POETRY TEACHING NOTES
This place we call home is much larger than just where we
live. I like to use local history and heritage as a place to begin gathering
information for the poetic process. To develop a sense of place, and from
there, to explore our global connections. Where we live and who we are
profoundly affects our culture and art. We are all immigrants; we've come from
distant shores to sink roots down into the soil called California.
California has always been a multi-cultural state, if not a
state of mind. It began long before California was "discovered" by
the Spanish. No one is sure what the Native American names for California were,
but the Coastonoan Ohlones of the San Francisco Bay region have left us one
small clue. All that remains of an entire culture's mythology and culture is
this fragment, Dancing on the brink of the world.
The multitudes of Native American languages and dialects in
California number into the thousands. According to anthropologists, this
phenomenon could only have happened over a long period of time—say 10,000 years
or more—by infiltration of new groups coming across from the Bering Sea, and by
groups so stable, their common dialects became separate languages over vast
tracks of time. But there are also cultural and linguistic connections between
the Pomos of Sonoma, one of the oldest groups in California and the Mixtec of
Oaxaca, Mexico.
When Hernando Cortés sailed to the Americas in 1535 from
Spain, he was looking for a mythological land of gold. The naming of California
began long before California was "discovered." When Cortés sighted
the lower tip of Baja, he named the "island" California after an
amazon queen Califia, from a novella, The Adventures of Esplandian. Perhaps it
was the fabulous pearls in La Paz that made him think this was mythological
California, or maybe in bitter irony, he named the bleak vast desert
"California" as a joke. But he wasn't so wrong, because in 1849, gold
was discovered. One student wrote: Califia summoned the mountains,/She summoned
the trees, the winds, the streams/And the hills as well... (1)
More and more teachers tell me their students seem to lack
in self-esteem. Could I include something on self-awareness? This becomes my
focal point. I like to start out with an autobiography. "Auto" means
"self," "bio" means "life," and
"graphy" or "graphics" means "picture."
Self-life-picture.
I ask students to write me a letter about where they were
born, where they've lived, who they were named after, their nationalities, what
languages their families speak, do they have any famous ancestors, any family
stories, traditions, etc. I brainstorm with them. Do they have a secret place?
What do they want to be when they grow up, what do they think they'll be
instead? What places would they like to travel to? Who are they, what do they
dream of?
By the year 2000, the dominant population will be the
so-called "minorities" with the largest group being Latin American,
followed by Asian, and Black populations. This variety of cultures becomes a
fertile ground for the writing of poetry. The students' own family history can
be incorporated into their writing.
Notes: this is a list of ideas, rather than a lesson plan.
(See Nuts & Bolts for more details). I usually meet with a given class one
hour a week for ten sessions. I cover a wide range of poetic ideas and styles,
some of which are included here.
To break the ice, metaphorically speaking, I start poetry
writing classes with bi- or tri-lingual decks of word-cards or phrases. Pick
approximately 600 words and parts of phrases from poems, or have students help
design a deck. I often have them do the translations. My word-cards are in
Spanish, Russian, Chinese as well as English—students are fascinated by
different languages.
Shuffle the deck, pass out five word-cards to each
student. Choose five words from their collection to do a demonstration poem on
the chalk board. Ask for synonyms, homonyms and antonyms for each word and
write them down. Build a poem using words from the clusters—include tense
changes too. Add as many other words as needed.
Include a comparison, a feeling
(without naming it), make sure it's a image (a painting with words). Student
Matt Melodia wrote: A young deer/occasionally came/and ate the rich
apples./They taste like a dream. (2)
Limit the poem to 3-5 words per line. Do revisions, give it
a title. Have students make their own poems. When they've used their five words
(or related words) give them five more, etc. They can add onto the first poem
or start a new one. Lie under a tree/Sadness/Watch it flower. (3)
Poems can be as serious or as silly as they want. A
variation, try word-card haiku inspired by Impressionist paintings. Each line
becomes a brush-stroke. Dense morning/Pulling the sky down/Clouds fighting
again. (4 )
Word-cards help students break out of predictable writing patterns, forcing them to
taste words they wouldn't normally use in a poem. It stretches their vocabulary
and opens new doors of expression. Look up a word sometime in a good
dictionary.
