Poetry and Help
Okay I don't usually like to use this blog as a vehicle for getting help with my work, but today I make an exception.
I have to write a unit as part of my final course to get my teaching license. It has to be geared to 9th graders or 10th graders in a heavily minority inner city high school (Denver South to be precise).
I have chosen to cover Modern American and British Literature. I have outlined the unit and am now looking for brainstorms and ideas.
What are some movements I should cover, actual poems I should cover, and poets I should expose them to? Obviously I have things like the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat Poetry Movement, and the Modernist Movement already. I am familiar with the era, but want some outside input.
What do you all think is important in modern poetry?
Thanks and I will be back later with a post that is a little more substantial. First, though, it is off to class and to think about what will stir the pot and get a smile around here later on.
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re: poetry needs help :)
What do you all think is important in modern poetry?
Y'know, the very little bit I've looked into this in the past few years, I've come away with the feeling that modern "serious poetry" is kinda directionless. Almost anything goes - except rhymed and metered verses, of course.
What about exposing kids to the daily snippets of poetry, mostly modern, offered by Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac?
And maybe a comparison of something like Keillor's venture with a unit on (gasp) modern song lyrics? covering various popular genres? Some of your students likely collect lyrics already anyway, might be an anchor to the "higher brow" stuff.
Exactly..
In fact what I have ended up doing is working from song/rap lyrics out (rule of thumb is work from what kids find accessible outward to what they don't). From there I think I can work back toward the beat poetry movement, 60s song lyrics (Dyllan was a poet, I think we all know that), and eventually stuff like Eliot. We will see, but I appreciate your input. By the way, we are on the same wavelength with "snippetts).
Later
re: exactly
stuff like Eliot
T. S. Eliot? What, you got a classroom full of MENSA candidates? Hell, I can't read Eliot and get anything out of it except dazed and confused these days!
:)
I think I like your strategy, but if it were me I'd be tempted to work from "easier" to "more difficult" without trying to work in the history, i.e. different styles of contemporary work. If you need a lot of history to understand a piece of writing, then I think you'd better work forward. Maybe that's phase 2 ...
But then that's one reason why I quit teaching :). Let us know how it goes.
Eliot
Not as a an author to teach (the wasteland was 4 weeks of college I will never get back!) but to expose. At the level I will be teaching I am big on exposure and little bites of things. No reason to emmerse them, but a lot of reasons that they should know who these people are on a level of recognition, and to have an idea of what those people did for art.
Later
First, I adore The
First, I adore The Wasteland. Just wanted to throw that completely random thought out there.
Second, if you are going to be teaching 9th and 10th graders, I think the rap thing is a fabulous idea. If the idea is to get them to understand poetry, you could always use an idea from my favorite professor in college. We broke into groups and picked a song, and then interpreted it for the class. But given the age group, there's a strong chance that somebody will try and pull a fast one and put a really objectionable song, just to see if they can.
I think you could easily tie rap into the beat movement. I wouldn't necessarily work backwards or forwards, but instead just go with whatever makes sense logically.
Finally, I agree completely with giving them lots of exposure with very little depth. I remember my high school teacher being fascinated with Sylvia Plath, and the girl who got assigned her, though very bright, complained that she was assigned "the lady that killed herself". All of Sylvia Plath was reduced to that moment, and her poetry became less relevant than her death. Give them a ridiculous amount of exposure, and they will discover for themselves what they like.
The Wasteland ... and ...
... there's always Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Which, of course (that is an "of course", isn't it?) begat the musical ...