1

Agenda: Week 13

• Reminders: Poetry Instruction– What are we teaching?– What do we hope to accomplish?

• John Ciardi” “How Does a Poem Mean?”• “What Good Poems Are For”• Strategy #3 Questioning a Poem• Strategy #4 Dialogue Journal• Imagism: The Aesthetic Foundation of

Contemporary Poetry• Strategy #5 Progression and the Poetic Turn

2

Introduction to Poetry Instruction

3

Instructional Goals

Developing Independent Readers

Literary Pleasure

Developing Student Ownership

4

Poetry Instruction: An Introduction

• Teaching several explicit reading strategies can help students develop both confidence and competence.

5

John Ciardi: “How Does a Poem Mean?”

• “What greater violence can be done to the poet’s experience than to drag it into an early morning classroom and to go after it as an item on its way to a Final Examination?”

-John Ciardi

6

John Ciardi: “How Does a Poem Mean?”

O body swayed to music, O quickening glance,

How shall I tell the dancer from the dance?-William Butler Yeats

“What the poem is, is inseparable from its own performance of itself. The dance is in the dancer and the dancer is in the dance.”

-John Ciardi

7

John Ciardi: “How Does a Poem Mean?”

“Learning to experience poetry is not a radically different process from that of learning any other kind of play. The way to develop a poetic sense is by using it. And one of the real joys of the play-impulse is in the sudden discovery that one is getting better at it than he had thought he would be.”

-John Ciardi

Aesthetic Reading vs. Efferent ReadingFigurative Reading vs. Literal Reading

8

John Ciardi: “How Does a Poem Mean?”

• Discussion of article– 5 minutes to review it– Identify two important or puzzling passages– Write one question for discussion

• Why did I give you time in class to prepare for this discussion?

9

“What Good Poems Are For”Tom Wyman

To sit on a shelf in the cabin across the lakewhere the young man and the young womanhave come to live—there are only a few booksin this dwelling, and one of themis this book of poems.To be like plantson a sunlit window sillof a city apartment—all the hours of carethat go into them, the tending and watering,and yet to the casual eye they are just present—a brief moment of enjoyment…

10

Only those who work on the plant know how slowly it grows

and changes, almost dies from its own causesor neglect, or how other plantscan be started from this oneand used elsewhere in the houseor given to friends.But everyone notices the absence of plants

in a residenceeven those who don’t have plants themselves.

11

There is also (though this is more rare)a man in his 50’s taking a poem from a new book Bob

showed himaround from table to table, reading it aloudto each group of drinkers because, he kept saying,the poem was about work he did, what he knew about,written by somebody like himself.But where could he take itexcept from table to table, past the Fuck offsand the Hey, that’s pretty goods? Over the noiseof the jukebox and the bar’s TV,past the silence of the lake,a person is speakingin a world full of people talking.

12

Out of all that is said, these particular wordsput down roots in someone’s mindso that he or she likes to have them here—these words no one was paid to write that live with us for a whilein a small containeron the ledge where the light enters.

13

Conversational Focus

• How can we connect what Wayman says about poetry to what Ciardi says?

• What are the implications of these messages for us as literature teachers?

14

Strategy #3Questioning the Text

• Read poem once aloud.

• Have students read and mark/ comment on text for 3-5 minutes.

15

Strategy #3Questioning the Text

• Ask students to turn paper over and write in response to the prompt at the bottom of the page.

• In groups WITHOUT TURNING BACK TO THE POEM use your writing to discuss things you noticed and questions that remain.

16

The Process Unpacked

• Repeated patterns from earlier instruction– first reading by skilled reader– additional readings and markings by students– writing to clarify thinking and make questions concrete– peer or small group discussion– full class discussion

• Introduction of new process concept: the importance of the questions we ask about a text.

17

The Importance of Our Questions

What we are capable of noticing in a text, of understanding about a text, and of saying about a text is both generated by, and limited by, the questions we are capable of asking of the text.

What are the implications of this for us as teachers?