English has collected a portmanteau of words from most languages of
the world, not just from the Indo-European tree. The Oxford English or the
American Heritage dictionaries include the meaning and origin of words.
"Conspiracy," to breathe together, is related to inspiration which
means to breathe life/creativity into; as from the godhead. And other words:
perspire, respire, respite are related. We are a conspiracy of poets breathing
together as we write.
Another lesson idea might include the tracking down of a
family history, looking up the origin of your names and writing about them.
This is a good place to introduce narrative poetry that tells a story. Who were
you named after? What's in a name? An entire thumbnail sketch of history.
I
make copies of several baby name books and pass them out. Sometimes students
can find their last names too. Harrison is Harry's or Harold, the army ruler's
son. Aguilar is of the eagles. Don't forget nick-names and baby names. Memory,
history and origin combined.
Use information from your birth sign, stones, flowers, etc. What element are you?
Air, earth, fire or water? Write a poem from that perspective. Gary Snyder's
"As For Poets" is a good model poem. Are you a mind or a space
poet?
How about giving yourself
another name, a totem or clan name, a secret name: place, season, animal,
direction, color, etc. The naming of people, places, animals, and things goes
back to our ancestral beginnings. The cave paintings of Lascaux, France and
Altamira (to "look up" in Spanish), Spain, whether the art work of Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal man, invoke the animals of the hunt. A naming.
One of the oldest European poems 2,000 to 3000 years old, an
Irish fragment attributed to the bard Amergín (also the Welsh Taliesin) is a
mnemonic naming of knowledge, coding of information. It is also an incantation.
The metaphoric naming of things and ideas. I am the salmon of the seven
leaps. Who but I... (Robert Graves, The White Goddess).
ON A HILL WHERE POETS WALK
I am a wonder among flowers
running on a hill where poets walk.
The feel of fresh grass under my feet
where tears of the sun are falling,
where every head is guarded by a shield,
I am a young flower blooming,
but I am free to do anything; to go anywhere.
If I am free; am I the blaze on the hill?
Roxanne Nelson (5)
You could bury an acrostic message spelled down the
page—your name, your secret animal, place or thing name... Or bury a code word
associated with your name as a skeleton by which to hang a poem from. Take the
letters of your full name. How many other words can you compose from it? Make a
list and use as many of them as you can in a poem.
Bring in mirrors and write about yourselves and family. The
past, the present, the future, an aspect of time. Read selections from David
Meltzer's Two Way Mirror. David said: Poetry is a two-way mirror. The outside looking in;
the inside looking out. A reflection is a reverse image of yourself. No one
knows what they really look like as others see them. The camera unveils us as
the rest of the world sees us; face-forward.
What does it mean to see yourself
backwards and not as others view you? How about when you look into multiple
mirrors and infinity stretches out like a green lake—what happens when you
enter into that world? Follow up with improvisational mirror exercises, where
students pair off and slowly mirror each other's movements.
Have them write
about the process. Have them do a contour drawing of their partner without
looking at the paper, then write a poem about looking into their partner's
eyes. What do they see? What else?
Writing comes from pictures. The Phoenician seafarers
(modern-day Lebanon) invented modern "Roman" writing to keep track of
goods. A was aleph, the ox.
See its two ears
and horns? B was beth, house or temple,
C
was gimel, the ship of the desert (can you guess it by its shape?),
and D was daleth, or door.
The Greeks came along and
borrowed the alphabet, renaming the letters, alpha, beta, etc. Hence the word
Alphabet comes from ox and house. Another naming.




Write a fragment of a lost epic poem. "Translate"
the inscriptions of Minoan Linear B, the story boards of Easter Island or an
Aleutian skin story from Technicians of the Sacred, by Jerome Rothenberg.
Decode the message while listening to the song of a humpback whale. Do fake
translations, or transliterations from poems in Russian, Japanese, Chinese,
etc. However the poem is deciphered is correct.
"The painter Gauguin, exploring his own French/Peruvian
roots, and disturbed by the destruction of the Polynesian concept of paradise
wrote on his most famous painting, Who are we and where are we going?
