to develop the literacy skills of emergent and beginning readers in a way that is meaningful to them.

Shared Poetry Reading The following vignette describes a shared poetry reading that Charles Elster, of Purdue University, and I observed several years ago. The reading was organized by a first-grade teacher in a Midwestern American school. The teacher, Mr. Perry, calls the children to the reading area. He sits in his reading chair — an old rocking chair — as the children arrange themselves around him in a half circle 18

on the carpet. He holds up a book, Rain Song by Lezlie Evans, and explains that he is going to read it aloud. Before beginning to read, he reminds the children of the previous day, when it rained. He asks them when they got up that day. After listening to their answers, he describes what the sky looked like when it rained and imitates the sounds of thunder. He encourages the children to respond by talking about their own experiences of rain and thunder. Mr. Perry then opens Rain Song, calls it a poem, and instructs the children to pay attention to what the characters in the poem do. Holding the book at an angle so that the children can see the pictures and the text, he begins reading. As he reads, he varies the tempo and volume of his voice. He also elongates specific words, and while reading words like “raindrops” and “grumbling thunder,” he uses his voice to mimic the sounds of rain and thunder. Halfway through the reading, he stops and encourages the children to make noises like thunder, a suggestion they comply with enthusiastically. One child even stands and stamps his foot to demonstrate the sound of thunder. Mr. Perry continues to read to the end of the poem. When finished, he closes the book and asks the children to explain what the characters in the book did when it rained. Before a later reading of the same poem, Mr. Perry asks the children to focus on the sound words by repeating these words after him. He then practices this with them, though he says that they must do it only once so that he can continue reading. The children willingly take part in the demonstration. To silence and calm them before he begins reading again, he tells them to be really quiet before the storm starts. Once again, as Mr. Perry reads, he changes the volume and tempo of his voice. This time, the children act out the sound words, repeating some of the phrases at the same time as or just after their teacher. They follow Mr. Perry’s instruction, however, and limit their oral and physical responses to a few seconds. This interaction is cyclical; the children are silent as they pay close attention to the poem,

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then they act out or verbalize the relevant sections for a few seconds before falling silent again. Mr. Perry ends his reading by saying, “Ahh, now the storm is all gone. Listen to how quiet it is after the storm.” He touches his ears to emphasize the silence, and the children sit quietly. He tells them that he will read the poem again tomorrow and that he is sure that they will be able to join in with the words. Some children clap their hands. This vignette exemplifies the principles of poetry reading with emergent and beginning readers. Mr. Perry read the poem twice. Both readings were divided into three distinct phases, each with its own specific aims, procedures, and tasks. The first phase of the first reading involved helping the children create a personal connection to the content of the poem. As a result, the choice of poem was particularly important. Mr. Perry chose a poem about a rainy day because the whole class had experienced the storm that had passed through the area the day before. He created a personal connection by providing his own description of that day and by imitating the noises of thunder. His description encouraged the children to draw on their own prior knowledge, which could be related to the experience described in the poem. In addition to helping the children make a personal connection to the content of the poem, Mr. Perry also prepared them to move beyond their own experiences by telling them to pay attention to what the children in the book did. This encouraged the children to evaluate their own experience in light of the experience described in the poem. The second phase of the first reading involved performing the poem, and Mr. Perry put enormous effort into his expressive performance. He used his voice and the language of the poem to help recreate the experience of a rainy day and the sounds of a storm. Tempo, volume, and stress are important devices in the poetic repertoire, and the book uses both language and content to recreate the experience of a rainy day. To enhance this aspect of the reading, Mr. Perry even asked the children to make “thunder boom-bang” noises with him, and they complied enthusias20

tically. This helped make the language of the poem come alive for the children and is an example of how an experience can be mediated through the reading and language of a poem. The children participate on two levels: content and experience. The final phase of the reading involved refocusing the children on Mr. Perry’s initial instructions for reading and listening. Before reading the poem, he had asked the class to pay attention to what the characters in the poem did. When the reading was finished, he revisited this instruction by asking what the characters had done. This encouraged the children to reflect on their own experiences of a rainy day, the experiences of the characters in the poem, and their new experience, which was mediated through the reading of the poem. The second reading of the poem was also structured in three phases. When Mr. Perry introduced this reading, he reinforced the children’s personal connection with and experience of the content of the poem by inviting them to make thunder and rain noises with him. This re-emphasized the sounds of a stormy day. He then asked the children to focus on the sound words by repeating these words with him as he read. This exercise had two goals: to recreate and mediate the rainy-day experience and to show the concrete nature of language as sound. Just before Mr. Perry began to read, he created the setting for a poetic experience by conflating the experience described in the poem with the experience of reading the poem. He achieved this by asking the children to be really quiet before the storm started. The children were, of course, aware that the storm exists only in the language of the poem, but this is the essence of a negotiated poetic experience: the ability to live through an experience that is described in language. Once again, Mr. Perry read the poem expressively, using his voice as a tool for conveying the experience of a stormy day. The children participated actively in this process. They listened attentively and acted out the sections that included

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storm sounds. Some children spontaneously started to repeat the words of the poem with the teacher. As the children eagerly awaited their chance to take part in the reading, their attention was directed toward the words of the poem. Mr. Perry’s reading style and his initial instruction created a situation in which the children focused on both the language of the poem and the experience it described. This kind of reading experience uses language to recreate an experience. As the children’s responses demonstrated, they were truly involved in the reading and enjoyed the experience. Mr. Perry used poetry to create a truly meaningful experience for the children in his class. As a result of reading this poem, the children learned to appreciate the orchestral qualities of a stormy day. In many ways, this is one of the classic roles of poetry: to create a heightened awareness of the wonders of nature. The other aspect of learning that took place during Mr. Perry’s reading relates to the nature of literacy itself. His lively reading style demonstrated that reading can be — and is — personally meaningful. It is possible to write about the sounds of a storm or one’s everyday personal experiences. Mr. Perry also demonstrated the fun that can be had with the sounds of words and the sounds of the human voice. This use of sound as part of a poetic experience also helps develop phonological awareness. Both Mr. Perry’s use of his voice and his instruction to focus on certain words directed the children to pay attention to the sounds of the words, as well as their meaning. Though this is not direct phonics instruction, it does emphasize the phonological aspect of written language and provides students with an enjoyable way of raising their phonological awareness, an important requisite of the development of literacy knowledge. Poetry also helps develop children’s literacy knowledge because much of it is easy to remember and repeat. When Mr. Perry read the poem for the second time, some of the children spontaneously started to repeat the words with 22

him. This acquired knowledge of the specific words of the poem can function as a scaffolding element that may enable a child to reread the poem by her- or himself. When doing this, the child uses both initial word analysis strategies and memory of the text to read and develop his or her experience of reading. POETRY-READING STRATEGIES: A SUMMARY

The following summary of some of the shared poetry-reading strategies used by Mr. Perry also describes the role of these strategies in helping children develop literacy skills and knowledge. — Choosing a poem: The starting point of a shared poetry reading is the poem. The poem chosen should be as meaningful as possible for the audience. Be sure to involve the children in making the choice by discussing it with them or asking them to choose a poem or subject they are interested in. Research by Karen Kupiter and Patricia Wilson has shown that humorous poetry with sound patterns and elements of narrative are very popular with children. In addition, your own experience and knowledge of the children in the class may suggest topics and poems that will interest them. — Creating a personal relationship with the poem: After choosing a poem that is likely to be meaningful to the children, help them create a personal relationship with the poem. This involves encouraging the children to activate their prior knowledge and connect their personal experience with the experience described in the poem. Activities that help do this include telling personal stories, drawing pictures, answering questions about the experience, and examining and discussing photographs or objects. Remember that sensations are also part of the child’s knowledge of an experience. Sometimes, a feeling, taste, smell, sight, or sound is the most crucial aspect

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of a particular experience. Poetry makes use of memories like these to create a new experience. — Constructing a context for the poetic experience: Activating children’s prior knowledge is an important aspect of situating a poem in a meaningful context. This context should, however, relate to both the children’s previous experience and the current experience of reading the poem in the classroom. A special physical and mental space should be created for the poetry reading. Reading poetry on a special chair while the children sit on the carpet, for example, enhances the poetic experience by changing the ground rules of the shared-reading session. The physical site has overtones of an intimate reading situation in which personal experience is important. Constructing the mental space required for a poetic experience involves creating conditions in which the children can focus on the meaning, sounds, and sights of the poem, as well as the experience it describes. Mr. Perry, for example, calmed the children before the poetry reading by telling them to be quiet before the storm. This created a context for the poetic experience that followed by both encouraging the children to be attentive and recreating the poetry reading as the actual experience of a storm. To enhance this context and further direct the children to create a personal connection to the poem, provide specific reading — or listening — instructions. These may direct the children’s attention to aspects of a shared reading that are sometimes omitted when reading other kinds of text (e.g., asking them to listen carefully to the sounds of the words or to look at the way the lines are set up on the page). These instructions direct the children to pay attention to specific elements of the poem as part of the listening or reading context. — Reading expressively: Once the context is created, read the poem as expressively as possible. Before starting to read the poem aloud, carefully consider various 24

aspects of your performance and how you can enhance the reading experience. Connections can often be found between a poem’s content and the way it sounds or is set up on the page. Emphasizing these aspects of a poem while you are reading aloud helps create an expressive reading. The tools at your disposal are the volume, tempo, and quality of your voice. Use these to interact with the content of the poem. For example, line breaks can be accompanied by pauses, rhymes can be emphasized, sound words can be sounded out, and characters’ voices can be differentiated. These uses of voice enhance the special aspects of poetry reading and often make an important contribution to the poetic experience. — Negotiating the poetic experience: It is important to remain in touch with your audience while reading. The poetic experience is a complex verbal interaction between the reader and the members of the audience, and your reading keeps this experience alive. — Reflecting on the poetic experience: After the reading, encourage the children to consider what they have learned — what new understandings they have reached — about the experience described in the poem. This new understanding might involve a heightening of their awareness of an aspect of the experience described or the development of new connections to the experience. In many cases, reading poetry helps people make connections among feelings, senses, and experiences, and these new connections can change how children view their own experiences. To enhance this process, set tasks that direct the children to consider what has changed in their understanding of the experience. In other words, try to provide tasks that make connections between the children’s personal experience and the experience described in the poem. When combined, these strategies provide a format for designing a shared poetry reading with emergent and

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beginning readers, though the specifics will, of course, change depending on the poem, class, and teacher. But it is always important to remember the goal of the shared poetry reading: to create a poetic experience in which a child will reach a new understanding of a personal experience through the verbal and visual representation of that experience. Though the format described in this section may help you achieve this goal, it is not the only way of doing this, and you should feel free to experiment with other ways of reaching the same objective.

Poetry Writing When my daughter Kimmy was five years old, a friend of mine sent her a handmade collection of poems. The collection consisted of Mother Goose nursery rhymes set out in a small handmade booklet with hand-drawn pictures. The book was placed in a small white box. My daughter became so attached to this book of poetry that she took it with her everywhere. One afternoon, Kimmy asked me to help her make a book of poetry for my friend. She fashioned a small, six-page, orange booklet by folding three orange papers in the middle. Then she told me that my role was to write down her poems. Next to every poem, she drew a small picture to accompany it. When the drawings were finished, each poem was given a title, and I read it aloud. This project took three afternoons to complete, and we sent the finished book to my friend. Here is one of the poems from the book. Dog Dog Jump, Dog Dog Listen by Kimmy Hanauer Dog dog jump Dog dog jump You have legs You can jump.