18

RESPONSE, ANALYSIS, REFLECTION

19

Strategy #4

The Dialogue Journal

The text says… I say…

•Another way to help students into the language of the poem, to help them engage in a non-threatening way.

•Encourages, accepts and validates the VALUE of their words, their voices by positioning them in a position of equality with the text.

20

Imagism: The Aesthetic Foundation of Contemporary Poetry (1912)

1. “Make it new!” (Ezra Pound)a. Language: common speech; exact word

b. Topics “absolute freedom in choice of topic.”

c. Forms: free verse. “A new cadence means a new idea.”

d. Aesthetic: rejected the sentiment and artifice of Romantic and Victorian poets. Concentration is the essence of poetry.

21

Ezra Pound

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet black bough.

22

Amy Lowell

Peace

Perched upon the muzzle of a cannonA yellow butterfly is slowly opening

and shutting its wings.

23

Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)Pear Tree

Silver dustlifted from the earth,higher than my arms reach,you have mounted,O silver,higher than my arms reachyou front us with great mass;

no flower ever openedso staunch a white leaf,no flower ever parted silverfrom such rare silver;

O white pear,your flower-tuftsthick on the branchbring summer and ripe fruitsin their purple hearts.

24

Influenced By Imagism

• Wallace Stevens

• D.H. Lawrence

• Marianne Moore

• T.S. Eliot

25

William Carlos Williams"No meaning but in things!”

26

William Carlos WilliamsThe Red Wheelbarrow

so much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the white chickens.

“No meaning but in things!”

27

28

Strategy #5: Progression and the Poetic Turn

Poems typically present readers with one or more progressions from beginning to end. Look for changes in time, location, or increased understanding on the part of the narrative voice.

•Ronald Wallace: “Grandmother Grace”

•Richard Wilber “The Pardon”

29

Strategy #5: Progression and the Poetic Turn

Many poems have a turn somewhere after the halfway point that leads to a change or development in meaning. Readers aware of this convention and alert to the possibility of this change are less likely to miss the extension of meanings presented by the text.Elizabeth Bishop “One Art”Adrianne Rich “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”

30

Strategy #5: Progression and the Poetic Turn

•Explicit instruction

•Lots of practice identifying progressions and turns

•Lots of discussion about the implications in terms of the development of meaning in particular poems.

31

Wise Words from William Glasser

• WE LEARN:– 10% of what we read,– 20% of what we hear,– 30% of what we see,– 50% of what we both see and hear;

• AND:– 70% of what we discuss with others,– 80% what we experience personally,– 95% of what we TEACH someone else.

32

NCTE

• Anne Ruggles Gere, Leila Christenbury, and Kelly Sassi. Successful On-Demand Writers: What Teachers Can Learn From Them

• Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey. Graphic Novels: NOT Your Father’s Comic Books

• Jerry Harste. What Do We Mean by “Literacy” Now?

• Laura Rodriguez. President’s Award

33

Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey. Graphic Novels: Not Your Father’s Comic Books

• Wide readership

• Use to build background knowledge

• Excellent for teaching many literary devices, especially inferencing– Keep their minds in the

gutter!

34

Jerry Harste. What Do We Mean by “Literacy” Now”?

• Recognition of multiple literacies– Different cultures, different literacies– Multiple ways of knowing

• Critical Literacies– Literacies should be understood as social practices.– Literate methods are social practices.

• In order to change literacies, we must change the social practices that hold existing literacies in place.

35

Jerry Harste. What Do We Mean by “Literacy” Now”?• What kinds of literacy are needed to read

critically?– Instrumental literacy

• Ability to access text• Understanding of what text is doing to reader

– Subtext strategies • Two sticky notes

– Character thinking– Character saying

• Lingering in a text: focus on a single passage that students unpack.

36

Jerry Harste. What Do We Mean by “Literacy” Now”?

– Subtext strategies continued• Key questions

– Who wrote this text?– Why was this text writtten?– Who was the text written for?– Whose voices, points of view, are NOT

included?– What do you find problematic about the

story being told?– From a language or discourse point of

view, how is this message presented?

37

Laura Rodriguez