You could explore environmental and
ecological issues which reach across racial boundaries. Writing from pictures;
a before and after. Many students are concerned for the future welfare of the
earth. Look for patterns to emulate, moving from the smaller picture of self,
to the larger issues of the world.
Cycles and systems—why it's important to preserve the place
where we live. Building on prime farmland, waste management, air pollution, and
recycling are issues that affect us all. Minnesota poet Thomas McGrath wrote in
Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Write letters to the earth, the sky, the ground, the sea, a tree, the
ozone layer, the rain forest, endangered species, etc. Show the
interconnectedness of things.
The environmentalist John Muir who was
responsible for founding and preserving our national parks, (Yosemite,
Yellowstone, etc.), said everything is connected to everything else in the universe.
A prime example of habitat destruction are the feral non-native Russian boars
in Sonoma County. In 1811, the Russians who colonized Fort Ross had no idea the
pigs would plow whole hillsides devouring everything in their path including
rare wildflowers and small animals and ground nesting birds.
Build writing ideas on curriculum already developed.
Science, social studies, geography, sociology, etc. Since fourth grade focuses
on California history and the missions, one could write about a day in the life
of a Pomo or Coast Miwok sighting the first ship...A white bird filled with
pale ghosts rose from the belly of the sea, or life at the mission, or Vallejo's adobe.
Try to paint a
vivid picture of how life was lived. Visual and tactile stimuli are often a
good place to write from. If Califia were here now, what would she say?
Bring in role models from other cultures. Not just poems,
but people who can share their heritage with students will invoke interesting
writing, especially if you already have students writing poetry about
themselves. Remember a poem is an image with rich comparisons and feelings.
Think of the fragment, Dancing on the brink of the world as part of a letter to an unknown
friend. The possibilities are endless.
*
* *
Nuts & Bolts—We each our own methods of teaching
poetry—we've all gotten ideas from each other and refined and modulated them to
fit our styles. Every time I teach the improvisational process may change but
the philosophy doesn't. I
encourage teachers to write in the hopes that they will invent their own
teaching form, and not take mine into the classroom Monday morning. But I've
included a basic teaching format that works well for me.
I divide my one-hour block roughly into four 15 minute
segments: The first 15 min. we read typed poems (about 1/3 of the class) from
the week before, review last week's lesson, make in-class corrections, typos,
delete words, etc. As a warm-up exercise, students may underline five words
from the typed poems and use them during the five minute freewrite, or they may
revise a typed poem. They must write non-stop for five minutes about anything.
Often they have a poem they've been wanting to write, or classmate's typed
poems generate new ideas.
The second 15 min. segment is a lecture. I introduce new
poetry idea, sample adult poems, and do a group poem on the board if there's
time. I write on the board what I want them to cover: image,
metaphor/comparison, & feeling/emotion, etc. Most students finish up in 15-20
minutes, but this format gives students about 30 minutes to write. I circulate
around the room and read work in progress, make suggestions, etc. If they
finish one poem, they should add onto it or write another. About 10 to 15
minutes before class is over, we read aloud poems from the lesson or from
freewrite.
Students use bound Classmate journals for the poetry
workshop and date each day's work.
I read the journals and write comments after each workshop. I type up the best
poems (about 1/3 the class) as role models which inspires new student work. At
the end of the residency, they'll each have a large collection of writing to
choose from for the anthology. I give them a computer print-out of all their
typed poems (at least two or more per student). We meet individually and in
small groups to edit and review possible poems and make final revisions for the
book.
***
1. Matthew Keough, 4th grade, from Still Writing on Rocks,
Matanzas School, Santa Rosa. 2. Matt Melodia, 6th grade, 3, 4 ,5. Gabe Silva, 3rd grade, Brandi
Gordonoff, 3rd grade, Roxanne Nelson, 5th grade, from The Power of the Reckless
Sleeper, Mark West School, Santa Rosa. Edited by Maureen Hurley.
Probably originally written in the mid-1980s for a CPITS anthology, (I was working with John Oliver Simon at the Oakland Museum during that time). My oldest file is dated 1990. (It's a dead Unix executable fire box...I finally figured out that executable means to kill your file, not that it's functional.)I will post this in December of 1990 so I can easily find it.