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Dog dog listen Dog dog listen You have ears You can listen. You can jump higher than a cat You can see in the dark like a cat You can eat bones. As my daughter wrote this poem, a soft toy dog named Charlie sat on the carpet next to her. This toy was a particular favorite of hers, and her desire was to see it come to life. The poem relates to this desire and her experience with this toy. The form of the poem is interesting. Although I was the official writer and did the graphic formatting, the form I chose reflects the way the poem was dictated to me. The stanza breaks represent pauses in speech as Kimmy considered how to develop her ideas. Notice how the first two stanzas follow the same pattern: the first two lines are the same and give commands; the third line is a simple sentence that lists a physical attribute; and the final line is a sentence that includes the modal verb “can” and repeats the verb given in the first two lines. The final stanza changes this pattern and presents three sentences with modal verbs that further develop the theme of what the dog can do. The poem moves from giving commands to an attempt to convince the dog of its ability to carry out the requested action. Physically, the dog has the attributes necessary to jump, listen, see, and eat, but only a live person can actually make the dog come alive. The poem negotiates this experience by first expressing my daughter’s desire for the dog to carry out an action. Then it identifies the physical attribute that should enable the dog to do this, and finally, it attempts to overcome the dog’s inaction by convincing him that he possesses the power to do it (even though he obviously doesn’t). This patterned format uses repeated language structures to focus the attention of the reader or listener on the poet’s desire to see the dog come alive.

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It is also interesting that this poem does not use a narrative to give it coherence. The coherence is based on its use of patterned language structures. In other words, the experience is conveyed through the use of language. A similar poetry-writing process has been shown to be effective in first-grade literacy programs. In an article in The Reading Teacher, Christine Duthie and Ellie Zimet described an early literacy poetry-writing program that greatly increased children’s motivation to acquire literacy skills. In this program, children were introduced to various kinds of poetry, then assigned various poetry-writing tasks. The program exposed children to the formal aspects and functions of poetry, then encouraged them to use these formal aspects to create poems that were meaningful to them. Of particular importance in this case was the observation that the program motivated children who had previously been reluctant to write by themselves. Consider the following poems, which were produced by Duthie and Zimet’s students: Dinosaurs by Nora

Strawberries by Kyle

Dirty Dinosaurs

Strawberries Strawberries I love strawberries They are like heavenberries

are Definitely D i r t y

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Boom by Carrie Boom! Crash! Bang! Boom! Crash! Bang! Boom! Help! Help! Help! Boom! Crash! Bang! Boom! Help! Help!

Ice Skating by Emma When I go ice skating I make a heart With the sparkling sliver of my ice Skate! And when my sister comes out, She makes her name And messes up my ice heart. These poems are impressive and clearly show the children’s ability to use various poetic devices to negotiate meaning. Nora’s poem starts and ends with the word “dirty,” and the letter D is used repeatedly to emphasize the dirtiness of the dinosaur. The final “dirty” is presented graphically, spelled out one letter to a line. The poem as a whole may be interpreted as a comment on the social value of cleanliness and Nora’s relationship to this norm. Kyle’s poem has a sonata-like quality that reaches a crescendo in the use of an invented word. The poem starts by repeating the word “strawberries” twice in two different lines. It then gives a clear statement of liking and ends with the invented word “heavenberries.” This use of an invented word is important, for it shows the strength of Kyle’s experience of strawberries. For Kyle, it was necessary to invent a word to fully express what strawberries mean to him. Carrie’s poem makes extensive use of sound words, which are repeated in various combinations to suggest an accident. Halfway through the poem, a call for help appears and this is repeated in the last line. The poem does not contain a single content word that directs the reader to a specific setting, yet it effectively elicits the idea of an accident. This effect could not have been achieved in another genre. Emma’s poem describes a specific experience, which includes two essential elements that are differentiated through the sentence and line structure. The first element expresses the poet’s joy at making a heart on the ice. The second deals with Emma’s sister’s erasing of the heart when she writes her name on the ice. This poem is a powerful 29

comment on the rivalry and jealousy between sisters. The reader is first presented with the image of the creation of a heart, a classic symbol of love, and the obvious enjoyment that Emma takes in creating it. The heart — and its symbolic value — is then erased when the sister writes her name over it and “messes” it up. The poem ends with the phrase “ice heart,” which is a wonderful way of describing the speaker’s feeling after this intrusive act of destruction. It is unlikely that this experience could have been expressed as effectively in another genre. This is a truly wonderful example of the expressive ability of poetry and the way language can be used to negotiate meaning. POETRY-WRITING STRATEGIES: A SUMMARY

My daughter’s poem, as well as those written by the children in Duthie and Zimet’s study, demonstrates the central principles of poetry writing with emergent and beginning readers. — Exposing children to poetry before they write: Reading and discussing poetry with children, as well as showing them what poems look like, are important ways of introducing poetry writing. Poetry uses language in different ways from other forms of written communication, and children need to be exposed to the various options for language use and expression offered by poetry. This exposure should include the reading aloud of poetry and the visual presentation of poems on the page. The first-grade class studied by Duthie and Zimet included direct exposure to poetry in the form of a series of mini-lessons on specific poetic language use, such as line breaks, sound words, the shape of poems, and invented words. Poems that included these specific features were read with the children. This exposure to poetry and poetic language presented the children with various examples of the way poetry can be used to create meaning. — Writing poetry in a meaningful context: The starting point of poetry writing should be meaningful and 30

important to the child-poet. This context reflects both the social and personal context in which the poem is being written; in other words, the poem is inspired by the experiences of the child. Emma’s poem, for example, is inspired by her experiences of her sister and ice skating. The resulting poem is powerful because of the depth of the emotion associated with the experience and Emma’s ability to clearly express the shifts in her emotions. The poem’s context must also be meaningful on a social level. My daughter, for example, wrote her poems in response to a book of poetry that was created for her. In the classroom studied by Duthie and Zimet, the teacher provided positive feedback on every poem and created peer-group poetry-reading sessions. As a result, the children’s poems were shared in the classroom and discussed by the children as a group. In addition, a class anthology of poetry was created and given to each child. The children enjoyed finding poems written by their friends. The social context encourages meaningful communication using poetry. — Encouraging creativity in poetry writing: The use of language in a creative and unusual fashion is an important aspect of poetry writing and should be encouraged. As the examples in the previous section demonstrate, children have the ability to use language creatively to express an experience. Carrie’s poem, which is made up mainly of sound words, is a good example of this. One way of encouraging creativity is to provide positive feedback on the children’s language use. When assessing this, consider the extent to which the language used expresses the experience described. Carrie’s poem, for example, uses a very specific lexicon but succeeds in expressing an experience very well. This criterion for evaluating language use frees you from the bonds of evaluating only standard English usage. 31

Another way of encouraging creativity involves providing examples and tasks that direct children to the possibility of using language in an unusual and enjoyable way. These tasks may involve demonstrating a specific aspect of poetry writing, such as breaking lines or inventing words, and asking the children to experiment with these techniques in their own poems.

Summing Up Poetry is a literary text that presents the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of the writer through a self-referential use of language that creates for the reader and writer a new understanding of the experience, thought, or feeling expressed in the text. This chapter has described a shared approach that can be used with emergent and beginning readers and writers. The essence of this approach involves using meaningful poems to encourage children to comprehend and use language. If the general principles of this approach are followed, poetry can become a valuable tool in your repertoire of literacy activities. The examples provided in this chapter show that poetry can be used effectively with emergent and beginning readers. Christine Duthie and Ellie Zimet concluded that the poetry component of their early literacy program enriched the program as a whole and helped motivate the children to acquire literacy skills and knowledge. My own experience confirms this.

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . P O E T RY W I T H M AT U R E READERS AND WRITERS

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ith emergent and beginning readers, literacy instruction focuses on constructing meaning and teaching decoding strategies. This process of acquiring basic literacy starts in infancy at home and extends to about the end of third grade. It is a mistake, however, to think that literacy learning ends once decoding and basic comprehension skills have been acquired. In fact, one of the most important stages of reading instruction starts only after decoding has become fluent and largely automatic. During this mature stage of literacy learning, readers develop many different ways of constructing meaning. The most important aspect of this stage involves the gradual development of metacognitive control over the literacy process. This metacognitive control — the ability to think about how they are learning — enables mature readers to diversify the ways they construct meaning and choose the appropriate method for the task at hand and the text that is being read. According to research conducted by Michael Pressley and Peter Afflerbach, as well as Annemarie Palincsar, the central characteristic of this stage is the ability of mature readers to move beyond the explicit information provided in the text to use and manipulate this information for their own purposes. They begin to use written material to understand the world and, more important, to explain the world from their own point of view. During this stage, it is very important for readers and writers to develop the literacy

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skills that will enable them to develop a personal voice and an individual way of understanding the world of textual meaning. This can occur only if learners acquire knowledge of the options for self-representation and meaning construction — and poetry can play a central role in this development. Within the genres and sub-genres of poetry exists a wide variety of ways of representing oneself and constructing meaning. As a result, poetry is the perfect tool for helping mature learners develop their ability to represent themselves in writing and to construct meaning in a variety of ways at the same time as they extend their metacognitive skills. This chapter presents ways of using poetry to help them do this.

Reading Poetry The following vignette describes a poetry reading in a fifth-grade language arts class in a West Coast inner-city school in the United States. The teacher, Ms Andrews, begins by announcing that the class is going to read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, an African American poet. Ms Andrews introduces the lesson by asking whether anyone has a private dream “like a dream of a different life or a better world.” Several students respond at once, offering dreams of becoming famous and getting rich. One student says that she wants her father out of trouble. For a few minutes, Ms Andrews discusses the students’ dreams and notes a few on the chalkboard. She then turns to a tape recorder, plays a short section of Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, and asks what King’s dream was. The students respond with statements about African American rights, equality, and racism. Ms Andrews then instructs the students to turn to the poem “Kitchenette Building” by Gwendolyn Brooks. Before reading the poem aloud, Ms Andrews explains that it is about Bronzeville, an African American ghetto in Chicago in the 1940s, and that Brooks was very active in advancing 34

the cause of African American rights. She then slowly reads the poem aloud. Kitchenette Building by Gwendolyn Brooks (1945) We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.” But could a dream send up through onion fumes Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall, Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms Even if we were willing to let it in, Had time to warm it, keep it very clean, Anticipate a message, let it begin? We wonder. But not well! not for a minute! Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now, We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it. Ms Andrews reads expressively, varying her tone of voice and changing her voice in the last stanza. When she finishes, she pauses for a few seconds, then tells the students that they are going to take a close look at the poem. She rereads the title and the first stanza, then directs the students’ attention to the lines, “‘Dream’ makes a giddy sound, not strong / Like ‘rent,’ ‘feeding a wife,’ ‘satisfying a man.’” She tells the students to look at the word “like” and asks, “What is the word ‘dream’ compared with?” Several students say, “Rent,” “Feeding a wife,” and “Satisfying a man.” Ms Andrews then asks, “Why would Gwendolyn Brooks make such a comparison?” In response, one student says, “‘Rent’ and ‘feeding a wife’ are worries of life, things that gotta be done.” Another says, “So is a dream.” Ms Andrews asks why a dream is called ‘giddy’ while the other things mentioned are called ‘strong.’ A student suggests that paying the rent is real while dreams are not. Ms Andrews points out that “giddy” can mean about to fall over. 35

One student says that “giddy” reminds her of a clown. She then rereads the line they are discussing and says, “It is as if a dream is weak and cannot stand up to the things people worry about every day.” Ms Andrews then points out the first words of the poem, “We are things …,” and asks, “Who is meant by ‘we’?” A student answers, “The people in the building.” When Ms Andrews asks what the people are like, one student says, “Gray,” and another says, “They are old.” Ms Andrews says, “It is as if the people of the building have been made old — ‘grayed in’ — and the dream is not strong enough to save them.” She also points out that the inhabitants of the building are described as “things,” as if they are not human but merely objects. She asks, “Why would someone describe her- or himself as a thing?” One student responds that it is because they are “like nothing.” Ms Andrews then provides her own interpretation of the first stanza, saying, “If we look at the beginning of this poem, the dream does not seem strong enough to overcome the everyday worries of life. The people describe themselves as old and worried, and the dream is just too weak to change anything.” Ms Andrews then writes the entire second stanza on the chalkboard. Reading it aloud, she circles the word “dream” in the first sentence. “What does the dream do?” she asks. One student says, “Send up,” and Ms Andrews circles the words “send up,” “fight with,” “flutter,” and “sing.” She says, “These are all things that the dream does. Let’s look at each. What must the dream fight with?” One student responds, “Fried potatoes and garbage,” and Ms Andrews asks, “Can you smell the garbage and fried potatoes?” The students laugh. “What does the smell of garbage have to do with a dream?” asks Ms Andrews. A student says, “There are onion smells too,” and another asks, “What is white and violet?” “Onions” answers a third. Another student says, “The dream is fighting the smell, but the smell is stronger.” Ms Andrews then moves on to the last line of the stanza, asking students whether they know what an aria is. When 36

several shake their heads, she explains that an aria is “a piece of opera music sung by a single singer. It can be very beautiful, like in the movie Philadelphia, when Tom Hanks listens to an aria and cries.” “I saw that,” one student responds. “Why is the dream compared to an aria?” asks Ms Andrews, and a student answers, “Like you said, it is very beautiful, if you like that.” “But no one listens to opera there,” adds another student. Ms Andrews picks up on this point and says, “You are probably right when you say that opera is not usually found in the kitchenette building, but that is the point. The dream might be very beautiful, like an aria, but it is not found in the kitchenette building. It could be beautiful, but meanwhile, all the people have is garbage and the smells of fried potatoes and onions.” Ms Andrews then reads aloud the entire third and fourth stanzas, using her voice expressively and increasing the stress on the words, “But not well! not for a minute!” When finished, she asks the class to look at the first line and explain what “it” refers to. When a student says, “The dream,” she asks how the dream is described in the first three lines. “Like a dog,” says one, and “Like a baby,” says another. Ms Andrews then asks why the dream is described as being like a puppy or a baby. “’Cause it’s weak and has no home,” suggests one student. Ms Andrews makes a supportive comment and asks, “Why is the dream described as being so weak and incapable of looking after itself?” In response, a student puts up his hand and says, “The dream is just a dream. It ain’t got no truth to it. It’s just weak.” Ms Andrews then directs the students’ attention to the end of the poem and asks, “What happens at the very end?” Though the students look puzzled, one finally answers, “She is waiting for the bathroom.” When Ms Andrews asks, “How is this connected to the dream?” another says, “She has to go to the bathroom, and that can’t wait,” and a third repeats the earlier comment that the dream is weak.

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Ms Andrews connects these two comments, saying, “The dream is too weak to overcome the reality of everyday life in the kitchenette building. You are both right. Going to the bathroom is more urgent than looking after the dream. She has to go, so she goes. The dream just does not have the strength to change the poverty in the building.” The students seem to nod in agreement. “So what do you make of this poem? What do you think it is about? Why do you think Gwendolyn Brooks wrote this poem? What was she trying to tell us?” Ms Andrews asks. When no one responds, she prompts the students, saying, “Think back to the beginning of class. Think of Bronzeville, African American civil rights, and Martin Luther King. How do these things relate to the description of the kitchenette building?” One student puts up her hand and says, “It’s like you said, the dream is weak, life is hard and the dream isn’t there.” Another adds, “See, hate still exists. The dream ain’t worth nothing.” At this point, a third student interrupts and says, “The dream is hope. There is hope, but life is real and it’s tough.” Ms Andrews commends the students for their thoughtful comments and says, “I think the poem is about losing hope — what happens when a dream of a better life is presented but has no reality in the life that you live. This poem describes a situation in which the dream is juxtaposed against real life. Real life and the quality of life described in this poem are those of poverty in an urban setting. The dream cannot disperse the sense of despair. Therefore, though the dream of civil rights and equality is a thing of beauty, it has not overcome poverty or discrimination.” As a final exercise, Ms Andrews asks the class to write a short journal entry discussing their thoughts about the poem, their understanding of civil rights, and their own dreams. Though this activity is open-ended, Ms Andrews does instruct the students to think about the poem’s message and to record their thoughts on this. In the lesson described in this vignette, Ms Andrews provided the context necessary to help students understand 38

the poem. Both historical information and material related to the civil rights movement were included and referred to at the beginning of the lesson and in the final exercise. The purpose of her lesson, however, was to help the students move beyond the explicit statements in the poem to discover a deeper social and personal meaning. Notice that Ms Andrews did not introduce technical terms for the linguistic structures found in the poem or explicitly teach literary devices, such as metaphors. Instead, she focused on constructing meaning by drawing students’ attention to specific structures and helping them understand these. In this sense, her approach illustrated the principle that reading poetry should be a personally meaningful experience. Though she focused on helping students construct personal meaning, Ms Andrews did not employ a classic reader-response approach, which involves an open discussion of the poem directed by the students themselves. In fact, her method of instruction largely involved asking leading questions, a method that runs counter to some current theories of literary instruction. Ms Andrews directed the students’ exploration of the poem by carefully choosing specific sections that she wished them to analyze and talk about. Her questions guided students through the poem and encouraged them to express their associative or emotional responses to and understanding of the text. In this context, language learning was achieved by directing students’ attention to specific sections and encouraging them to explore a variety of meanings using their linguistic, world, and lexical knowledge, as well as associative understandings. Though Ms Andrews did not present literary or linguistic terms, she did encourage the students to analyze syntax, reference structure, and vocabulary within the framework of a discussion of the meaning of the poem. In this sense, the discussion of the linguistic components of the poem was a form of applied linguistic analysis that used students’ linguistic knowledge to provide additional ways of understanding specific lines or particular words. This process exemplifies the way that implicit linguistic knowledge can 39

be used when discussing a text. Exploring additional options for understanding a specific line challenges the idea that there is a single, explicit meaning. Ms Andrews helped the students construct meaning by encouraging them to make connections among various aspects and analyses of the poem. This was the intention of most of the questions and prompts she employed. The ability to make connections is an important aspect of constructing meaning, and the intensity and extent of the connections was interesting. These involved exploring lexical word meanings, connecting the real world and personal experience, integrating linguistic and world knowledge, and following the linear development of information in the poem. To encourage the students to make connections, Ms Andrews modeled this process several times as the lesson unfolded by summarizing her understanding of the ideas presented during the class discussion. By modeling the process and presenting her own understanding of the poem, she created a situation that encouraged the students to connect a variety of pieces of information. POETRY-READING STRATEGIES: A SUMMARY

The following is a summary of some of the shared poetry-reading strategies used by Ms. Andrews, as well as their role in the lesson. — Providing a meaningful context: Reading a poem should provide readers with meaningful insights into a thought, feeling, or experience. When presenting a poem to mature readers, it is important to provide a context, which may include historical, social, and biographical background information. As the vignette showed, presenting the context creates a framework for understanding the environment and psychological context in which the poem was written. Reading poetry should support readers’ exploration of the meaning of the world, and understanding the context of a poem makes it possible to relate to the

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thoughts, feelings, and experiences that the poem explores. Choosing poetry that relates to significant experiences and contexts and clearly presenting this context enables readers to explore additional ways of understanding and experiencing the world. As a result, the goal is not to present the context as valuable cultural knowledge in itself; rather, it is to help the reader achieve insights into the issues that the poem and the reader are concerned with. In some cases, a meaningful context can be constructed by dealing directly with issues that students face. This might mean drawing poetic materials, such as rap, from the world of popular culture. This provides an opportunity to explore the meaning of the world that students often identify with. — Modeling and directing the poetry comprehension process: A central goal of poetry reading with mature readers is to help them construct inferred and implicit meanings. By definition, mature readers have acquired the ability to construct meaning from text. This does not mean, however, that they are able to construct meaning that goes beyond the explicit content of the text. In many cases, mature readers expect the meaning of a text to be constructed automatically and as directly as possible. In some ways, constructing meaning from poetry runs counter to this expectation. To find the meaning of a poem requires effort and analysis. Rather than constructing meaning automatically, the reader of a poem may experience the frustration that comes with a lack of understanding. This explains to a certain extent why some mature readers dislike reading poetry. To overcome this problem, the process of reading poetry — making connections, inferring meaning, and finding implicit meaning — must be taught to and experienced by the students. Modeling and directing this process is one way of achieving this goal.

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Modeling the meaning-construction process involves the teacher in slowly working through the poem, explaining relationships and helping the students reach understandings. This does not mean that you must present an explicit interpretation for students to memorize; rather, the emphasis of the modeling process is on demonstrating the kind of thinking involved in constructing a poetic interpretation. This works especially well when modeling is combined with the process of guiding the students’ comprehension. While modeling the process of constructing meaning, you should ask direct questions relating to the students’ understanding of specific lines of the poem and the connections that can be made. This strategy involves students in the interpretation process while reducing the frustration they may feel when they are unable to immediately grasp the meaning. You can then integrate the students’ understandings into the overall understanding of the poem. To guide the comprehension process, you may need to identify sections of the poem that may be helpful in constructing meaning. The criteria for selecting these sections should be based on your own reading of the poem. The combination of modeling and directing the comprehension process provides you with a powerful tool for enhancing students’ ability to comprehend poetry and construct meanings that extend beyond the explicit meaning of the text. — Developing linguistic knowledge and metalinguistic awareness: Working with poetry helps develop students’ linguistic and lexical knowledge, as well as their ability to use this knowledge as a problem-solving tool. By asking direct questions about the meaning of specific sections of a poem, you encourage students to stretch their linguistic and lexical knowledge and explore meanings that go beyond the immediate words and linguistic structures. Discussing various options for understanding helps students be42

come aware of new ways of understanding and using language. Mature readers should also be encouraged to focus on the linguistic form of utterances. This helps them explore additional meanings and gain experience in the metalinguistic use of linguistic knowledge: the understanding that linguistic and lexical structures can be manipulated to affect the way meaning is constructed. Because metalinguistic knowledge provides additional options for constructing understanding, it provides students with another tool for contending with comprehension difficulties. — Making connections: Reading a poem involves making connections on the linguistic, personal, and societal levels. A poetic experience requires the reader to have knowledge of the experience, thought, or feeling described and to create a personal relationship with the poem. This helps ensure that the students make connections between the various parts of a poem and between the poem and the readers’ experiences and feelings. In the vignette, Ms Andrews encouraged the students to make connections by presenting and explaining the social context in which the poem was written, asking questions that related directly to these connections, and requesting that students express a personal understanding after exploring the poem. And by modeling this process herself, she provided an additional illustration of how connections can be made. It is important to remember that making connections while reading poetry is not necessarily easy. If a poem does not make these connections explicit, the reader may feel that it lacks coherence and personal importance. By considering the issues presented in a poem in light of students’ needs, it may be possible to choose poetry that students can readily connect to. This does not mean, however, that all poems selected for study must be contemporary. Much poetry deals with the human condition and can be made accessible 43

to students through discussion and the use of personal examples. You must, however, be prepared to help students make these connections. Exploring the meaning of poems helps students arrive at new ways of understanding and experiencing the world. In addition, reading poetry expands the language resources of readers by encouraging them to consider the role of a variety of linguistic components in constructing meaning. These are important goals of education in general and language arts instruction in particular. Working with poetry can provide meanings, a way of constructing these meanings, and an awareness of how language resources can be used to uncover new understandings. These goals can be achieved by placing a poem in a context, modeling and directing the interpretation process, developing students’ linguistic knowledge and metalinguistic awareness, and emphasizing the making of connections in and beyond the poem. This instructional approach helps students arrive at a meaningful poetic experience, enhances the development of poetry reading, and avoids some of the frustrations associated with reading poetry.

Writing Poetry When I was 14 years old, my life underwent a major upheaval. This was a period of great stress, and I searched desperately to find something to hold on to. I felt as if the sources of stability that had organized my life had been lost and I had been cast adrift. It was at this time that I began to write poetry seriously. I had, of course, been exposed to poetry before this and had even written some poems at school. The difference was that this poetry-writing cycle was inspired not by an outside authority but by my own desire and need to write. My decision to choose poetry over other genres of writing was not conscious. Nevertheless, poems were all I wrote, and during that year, I penned a series of 12 poems.

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Later, I collected seven of them into a handmade book titled No More Heroes. These poems still have deep significance for me, though I hold no illusions about their aesthetic and artistic appeal for a wider poetry-reading audience. Nevertheless, I do wish to discuss a couple of them, for they illustrate how mature writers approach the process of writing poetry. Icarus by David Hanauer The body flew, broke and crashed On barbed wire it lay All nice and smashed People gathered To see the mess And smiled in masochistic tenderness. I wrote the first draft of this poem after reading W.H. Auden’s poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” in an English class at school. I was deeply struck by the mythic qualities of the figure of Icarus and the way these qualities were ignored by the ordinary people described in Auden’s poem. This triggered the writing of my own poem. When I started to write, I did not have a well-formed concept of what I wanted to say about Icarus. I just knew that I wanted to write about him. I wrote the poem in a single draft, then revised it over the next few days. My revisions involved changing several words and altering the line breaks. The final version of the poem has a clearly worked-out rhyme scheme — abacdd — and structure. While working on the poem, I paid the most attention to the final line. For me, this line was the most salient aspect of the poem because it expressed some of the complexities of my feelings about people’s responses to me. The poem is about relationships, and it describes my adolescent understanding that people actually enjoy feeling sorry for others and may even be happy to see others’ pain. I should note, however, that this interpretation and understanding of the poem came much later. As I was writing, I knew only that the words and images I had chosen were right. 45

The next poem had a different starting point and was written in a different way. I was standing outside in the rain on a cold day and knew that I wanted to write a poem. I went inside and wrote a single draft in one sitting. The only revision that took place was in the way the poem was set out on the page when I copied it onto a clean sheet of paper. Gray Day by David Hanauer I stood on top of the green moist hill Staring At the slowly receding gray clouds Like my heart It was neither Hot nor cold Wet nor dry But indifferent In the middle And sadly lonely. This poem was inspired by the feelings and images evoked by the weather. It reminded me of home, and I was feeling sad. What is interesting about the poem is the tension between feeling and indifference. The gray clouds and weather are symbolic, for they embody a sense of sadness and loneliness while being in between other states and indifferent. Once again, the final line presents the central emotional understanding of the poem. On the one hand, there is a feeling of indifference, and on the other, there are feelings of sadness and loneliness. This mix of feelings defines the central experience described in the poem: the possibility of having two feelings at the same time and the paradox of simultaneously knowing and not knowing a deep sense of loneliness. This internal contradiction was manifested in the process of writing the poem. It was written while I was feeling sad and lonely after going inside out of the rain. But the first nine lines of the poem deal with indifference; only in the last line does sadness and loneliness explicitly enter the poem. This line made my feelings of sadness and loneliness real 46

and represented a moment of discovery as I recognized my feelings and expressed them to myself. In the same way as “Icarus,” “Gray Day” makes use of strategic line breaks and a specific graphic form, both of which were considered as I wrote the first draft. This graphic form underlines the paradox of the poem. Notice how the words “hot” and “cold” and “wet” and “dry” are situated together on single lines between the words “heart” and “indifferent.” This form suggests the presence of these extremes, while the words explicitly deny this option. Only in the final line does the meaning become clear — when it becomes apparent that the indifference expressed is an external level of self-representation that covers deeper feelings of sadness. This pattern of line breaks and organization to express the central theme was not planned. It just seemed like a natural way to write the poem. The other poems in the book include one written in memory of Steve Biko, another lamenting the passing of socialism, two expressing feelings of depression, and one describing a conversation between a clerk and a speaker in which there is no communication. The themes of these poems focus on my feelings, the nature of relationships, and a concern for political justice. “Icarus,” “Gray Day,” and the other poems in the booklet represent my adolescent attempt to understand the world by writing poetry. This process helped me clarify my feelings about and understandings of personal relationships and explore the ethical considerations that seemed to govern the world. In other words, writing poetry was a process of personal discovery, and the poems I produced functioned as a medium through which I could express my thoughts and feelings. While writing “Icarus,” I was unaware of the deeper meaning of the poem or its criticism of society and personal relationships. And while working on “Gray Day,” I didn’t discover its meaning — or my own conflicted feelings — until I wrote the final line. Even more interesting is the fact that I did not consciously plan the organization of either poem. I wrote and revised the poems using phrases like 47

“masochistic tenderness” and a specific rhyme scheme without consciously understanding what I was saying. In both cases, an intuitive sense of rightness guided my linguistic and poetic decisions. I was aware of how each poem should be written but unaware of why this was so and exactly what I was saying. This suggests that writing poetry is a process of discovery that involves shifting unconscious linguistic functioning to conscious consideration. The moment of discovery occurs when the writer comprehends, as a reader, the meaning of the poem she or he is writing. This theory of poetry writing as a process of discovery has both literary and psychotherapeutic roots. Since the time of Aristotle, it has been recognized that literature — and particularly poetry — can express thoughts and emotions that have been repressed. The role of poetry is to make these accessible and to direct the experience of them. Expressing these thoughts and feelings in poetry enables readers to recognize and experience them while keeping a safe distance. In the field of poetry therapy, poetry writing is used to facilitate the expression of repressed emotion and unconscious content that can then become the basis for discussion. According to Owen E. Heninger, this approach bypasses an individual’s normal defenses against repressed and unconscious material and enables the reader and writer to explore hidden thoughts and feelings. It is important to point out, however, that language arts teachers are not trained psychotherapists. With mature readers and writers, the goal of writing poetry is to enhance students’ exploration of themselves and the world. Though the writing process may lead students to develop significant personal insights, it does not mean that the teacher must conduct a directed therapeutic intervention with student writers; rather, the teacher’s role is to facilitate students’ poetic experiences by creating a supportive environment that enhances students’ ability to write poetry as a means of understanding and discovering the world in and beyond the classroom. In an article in Language Arts, Ann Phillips described the development of a young poet, Evania, over four years from 48

the fifth to the eighth grade. In Phillips’ analysis of Evania’s growth as a poet, the discovery process played a central role. Evania said, “Poems can tell a lot about you … about a lot of things in [one’s] mind that one doesn’t quite understand all the time,” and Phillips described Evania as a “witness” who presented and interpreted her world through poetry. Though this world included both inner and outer manifestations, the inner world ultimately received the most attention and was most valued by both the young poet and her teacher. For both Evania and Phillips, poetry was “feeling expressed,” a process of verbalizing the conscious and unconscious inner world. In describing her own development as a poet, Evania focused on two specific issues: the role of exposure to poetry and the role of careful crafting. Evania used the metaphor of a crayon to express the way her poetry writing changed between grades 5 and 8. In Grade 5, she saw herself using a thick crayon, while in Grade 8, she used a thin crayon. The difference was in the amount of control she could exert, and she viewed her poetic growth as a process of developing greater skill in crafting and revising her poems. Evania attributed this growth to reading poetry in and beyond class. This reading provided a resource that she could draw on in her own writing, as it suggested additional ways of representing her thoughts and feelings in poetry. POETRY-WRITING STRATEGIES: A SUMMARY

My own early poetry-writing experiences, as well as those described by Ann Phillips, emphasize the importance of the following strategies in encouraging mature readers and writers to work with poetry. — Activating poetry writing: The poetry-writing process may have many different starting points, as the examples in the previous section illustrate. The process may be inspired by, for example, an experience in the world, a feeling or thought, an image that has stuck in

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one’s mind, or the reading of another poem or literary work. No matter what, however, the writer must find a meaningful point at which to initiate the process of writing a poem. For young poets, this point is reached when they understand that their internal world is of value and should be expressed. The teacher’s role is to create a situation that fosters this understanding by guiding students to focus on the relationship between their internal world and the external world they live in so that they become witnesses and interpreters. Creating this situation is far from easy and requires careful negotiation. As illustrated in the previous sections, modeling and directing the reading of poetry is one way of achieving this. Another way is to provide activities that encourage students to look closely at the environment in which they live and to consider their own thoughts and feelings about it. These exercises might be as simple as instructing students to describe the entrance to their home or as complex as asking them to remember a significant moment in their life and to think of an image that has stuck in their mind as a result. In both cases, the young poets use their own memory and perception as a source of material for creating poetry. As the teacher, your appreciation of the students’ personal responses to and understandings of the world are critical to this process. Nothing is more destructive to the poetry-writing process than criticism. Your ultimate goal is to motivate students to write poetry because of their own desire to express themselves and explore their internal worlds of meaning. — Exposing students to poetry: Extensive exposure to poetry through reading poems is the central supporting component of the poetry-writing process. To write a poem, a young writer must have a concept of what a poem looks and sounds like, as well as its personal and social function. Exposure to poetry provides 50

young poets with a repertoire of ways of representing themselves, as well as a series of statements about what is meaningful in life. In many cases, reading a poem becomes the starting point for writing a poem. Sometimes, the desire to write a poem is activated by the “sound” of a poem that has been read; other times, it may be inspired by the poem’s content or form. Providing a wide range of poetic resources, including materials such as rap music, that are close to students, offers many examples of poetic self-expression. Exposure to many different kinds of poetry also helps develop young poets’ concept of what works — and what doesn’t — in poetry. As the examples in the previous section illustrate, reading and writing poems helps develop an inner appreciation of what sounds and looks right. This inner appreciation is crucial in writing poetry, for it helps generate ways of organizing the poetic material on both an unconscious and a conscious level. — Nurturing the discovery process: The most important aspect of poetry writing is the discovery process. This process culminates in the moment in which a writer gains an insight into his or her internal world of feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Poetry embodies understandings that are beyond the conscious control and knowledge of the writer, and this moment may occur while a poem is being written or afterwards. The process of writing, then reading, a poem involves shifting material from the inner world of the writer to the external world of the written page. Once this happens, the written poem is open for discussion and provides an insight into the writer’s inner world. These moments of discovery and insight persuade students of the value of writing and reading poetry. You can enhance the discovery process by acting as an interested discussion partner. Your comments on what you see in a poem and your interpretation of the way it reflects the student’s understanding can provide the impetus for focusing on the insights that the 51

poem provides. As a starting point, discuss the poem in a personal conference with the poet. You might then encourage the student to share the poem with the class. The content may be something a student does not wish to share, however, and the decision about whether to share the poem should be left to the student. Sharing with the class should never be a requirement. Your role is to guide students to write meaningfully about their experiences, thoughts, and feelings, then discuss their poems in an attempt to interpret the insights they contain. It is important to provide heartfelt appreciation of the understandings expressed in the poem. Student writers quickly learn to distinguish between sincere responses and empty praise. Students should also be encouraged to reflect on and appreciate their own poetry, a process that can lead to greater poetic understanding and insight. In focusing on the process of discovery and insight in poetry writing, the language arts teacher is in the unusual situation of providing the student with a skill that can be truly valuable in times of stress. — Organizing poetic self-representation: Writing a poem involves directing the reader’s and writer’s understanding of an experience, thought, or feeling. This does not necessarily mean that this process is conscious; in fact, some of the most important insights in poetry writing and reading come from unconsciously re-forming and organizing the material. In poetry, experiences are organized through a variety of linguistic and graphic options. The rhyme scheme, the graphic layout of a poem on the page, and the use of sound patterns and imagery are examples of ways in which experiences can be directed. To write poetry, mature writers need not be polished poets. The patterning and organization of poems can be simple. The only real question is whether the form of the poem directs and represents the writer’s experience. The teacher’s role is to provide 52

students with options for organizing their poetic material. In many cases, this simply means encouraging them not to do what they have been taught to do when writing informational prose — and reading poetry helps develop student writers’ understanding and knowledge of various writing options. In a personal conference, you can also provide suggestions about ways of structuring and enhancing the poem. These should be presented as possibilities that the student can choose among, for the decision about how to organize a poem should be left to the student. The process of organizing poetic material involves developing a new set of writing options and broadens the student’s repertoire of modes of self-representation. It may also enhance the student’s knowledge of the way a variety of linguistic and lexical items function. — Teaching poetry-writing formats: Teaching writing is not easy — and teaching students how to write poetry is even more complicated. As suggested in the previous section, poetry is best written when its starting point is self-generated. Many students have had negative experiences with poetry, however, and feel that this is a foreign form of self-expression. At the same time, most students do wish to tell the world what they are feeling and thinking, and poetry can be the perfect genre for achieving this purpose. As a result, teaching poetry writing involves overcoming a student’s inhibitions about writing poetry, providing knowledge that is useful in poetry writing, and explaining the personal and social functions of poetry. Various teaching strategies help achieve these goals. As the vignette involving Ms Andrews demonstrated, modeling the process of reading poetry is best conducted in a whole-class format. This exposes students to poetry and helps them internalize various modes of poetic self-expression. During the poetry-writing process, however, personal conferences work best, for these enhance the process of discovery 53

by enabling you to respond directly and personally to a student’s writing. In the conference, you should encourage the student to explore the meanings embedded in the written poem. A personal conference can also be used to inspire the poetry-writing process by talking about the kinds of experiences, thoughts, and feelings a young poet wishes to explore. The personal contact with the teacher during this interaction is particularly important. For presenting the poem and seeking additional feedback, a small-group or whole-class format works well. This may involve reading the poem aloud and requesting feedback from a peer group. In some cases, you may wish to present selected poems to a wider audience of the students’ parents and friends. This can be done by creating an anthology of the students’ poetry or organizing a public poetry reading. For the students, the value of this social exposure lies in the reward of public appreciation of their writing. This can function as a true forum for the public voicing of personal understandings.

Summing Up With mature readers and writers, the goals of teaching language arts are to help students develop their ability to manipulate information in written text and to represent their own understandings of the world in a variety of forms. Reading and writing poetry can be a central element of both these goals. Reading poetry exposes students to a wide repertoire of ways of expressing themselves and their understandings of the world. Learning how to interpret these messages through the medium of language is a valuable tool that enhances students’ ability to read critically. By modeling and directing the process of interpreting poetry, teachers help students internalize new modes of comprehension that relate to implicit as well as explicit information in a variety of linguistic forms. This enhances

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students’ ability to explore meanings in the world of written text. Writing poetry further enhances this ability by providing mature literacy learners with the opportunity, experience, and knowledge to explore their internal world of feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Writing poetry involves transforming unconscious or partially known material to conscious consideration. Once written, this material is open for discussion and can be used as an important source of self-discovery, as well as a medium of self-expression. The process of writing poetry also broadens students’ knowledge of modes of self-expression and linguistic and lexical structures. The central feature of poetry is its ability to create a new understanding of an experience, thought, or feeling for both the reader and writer. In the language arts classroom, the processes of constructing implicit meaning, developing personal insight, and representing oneself can be viewed as the pinnacle of meaningful literacy activity. In many ways, this is the goal of literacy instruction, and it represents the point at which literacy instruction in school integrates with students’ personal development.

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . POETRY WITH ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

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oetry can be an important resource in English-as-a-second-language classrooms. Despite this, some ESL teachers dismiss as impractical the idea of using poetry with English language learners because even many native English speakers experience difficulty when reading poems. There are, however, sound psycholinguistic and pedagogical reasons for using poetry with language learners. Not least of these is the fact that poetry enables readers and writers to exercise a large degree of linguistic license. As a result, it offers them many opportunities to express and explore new meanings. Experts in language learning believe that literature serves three purposes in the teaching of a second language. The first is to provide a source of motivation, enjoyment, and personal involvement. The second is to provide language learners with access to cultural knowledge of the target language community. And the third — a position adopted by psycholinguists and supported by my own work — is that reading literary texts involves special characteristics that support the language-learning process. The central argument for encouraging language learners to read poetry is that a poem is an authentic text that directs readers’ attention to its textual features as they construct meaning. When reading a poem, readers are forced to pay close attention to its language. This motivates them to search for ways of understanding the language structures

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used in the poem, and this results in a widening of their understanding of the ways in which these language structures can be understood and used. In addition, poetry may enhance students’ discourse and cultural awareness, as well as their personal motivation. This chapter takes these arguments a step farther, for it proposes that poetry provides language learners with a way of truly exploring the meaning of a new culture and its linguistic resources. This exploration encourages them to engage with both their own culture and the target culture. Reading poetry presents English language learners with opportunities to encounter an individual voice and a particular way of using language against a rich cultural backdrop. Through their own understanding and knowledge, they can explore what the new culture means to them as it is presented by the poet from the target culture. As they think about the poet’s understanding of the new culture, they develop insights into their own culture. In this way, poetry offers a unique opportunity to develop deeply personal cross-cultural understandings. Writing poetry offers English language learners the opportunity to explore the new language as a meaning resource and to reflect on the complex nature of the migration and language-learning process. Poetry writing in a second language should emphasize self-expression and presenting a meaningful and personal language interaction. Students need not be restricted to using specific, conventional poetic forms. When writing poetry, they should be encouraged to explore the possibilities of their new language to express their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. The poetic license that is sometimes associated with the unconventional use of lexical items, grammar, and even spellings helps language learners experiment with an essential mode of expression. Writing poetry emphasizes the expression of personally meaningful experiences and allows great freedom in language use. For teachers and even experienced poetry readers, poems created by language learners may sparkle and surprise because of their unusual use of English and their cross-cultural content. Teachers 57

should embrace this as a positive development rather than as something to be corrected.

Learning a Second Language and Reading Poetry Many experts believe that the following two requirements must be met if language learners are to become proficient in English as a second language: — exposure to authentic language in real settings — instruction that focuses the learner’s attention on specific linguistic structures The first of these requirements reflects the communicative approach to language acquisition. Advocates of this approach maintain that learners acquire language more effectively when they have real communicative purposes for doing so. These authentic contexts provide the motivation for using language. The second requirement is based on the focus-on-form approach to language teaching. Research has shown that using authentic language in real settings is not enough to learn to use English proficiently. In addition to communicative contexts, English language learners also need explicit instruction in linguistic structures to make them aware of the characteristics of the language and the differences between their use of English and the normative use. Together, these two requirements involve English language learners in using real language in real contexts at the same time as they receive feedback that enables them to recognize language structures that are unconventional and beyond their current knowledge of English. In an article in TESOL Quarterly, Rod Ellis suggested that consciously considering the form of language facilitates the acquisition of English knowledge in two main ways. — It directs learners’ attention to the linguistic properties of the input — the language they can understand — and as a result, offers students the opportunity to improve their comprehension.

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— It enhances learners’ awareness of the gap between the input and their own output, the language they can produce. This enhances their ability to evaluate their implicit knowledge of the target language. Research has clearly shown, however, that many language-learning tasks focus on constructing meaning rather than on form. As a result, researchers such as John Sinclair and Peter Skehan suggest that teachers need to develop tasks that direct students’ attention specifically to form. Reading poetry helps combine the communicative and focus-on-form approaches, for it naturally links meaning construction and form. My own research shows that for native English speakers, constructing meaning while reading a poem involves closely considering the specific linguistic forms used to express this meaning. Henry Widdowson maintained that the unfamiliar language used in poetry destabilizes the learners’ familiar relating of words to world and sets them on a search for gaps in their own linguistic knowledge of the target language. My research into the way poetry is read and understood by English language learners supports this theory of language learning because it suggests that reading poetry in a second language involves a close textual analysis, as well as an effort to construct meaning. While reading a poem, English language learners notice specific lines and words, then attempt to produce a meaning for these by drawing on their linguistic and background knowledge. Reading and writing poetry seem to be tasks that direct English language learners to closely consider what they already know about specific linguistic structures and to search for new ways of understanding these structures. In addition, these tasks seem to offer opportunities for students to closely consider their own background and cultural knowledge.

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Reading Poetry with English Language Learners The following discussion of Leonard Cohen’s poem “Suzanne Takes You Down,“ which is reprinted here, took place between two advanced English language learners at a teachers’ training college in Israel. Both students were Jewish women whose first language was Hebrew. Suzanne Takes You Down by Leonard Cohen Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river, you can hear the boats go by you can stay the night beside her. And you know that she’s half crazy but that’s why you want to be there and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China. Just when you mean to tell her that you have no gifts to give her, she gets you on her wave-length and she lets the river answer that you’ve always been her lover. And you want to travel with her, you want to travel blind and you know that she can trust you because you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind. Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water and he spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him he said All men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them, but he himself was broken long before the sky would open,

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forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone. And you want to travel with him, you want to travel blind and you think maybe you’ll trust him because he touched your perfect body with his mind. Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river, she is wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters. The sun pours down like honey on our lady of the river, as she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers, there are heroes in the seaweed there are children in the morning, they are leaning out for love they will lean that way forever while Suzanne she holds the mirror. And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind and you’re sure that she can find you because she’s touched her perfect body with her mind. Elana starts the discussion, saying, “The poem starts by closing a circle … because it says ‘Suzanne takes you down’ and then it says ‘Suzanne takes your hand.’ There is all sorts of repetition; it keeps coming back in different ways. For example, look at the chorus, ‘you want to travel with her.’ “The thing that is really strange and really surprised me was this first sentence of the second stanza, ‘Jesus was a sailor.’ It really surprised me. I was sure this is a poem about a man and a woman, and suddenly Jesus appears and that confused me. There are all sorts of motifs and themes I noticed here — ‘blind,’ ‘mind,’ ‘river’ — and the motif of the water and nature — ‘flowers,’ ‘feathers,’ ‘sea,’ ‘river.’ The stanzas are the same … see, he built them the same way. The 61

structure is very structured. Lots of words that are repeated. It’s cyclical, like the cycle of nature. He tells us the story of Jesus on the water, and it is as if the water is holy. I mean that it is as if he is saying that Jesus was there all the time, even before he was a sailor, even before he revealed himself to people and began to walk on water, and then people said, ‘Okay, he is God.’ I think everyone of us has Jesus. This is very nice: he said that ‘all men would ... open.’” Elana started her examination of the poem on familiar ground: repetition. She noticed the similarity in the opening lines of the first and third stanzas, as well as the chorus and other repeated elements. Elana had no doubt read poems in Hebrew and was probably aware of the role of repetition in poetry. Because “Suzanne Takes You Down” is also a popular song, the content of the repetition may have been familiar as well. The first lines Elana mentioned relate to Suzanne and the poet’s relationship with this character. At this point, it was unclear exactly how Elana understood these lines, but the lines she chose present Suzanne as an active character — “Suzanne takes you down … takes your hand” — and show the poet’s desire to be with her — “you want to travel with her.” Elana seemed to be focusing on the relationship between Suzanne and the poet, and her comment about being sure that this was a poem about a man and a woman suggest that she viewed this as a love poem. Elana left this familiar ground when she discussed the presence of Jesus Christ in the poem and pointed out that this surprised and confused her. It is very rare to find Christ mentioned this way in Hebrew poetry, and it is possible that Elana’s surprise stemmed from this. By voicing her surprise and confusion, Elana was announcing the presence of an element that went beyond her understanding of male-female relationships. This presented her with an opportunity to develop a new insight into human relationships and, perhaps, the nature and role of Christ. At the very least, she signaled that she had achieved an insight into a new way of expressing the love between a man and a woman.

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Elana then developed her exploration of the poem by collecting information about some of the repeated motifs and themes. She pointed out “water” and “nature,” then attempted to connect form and content when she proposed that the repetition may be linked to the cycle of nature. Once again, her discussion of motifs and themes seemed to be based on her prior knowledge of poetry. The things she mentioned are classic components of poems in many languages, including Hebrew, and her identification of a relationship between the cycle of nature and the repetitive form of the poem is a well-known literary pattern. At this stage in her examination of the poem, Elana seemed to be collecting data about the poem and proposing some initial directions for developing an understanding of the poem. To do this, she used information from the poem and her own knowledge of poetry. After this, she returned to the issue of Christ and attempted to propose an understanding of his role in the poem. Her comments integrated her own background knowledge with the content of the poem from the second stanza on. She started by referring to her knowledge of Christ’s walking on water in the Christian narrative. She then went on to interpret this by presenting the water as holy and defining an omnipresent role for Christ. Her understanding proposed that Christ was there all the time, even before he revealed himself as God. She then went on to say, “Everyone of us has a Jesus,” and explain that she thought it “nice” that “all men will … open.” The exact meaning of these statements is unclear. They seem to support basic Christian articles of faith in dealing with the role of Christ as God, an omnipresent force for everyone. Particularly interesting is Elana’s use of the word “nice,” which seemed to suggest that she supports the idea that Christ plays a role in changing people’s lives. The cultural context of Elana’s statements is important, however. She is a Jewish student whose schooling was entirely in Israel. Articles of Christian faith are not taught in Israeli schools and are rarely mentioned in Israeli public discourse. As a result, her comments should be viewed as 63

an attempt to explore the meaning of Christ in the poem rather than as a statement of things she has been taught. She was working out the meaning by examining fragments of her own knowledge and what she noticed in the poem. To summarize, Elana’s initial response to the poem specified a number of features she had noticed. This is a form of close reading in which the reader collects data about the poem and tries to find some initial ways of looking at it. Elana’s ideas were not necessarily well formed or coherent; rather, they represented what had captured her attention as a reader. Her comments made it clear that she was engaging with the poem and wanted to understand it. It was also clear that she was exploring the meaning of Jesus Christ and how this image fits into the wider framework of the relationship between the poet and Suzanne. After listening to Elana’s comments, Gabby said, “I think perhaps this is a religious poem. No, it isn’t. It is more about a message they are trying to give us, that actually we are all not only river and water, but there is something mysterious and divine in us. And ‘until the sea shall free them’ means that there is something that frees you. It could be love; it could be all sorts of things: love, intelligence, water, or something you learn.” Gabby’s comments continued the direction of inquiry started by Elana. Gabby’s initial thought was that “Suzanne Takes You Down” is a religious poem, perhaps based on Elana’s grappling with the idea of Christ as a central figure. Gabby rejected this idea, however, and proposed that the issue goes beyond the figure of Christ. She said that the poem is more about something “mysterious and divine” that can be set free in everyone. Though Gabby’s comments can in many ways be viewed as remaining within the Christian narrative, she seemed to propose a broader interpretation. She suggested that the poem deals with love and how love is acquired. In her view, love is something that both motivates and must be learned explicitly. She also suggested that it might be love that has the power to free people. Her interpretation seemed to pick up on Elana’s original position that the poem deals with a 64

romantic relationship between a man and a woman and the Christian concept of the role of love in faith. Gabby broadened and redirected Elana’s initial position and refocused it on the poet’s relationship with Suzanne. Note how Gabby picked up ideas from Elana, then developed some of these and redirected others. As a result, Gabby’s response reflected a more extended and integrative understanding of the poem. In the ensuing discussion, Elana and Gabby explored several interpretations that focused on the central theme of love. These included the cyclical nature of a love relationship, the meaning of blind love, love as a binding contract, love as an emotional force that overcomes rationale thought, and even the Japanese concept of a geisha. Each of these ideas was suggested and explored by reading and commenting on a specific line or section of the poem. After this discussion, Elana and Gabby tried to summarize their interpretation of the poem. Elana began by saying, “[Suzanne] gives and gives and I [the poet] don’t have anything to give her. It is spiritual, the thought that you take all the time and don’t give anything at all. That is basically life. God gave you life, God gave you everything, and what did you give?” When Gabby suggested that they work out the message together, Elana continued: “It’s what we said before. It is ambivalent … the message is that we are all born, we live our lives trying to get to a certain target and we follow it blindly — well, not so blindly — we just follow it without knowing what we are doing. We take and take, and we don’t give anything back. It is a message that we need to think about.” At this point, Gabby jumped in and said, “Perhaps he is saying that we need to stop running after material things and to think about the spiritual. Perhaps he uses water, water all the time, that means stop being materialistic, stop looking for the small pleasures of life, start to look for the greatest joy of all, spiritual love, the greatest peace of all.” Elana added, “It is the motif of birth, rebirth. First you are in hell, and then you emerge from this, a spiritual birth. Ev65

erything here is very spiritual. He speaks of physical things, but he does not mean physical.” And Gabby concluded, “The cycle of the poem is a clue to the cycle of life. It is exactly the cycle of life.” Elana’s and Gabby’s summary of the personal meaning of “Suzanne Takes You Down” integrated many of the ideas and interpretations developed during their discussion. Throughout their discussion, they moved back and forth between interpreting the poem as a description of a love relationship between a man and a woman and as a religious poem. In the end, however, they opted for the religious interpretation. They decided that the relationship between Suzanne and the poet represents a blind seeking of the physical pleasures of life. In their view, the second stanza contained the meaning of the poem, and they elevated this to a discussion of the relationship between humans and God. According to Elana and Gabby, the poem directs people to reconsider their lives and embrace spiritual love, which will provide both joy and peace. To them, the poem offers an understanding of how life should be lived and a window onto the meaning of and need for spiritual rebirth. This understanding developed slowly, as a result of a discussion that examined the meaning of specific lines in light of their own background knowledge. The discussion did not unfold in a linear fashion, but moved back and forth among the lines of the poem as the two tested various interpretations. Their final understanding, which integrated several of their interpretations in an unusual and personally meaningful way, did not repeat accepted understandings of the poem. Instead, it represented their individual interpretations. Reading poetry should be as meaningful for English language learners as it is for native English speakers — and the discussion between Elana and Gabby showed that it can be. Language learners can not only find deep personal meaning in poetry, but also develop creative interpretations, as Elana and Gabby did.

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On the level of language learning, it is interesting to note how the two women integrated their cultural and linguistic knowledge to produce understanding. The poem’s content required them to use their cultural knowledge, which had to be stretched to produce meaning. This may also be true of students’ lexical and grammatical knowledge. It is difficult to think of another classroom task that requires students to construct this kind of explicit and extensive personal meaning. POETRY-READING STRATEGIES: A SUMMARY

The preceding vignette demonstrates how reading poetry can help English language learners apply and integrate their cultural and linguistic knowledge and broaden their understanding of existing knowledge. The following is a summary of strategies that can help them do this: — Constructing personal meaning: Reading poetry encourages English language learners to explore their own knowledge to develop a personal understanding of a poem. In many second-language classrooms, constructing this kind of understanding is considered of secondary importance because the teacher’s focus is on ensuring that students understand the explicit meaning of the text as intended by the author. In this situation, creative interpretations may be viewed as misunderstanding. When reading poetry, however, the license to explore meanings and use all available resources to create understanding are important elements of the process, even if these resources include vague associations and incomplete background and linguistic knowledge. Poetry challenges students to construct a truly personal meaning. — Choosing poems: Though English-as-a-second-language curricula often specify particular poems because of their importance in western culture, the poems chosen for study by English language learners should be personally meaningful to them. Popular 67

songs, with lyrics that can be read as poetry, are often valued and appreciated by language learners and can be a source of poetic material. An additional advantage of using popular songs is that they often reflect the concerns of a younger generation and provide insights into the country’s youth culture. This does not mean, however, that culturally valued poems should not be used. The basis for choosing a poem should be its potential for encouraging students to construct personal meaning. The level of language is also an important consideration when choosing a poem. Many ESL teachers believe that poetic language is beyond the comprehension of English language learners because poems — and even popular songs — often feature unusual graphic layouts and challenging phonological, grammar, and lexical items. Most poems, however, are relatively short and can be studied intensively. You can handle unusual lexical items and syntactic structures in a brief introduction or during the discussion. A significant reason for using poetry in second-language classrooms is that it stretches language learners’ concept of how English works. As a rule, the level of language in a poem can be more advanced than that of prose passages and slightly beyond the current linguistic knowledge of the student. As learners try to understand the poem, they are likely to discuss the very language structures that pose meaning-construction problems. With close study, aids such as dictionaries, and your guidance, students should be able to propose a tentative meaning. Still, if the language is truly archaic or so complex that even extensive discussion isn’t likely to produce meaning, a different poem should be chosen. — Establishing discussion formats: The discussion of “Suzanne Takes You Down” was organized in a dyad, or partner, format. This is one of several discussion formats that can be used when reading poetry. When de68

signing a poetry-reading lesson in a second-language classroom, keep in mind that it provides an excellent opportunity for close reading and consultation. This can be organized with the whole class, in small groups of three or four, or in pairs. Discussing a poem with others encourages students to pool their linguistic and background knowledge resources, and this allows a wider set of potential meanings to emerge. No matter which discussion format is chosen, encourage language learners to explore meanings and propose understandings, even if these are partial or associative. Working in a group means that these exploratory understandings can be fully discussed, extended, and if necessary, discarded. Designing a poetry lesson for English language learners can be as simple as setting up groups, providing a poem and instructing the groups to discuss and come up with an understanding of the poem. The most important aspect of the task is the close reading of the poem and the subsequent discussion of interpretations. — Focusing on form: As English language learners try to interpret a poem, the teacher’s role is to support the comprehension process by providing linguistic and background knowledge. You can do this by moving from group to group to help students understand the specific language structures that are the focus of their close reading. This may involve showing how the poet has extended a grammar convention or used language in an idiosyncratic way. Your intervention has two purposes. The first is to help in the meaning-construction process. The second is to point out how specific linguistic structures work and demonstrate their potential for creating meaning. This helps extend language learners’ knowledge of English. — Focusing on cultural understanding: The discussion between Elana and Gabby demonstrated that reading poetry can help students explore aspects of their new 69

culture. Because poetry tends to deal with issues of personal value and understanding, it often includes statements of the poet’s personal belief system, which reflects the broader social and cultural context in which the poem was written. This encourages English language learners to explore new cultural and personal meanings as they discuss poems with group members. This may involve you in actively providing specific knowledge of the history and culture. While moving from group to group, consider both the linguistic and cultural knowledge that the group is focusing on and support this discussion with information about the culture, if this is required and can be helpful in developing the discussion. Taken together, these strategies represent a general approach to using poetry in the second language classroom. This approach involves a close reading that requires readers to pay attention to specific lines of the poem and then, through discussion, to try to construct meaning from them. The teacher’s role is to structure a group discussion of a poem and to support the discussion by providing additional linguistic and cultural knowledge. Exploring potential meanings through discussion encourages English language learners to extend their linguistic and cultural knowledge, and your involvement enhances this language and cultural learning process. It is important to remember, however, that the aim of reading poetry is to construct a personally meaningful understanding of the poem. This is the most important goal in any language classroom, including the second-language classroom.

Writing Poetry with English Language Learners The process of learning a second language takes place in a variety of settings and involves a range of motivations for learning. In many cases, learning an additional language is

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part of the wider challenge of migrating to a new country and encountering a new culture. In second-language classrooms, poetry writing has two goals. The first is to encourage students to express emotions and thoughts that are, in many cases, integral to the language-learning process. This provides a literacy activity that enables both the second language learner and the teacher to gain insight into the world and experiences of learning a second language. The second goal is to provide an experimental setting in which linguistic resources can be freely explored. The following poems, which were written by a fifth-grade English language learner in a Midwestern American public school, exemplify these two goals. In the classroom where these poems were created, Ms Shatner, the language arts specialist, set aside time every week for writing poetry. At the end of the semester, she asked the students to choose several of their “best” poems, which were then printed and bound in a book. The English language learner chose to include these poems in her end-of-semester poetry book. The first poem was written in response to a class exercise in which Ms Shatner asked students to write a poem using the phrase “If I were ...” at the beginning of each line. The students were further instructed to think of an animal, a type of food, and a mood and to include these in the poem. If I Were If I were an animal I would be a Golden Retriever with beautiful golden hair and a big wet tongue. If I were a food I would be a carrot an orange and tasty long carrot. If I were a mood I would be a happy mood. If I were a monster I would have 5 heads, 7 eyes, no hair, 5 times as big as a 6 foot man and twice as wide.

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If I were a cereal box I would be frosted or Marshes because it tastes so bad so no body would eat me. If I were a liquid I would be milk because I would still have a chance to be spoiled and then nobody would drink me. If I were a house I would be big and made out of rocks so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting burned. If I were a chair my stomach would ache and my body would hurt because all day someone is sitting on my face. Although this poem uses simple language and a repetitive structure, it is very expressive. Within the confines of an exercise that required students to complete “If I were …” sentences, this language learner managed to express her own fears and emotional state. A careful look at the poem reveals an interesting trajectory. The first three sentences directly follow Ms Shatner’s instructions and provide statements relating to animals, food, and mood. These three statements are positive in nature. But the poem does not end with these statements. The next five statements involve the poet’s personal choices and provide evidence of a very different reality. These statements can be seen as a series in themselves. The first presents a desire to be big, strong, and scary. The choice of a monster as the object of the “If I were …” statement may reflect the poet’s sense of vulnerability in a new setting. A monster such as the one described would easily be able to protect itself. The next three sentences enhance this sense. The poet chooses three additional objects: a cereal box, milk, and a house. For each of these, she makes a statement that is based on the motif of the need for self-protection. The poet would be frosted so that she would taste “bad” and would therefore never be eaten; she would be spoilt milk so that she would not to be drunk; and she would be a rock house so that she would not be burned. In each case, the

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danger of physical destruction is a fear, and the speaker would protect herself by being undesirable or strong. The final sentence presents a statement of pain and humiliation. The poet describes herself as a chair and explains what it is like to be sat on. This description involves personifying the chair: giving it a “stomach ache” and describing how it would hurt because “someone is sitting on my face.” Although this poem uses simple, everyday language, the images are powerful and seem to express the emotional state of the poet, who describes feelings of fear, vulnerability, pain, and humiliation in her new school and new country. This poem provides insights into how the experience of migration was actually experienced by this young poet. The next poem was also the result of a classroom activity and was similar in format to the previous exercise. Ms Shatner asked the students to write a poem titled “I Remember the Things I Love and Don’t.” She told the students to begin each sentence with the words “I remember” and continue by describing things they loved or did not love. I Remember the Things I Love or Don’t I remember my love of dogs I remember when I brought a dog home My mom thought it was cute But didn’t let me keep it. I remember when I brought a rabbit home And lied to my mom That I found it down stairs Surrounded with cats. I remember the first time I saw snow I remember in a two hour flight That my ear hurts and in the end we found out That I had an ear infection on the plain I remember the war when I was three years old Because it was frightening. I remember my rabbit died. I remember the cat that had citines in front of my door. I remember my friends that miss me. I remember when I cried 73

Because I miss somewhere else I remember when I first jumped with a horse above a high stump I remember who I love I don’t forget people or animals I remember close bodies I remember every thing except social studies But most important I will not forget My life My happy and sad life about how one day I will get a dog. This poem is characterized by its deep reflective and emotive content. Asked to reflect on things that she does or does not love, the language learner produced a poem that reflected powerful personal experiences and emotions, including war, death, fear, birth, and love. The poem is framed by the poet’s feelings for dogs. It starts with a statement about her love of dogs and develops this with the image of loss that appears in the next line. The poet loves dogs, found a dog, and brought it home. But she couldn’t keep the animal, so the image becomes one of loss and longing. The poem ends by reaffirming the poet’s desire for a dog and voicing her hope of achieving this. This framing device represents the dog as a symbol of resolution, a friend who will make the poet happy and provide love and closeness. As a result, the dog embodies a sense of loneliness and loss at the same time as it represents a remedy for the poet’s sense of abandonment. The central themes of loss and loneliness are developed throughout the poem. The poet remembers a rabbit that she brought home and which later died, the pain of an ear infection, and finally, war. The most moving and direct statements of loss and loneliness relate to the migration process and are represented by the lines “I remember my friends that miss me / I remember when I cried / Because I miss somewhere else.” This last statement is especially interesting because it focuses on the memory of the loss itself rather

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than on nostalgia for the home country. It is a memory of mourning for “somewhere else.” Integrated into the central themes of loss and loneliness, however, are images of love, success, and closeness. The poet remembers the first time she saw snow, the success of a horse jump, and the physical closeness of others. These memories combine with the images of loss to produce a complex picture of the speaker’s emotional state — as she says, “I will not forget / My life / My happy and sad life.” As in the previous poem, the experience of the migration process seems to have been painful, and the themes of mourning, loss, and loneliness seem to override the positive new experiences. But the positive experiences and memories are there, and the potential for a better future does exist. The final poem in the series was inspired by class exercise on pattern poems. Ms Shatner explained that the graphic form of a poem can be used to convey meaning and asked the students to write poems using various graphic patterns. T.V. unreal, looking frightening, briking, sitting bad message, choice, life realing, doing, feeling controlling, willing reality In this poem, the English language learner comments on the role of television in western society. What is interesting is the poet’s willingness to play with language to make the poem express her meaning. She criticizes television for its ability to control minds and reality. Although the poet clearly recognizes the lack of reality in television, television is described as “controlling, willing reality.” Notice the use of -ing forms, such as “frightening” and “doing,” which contribute to a sense of fast-paced action. This sense is enhanced by the form of the poem: very short, centered lines and single words separated by commas. The poet also showed creativity and a willingness to explore 75

how English works when she invented the words “realing” and “briking.” When considered together, these elements of form help convey the poet’s message and characterize the object being discussed. Rather than being intimidated by the idea of exploring language meaning in pattern poetry, this poet seems to have embraced the idea and clearly attempted to use a wide variety of linguistic forms to convey his meaning. POETRY-WRITING STRATEGIES: A SUMMARY

The preceding poems demonstrate how writing poetry can help English language learners apply and integrate their cultural and linguistic knowledge and broaden their understanding of existing knowledge. The following is a summary of strategies that can help them do this: — Expressing personally meaningful experiences, thoughts, and feelings: Writing poetry enables English language learners to express their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. Some language teachers believe that the limited English proficiency of language learners means that they cannot express themselves through poetry and therefore reserve this genre for experienced native English speakers. But as the examples in the previous section demonstrate, it is possible to express complex ideas using simple vocabulary and syntactic structures. In addition, it is important to remember that learning an additional language is nearly always a difficult process that may be facilitated through reflection. For immigrant language learners, language learning inevitably involves a period of stress and challenge, and writing poetry enables them to explore their feelings about their experiences. Doing this can provide insights for both language learners and their teachers. Being a language teacher is never restricted to teaching the rules and conventions of a language. There is always a personal component to this educational enterprise. Writing poetry is one way of en76

couraging students to reflect on this aspect of the language-learning process. — Exploring language: Writing poetry presents English language learners with opportunities to use English in an exploratory manner. Rather than being expected to conform to a series of linguistic rules and conventions, the poetry-writing task enables writers to use language creatively without being penalized for breaking the rules. This is an unusual situation in second-language classrooms, where learning new rules and conventions seems to be the norm. Writing poetry can encourage students to consider new possibilities and experiment with modes of expression. Experimenting with language helps language learners broaden their understanding of how specific forms function and how they can be used expressively. — Scaffolding poetry-writing tasks: Providing structured poetry-writing activities helps ease the fears of English language learners, who may be intimidated by the idea of writing in English. All the poems presented in the previous section, for example, were created after the teacher provided a general theme with an emotive component and suggested a beginning. In this situation, all that was required of students was a willingness to complete the line by exploring their own experiences, thoughts, and feelings. This kind of scaffolding makes the poetry-writing process relatively simple and unthreatening. As the examples demonstrated, however, this does not mean that the content will not be meaningful. Additional scaffolding strategies may include providing a specific poetic form, lists of words or phrases, or an idea that draws on the writer’s unique knowledge. The role of scaffolding is to create a situation in which the language learner can fulfill the dual aims of expressing meaningful ideas and exploring language. In some ways, scaffolded exercises help students explore language and express their own ideas more easily than less structured activities. 77

Summing Up Poetry can play an important role in second language classrooms. English language learners are capable of creating truly meaningful experiences, and their literacy activities should not, therefore, be limited to the mechanical aspects of language learning. Reading poetry provides language learners with opportunities to explore their new culture and their home culture as well the personal meanings of the poet. This process can enhance language learners’ linguistic knowledge as they attempt to construct meaning. Writing poetry provides language learners with opportunities to explore the experience of learning a second language and to express their thoughts and feelings about this process. This can provide an opening for both language learners and their teachers to gain insights into the world of the second language learner and the migration experience. At the same time, writers can explore the potential of English to construct meaning and broaden their idea of how the language can be used. If used effectively, reading and writing poetry can create situations in which language learners discover the importance of self-expression and constructing personal meaning. And teachers can provide an experience that is at the heart of all communication: the desire to use language to express oneself poetically. This experience need not be limited to native English-speaking readers and writers. As the examples in this chapter demonstrate, readers and writers who are learning English can also participate in meaningful literacy experiences.

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . P O E T R Y, L I T E R A C Y INSTRUCTION, AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

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n very broad terms, the aim of literacy instruction is to provide members of a specific community with the ability to function on the personal, educational, economic, and public levels of society. Traditionally, literacy educators have fulfilled these aims by teaching students a limited set of culturally defined written genres. Overwhelmingly, the texts chosen for inclusion in the curriculum were monolingual, monocultural, used standard forms of language, promoted the nation’s ideological values, and had a book or page format. Instruction focused on informational text and discovering explicit meaning. This kind of curriculum has been criticized for presenting a distorted picture of the way literate communication is conducted. As is clearly evident from events in the world today, this conventional, back-to-basics approach to literacy instruction is simply inadequate. The safe world of a limited set of clearly defined, culturally valued written texts and understandings has shattered into a multiplicity of multicultural and multilingual written texts presented in a variety of formats, as well as conflicted relationships between various national, cultural, religious, and ethnic groups. This shattering of the monocultural myth is the direct result of developments in the realms of technology, communication, travel, economics, and society. What is needed in the twenty-first century is an approach to literacy that encourages self-expression and the con-

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struction of implicit meaning. The new conflicts and new texts that populate the twenty-first century world require learners who can find meanings in new contexts and reflect on their own understandings. This is a world that requires flexible thinking and the ability to project one’s self-concept in a variety of new modes of communication to a multitude of audiences. Finding and proposing innovative and personal meanings is of central importance in this new world. An education system based on the traditional approach to literacy will quickly revert to the fascist tendency to produce the standardized individual (while ignoring the obvious diversity that exists) and ill prepare students for the real challenges facing the world today. Two challenges are foremost in this emerging world. The first is the need to explore and understand the complexities of an individual’s life in society; the second is the most basic need to find personal meaning in life. Poetry has a central role to play in the literacy program developed to meet both these challenges.

Constructing Meaning through Poetry This chapter presents two poems that exemplify and explain the role of poetry in exploring the complexities of life and in finding personal meaning in life Although the poems were unconnected when they were written, I will discuss them as a single, interconnected unit in which personal meaning and the meanings of another are explored. The first poem was published on the Internet by the Iranian American poet Zara Houshmand and relates to the events of September 11, 2001. The second poem is one I wrote fifteen years ago about my experience of being a second-generation Kindertransport-Holocaust survivor. Here is the first.

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Another Day and Counting by Zara Houshmand It’s routine now: I drive my son to school, the sun just breaking through Pacific mist. Driving home, I listen to the news and quietly cry. My son won’t listen anymore: ”All opinions, hot air. Call me when they find some facts.” Proud and fragile privilege of youth: demand the truth. The sky recedes, ashamed. What passes now for truth on this cold ball? The sky is pink with shame beyond the concrete ribbons where commuters crawl. What’s in that microscopic dust that bends our light to post-card pinks? Dust of concrete hopes exploded, dust of homes of sun-baked brick, complex chains of human dust and dust of promises to youth. Tonight my cheeseburger arrives with a flag poked proudly in the bun. The tiny paper stars and stripes seem far away, victory through the wrong end of the telescope, moon-landing on the circle of my plate. The waitress smiles broadly, but the food tastes bad, or maybe I’ve just lost my appetite. The three stanzas of this poem relate to three everyday scenes that, together, chronicle a day in the life of the poet and her family. This poem was published in The Iranian, an electronic journal, on October 22, 2001, less than two months after the terrorist attacks on the United States. At the time, these events were very much in the mind of every American citizen and resident. 81

The poem starts with the words “It’s routine now” and describes the poet’s driving her son to school. This first line is in sharp contrast to the context of the events of September 11 and highlights the sense of disparity between everyday life and the experience of horror. This is an experience that every witness of an atrocity and anyone who has experienced grief is aware of. Thousands of people have died, yet the world has not stopped. In fact, as specified in this opening line, the routine continues. The poet, we are told, is driving her son to school and listening to the news on the radio. This everyday event produces two very different responses. The speaker responds to the news with sorrow, while her son responds in the second stanza with indignation. When this poem was published, the news was full of accusations against various Arab and Muslim groups. Although the terrorist group Al Qaeda was identified as the perpetrator of the attack, other parties were also suspected of being involved, and mainstream American public discourse seemed to be directed against any Arab or Muslim group. The speaker demonstrates her own feelings by “quietly crying.” Her son demands “facts” and objects to the stereotyping and accusations directed at all Muslims. The third stanza presents an extended metaphor of the sky, as the poet looks out her car window. The sky is personified as being “ashamed” and “pink with shame.” This metaphor is based on the sky’s pink color, which is a sign of shame and indicates blushing. This shame is directly connected to two things: the issue of truth referred to by the poet’s son and the presence of dust in the sky. On a physical level, the cause of the pink sky is microscopic dust, but this dust also becomes a metaphor. The dust is “dust of concrete hopes exploded,” “dust of homes of sun-baked brick,” “complex chains of human dust,” and “dust of promises to youth.” In this complex, extended metaphor, the dust, which is the cause of the sky’s shame, has four sources. The first is the destruction of the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center, which produced an enormous dust cloud. Notice the reference to “exploded” hopes, which may rep82

resent the towers as a positive symbol, perhaps of the hope of economic development. The destruction of the buildings produces in the poet a sense of shame and of being ashamed. The second source of dust is the destruction of “sun-baked homes.” This may refer to the homes of Afghans and the actions of the American armed forces in response to the events of 9/11. The third source is the horrific image of the nearly three thousand people who were incinerated and literally turned to dust in the terrorist attack. This image is directly reminiscent of the Holocaust, in which the dust created when people were burnt in crematoriums fell upon the surrounding landscape. The final source of dust is the figurative destruction of “promises to youth.” The implication seems to be that after the events of September 11, 2001, and the response of the American people, hopes for and promises of a better future have been crushed. This seems to suggest despair, which is emphasized by the juxtaposition of the sources of the dust against the vision of the sky as “post-card” pink. This extended metaphor forces readers to confront the complexity of the poet’s feelings and understandings. She is horrified by the events of September 11 and the way the United States is responding to these events. She despairs at the destruction of human life and of dreams of a better future, at the human thought that could lead to such an atrocity, and at the results of the terrorists’ actions. But she is also a double victim. Like every other American, she has been hurt by the atrocity, but at the same time, she and her son are the victims of the stereotyping of anyone who has any connection with Islam, the Middle East, and Arabs. The final stanza of the poem is set at the end of the day in what seems to be an American diner. The poet orders that most American of all meals, a cheeseburger. It arrives with a patriotic symbol, a small stars-and-stripes flag, stuck in the bun. The poet relates this image to one of the most symbolically important acts in American history: the first moon landing. The bun of the cheeseburger is the moon, and the flag is a symbol of victory in the space race. 83

Unfortunately, the poet experiences the restaurant’s small and rather meaningless act of patriotism as an alienating event. Rather than bringing her closer to others who are also suffering in the aftermath of September 11, the presence of the flag distances her from the society in which she lives. She sees the flag “through the wrong end of a telescope,” as a tool that intensifies her feelings of alienation. The smiling waitress is completely oblivious to the ramifications of her offering, and not surprisingly, the poet loses her appetite for the hamburger. The poem sums up the complexities of life for an Iranian American at the end of 2001. Houshmand interweaves everyday events, symbolic representations, and her own interpretation of these real and mythic experiences in an attempt to explore the meaning of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The poem challenges stereotypical portrayals of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks as a simple dichotomy between good and evil and raises issues relating to living in the United States and the way Americans responded to the attacks. Popular patriotic reactions, including gathering round a symbol such as the flag, are shown to be alienating for some. This poem demonstrates the role that poetry can play in powerful events like the reaction to the terrorist attacks. Writing a poem enabled Houshmand to express her understanding of the complexities of her life and to explore her personal beliefs and the way she sees herself. She takes into account her community but speaks for herself, and readers are immediately struck by her multicultural essence. Houshmand helps us explore her world and gain insight into what it means to be an Iranian American. The second poem is one I wrote in an attempt to understand my feelings as a second-generation Kindertransport-Holocaust survivor. For many secondgeneration survivors, the Holocaust is an enigma. Though we can describe what happened as a historical event and even identify its causes and effects, its role in our own families and its effects on us as individuals cast it in a different light. It is this that I felt compelled to address, and it was only through poetry that I found this possible. 84

Crayons by David Hanauer Your faces, multiplied Xeroxed a hundred times in a different form in a different order and then stuffed into ten different plain paper bags unrecognizable but I can still see you with the red marks that I drew with crayon and the yellow Star of David drawn by me in crayon I couldn’t help myself the pictures being so youthful so clean, so sterile I wanted to know you, feel you so I started to color in with the red, yellow, black and blue crayons red, yellow, black and blue crayons I highlighted your faces and gave you red lips I put a blue line by the side of your nose and drew in a yellow star on your jacket I blackened out your cheeks and took away your hair and tried to imagine you in a concentration camp. I filled in the white spaces with red and black to see you bruised and physically abused I took away your jacket and gave you rough, black stripes for a thin prison jacket 85

and I transformed you with crayons red, yellow, black and blue red, yellow, black and blue. When I wrote this poem, I had two photographs of my grandparents in mind. I never met them — except in dream and nightmare — but my parents had two old pictures of them posing for the camera before World War II. At the time, they were in their early 40s, well dressed and very serene. As I grew up, I found it difficult to relate to my grandparents. On the one hand, their photographs were in our house and were part of a terrible family history. This history, I was told, represented the way all Jews were treated — and was thus part of my own future, as well as of my family’s past. On the other hand, I never knew my grandparents, and they seemed distant. Their photographs did not connect them to me or to the Holocaust. In the pictures, they did not look like Holocaust victims; they merely looked like people from another place and time. My home environment enhanced this feeling of distance and horror. My parents rarely spoke of the Holocaust, and it was only at the age of eight that I discovered that my father was not English. This poem was an attempt to explore these feelings. In the poem, I created the image of my young self drawing with crayons on Xeroxed copies of photographs of my grandparents. Their faces are youthful, clean, and sterile. At the beginning, there is no sign of the Holocaust, but slowly, images appear: the yellow Star of David, the blackened face and shaved head, the red-and-black bruising, and finally, the stripes of a prison jacket. The sterile, unrecognizable people in the photographs are transformed into concentration camp victims. This transformation is made all the more horrific by the contrast between childish crayons and the reality of the concentration camp — the juxtaposition of a child’s and an adult’s world. The poem represents the meeting of my history and my self, and is an attempt to really feel the connection between the two. 86

The poem is, I think, successful, for I cannot read it without feeling strong emotions. When I read, the horror of the Holocaust becomes very real, but the true horror is the ease with which people can become objects and disappear. It is knowing that my grandparents were there and that they were murdered. What the two poems — “Another Day and Counting” and “Crayons” — have in common is their presentation of the inner world of two people who are struggling to discover the meaning of events that have happened around them. In both cases, the events are historical, but the crucial aspect of each poem is the poet’s response. Readers of the poems are invited to move beyond simplistic notions about the Holocaust and 9/11 to grapple with some of the complexities of life and gain insight into how individual understandings and those of society are intermingled. Life is not simple and understanding another is not a direct process. Each of these poems is a case of real communication in which the poets reveal as much to themselves as to others. The poems also represent a meeting ground for interpersonal and cross-cultural understanding. Reading them enables the audience to explore the complexities of the world and to construct meaning in the world.

Poetry and the Meaning of Life Throughout this book, I have argued in favor of a different concept of literacy and literary instruction. In an education system controlled by benchmarks, it is easy to fall into the trap of viewing literacy education as a collection of discrete technical skills that need to be acquired in linear fashion over time. In this system, literacy refers to knowledge of phonics and vocabulary, and the ability to correctly answer multiple-choice reading comprehension questions. In this process, the individual is very nearly forgotten. The same system promotes literary education as the acquisition of knowledge of culturally valued literary authors and set responses to a series of required readings. 87

The emphasis of this book — and especially this final chapter — is on using literacy to create meaningful interpersonal and cross-cultural communication. From an ideological point of view, this approach places the individual at the center of the meaningful universe. The examples I presented were not created by well-known poets, nor are they artifacts of the western cultural heritage; rather, they are the products of personally meaningful literacy activities. If they convince, it is because readers can sense the sincerity they embody. This is essentially an approach to literacy that promotes meaningful literacy activities as a means of exploring the relationship between the internal and external worlds of the individual. This approach does not ignore the role of community, ethnicity, and culture; rather, it embraces these as interpretive resources that each individual has been exposed to and has, to varying degrees, internalized. Underpinning this approach is an existential philosophical position, which maintains that every individual is responsible for constructing meaning in the world — for finding the meaning of life. Reading and writing poetry has a special role to play in developing meaningful literacy. Through poetry reading and writing, one can find personal meaning and explore and come to understand the complexities of an individual’s life. As the world moves farther into the twenty-first century, old allegiances are being questioned and multicultural contacts are daily events. In this world, searching for meaning and understanding becomes an ever greater challenge. Poetry is a resource that can help people discover meaning in life and explore their own understandings. By using an aesthetic cognitivist approach to poetry in the language arts classroom, we can increase students’ understanding of the complexity of being an individual in society and help them find their own meaning in life. I wrote this book with this aim in mind.

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . BIBLIOGRAPHY

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . CREDITS

Care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material contained in this text. Information that will enable the publisher to rectify references or credits in subsequent printings will be gladly received. p. 25: “Dinosaurs,” “Strawberries,” “Boom” and “Ice Skating” — International Reading Association, from “Poetry is like Directions for your Imagination!”, Christine Duthie and Ellie Zimet, The Reading Teacher, 1992. p. 31: “Kitchenette Building” — Gwendolyn Brooks, from “A Street in Bronzeville,” The World of Gwendolyn Brooks, Brooks Permissions, 1945. pp. 53–54: “Suzanne Takes You Down” — “Suzanne.” Lyrics and music by Leonard Cohen. Published by Sony/ATV Songs LLC(BMI). All rights reserved. Used by permission, Sony/ATV Songs LLC (BMI), administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Canada, Toronto, Ont. M3C 2J9. p. 72: “Another Day and Counting” — © Zara Houshmand, 2001. Used by permission.

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