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UNFOLDING BUD
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One is amazed
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By a water-lily bud
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Unfolding
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With each passing day,
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Taking a richer color
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And new dimensions
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One is not amazed,
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At a first glance,
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By a poem,
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Which is as tight-closed
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As a tiny bud.
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Yet one is surprised
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To see the poem
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Gradually unfolding,
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Revealing its rich inner self
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As one reads it
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Again
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And over again.
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Naoshi Koriyama
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The urban educator must be constantly attempting to integrate his or her students’ environment with a diversity of new educational approaches. The purpose of this unit is to show eighth and ninth graders the importance of studying poetry from both technical and personal perspectives. By placing emphasis on twentieth-century poets and lyricists who write about city life, the unit will establish a relationship between classical forms and contemporary issues. A major goal will be to have students analyze songs, a cultural medium young people readily absorb, in comparison with a variety of poems. The students will begin to see a relationship between poetry and music. After hearing music in its familiar form, students will be asked to examine the works on paper. They will then start to see the bond between spoken poetry and lyrics read without music. What students will eventually learn is that, even without melody, lyrics can retain their meaning and rhythm.
The unit will teach students to expand and vary their use of language by beginning with their familiarity with rhythms and images in music, and culminating with an enjoyment of reading poems. Students will then be able to imitate poetic forms, think and write critically about themes, and finally translate these skills into their own creative efforts.
This unit will revolve around specific poems and songs all related to the theme of isolation and the city. Each section will stress specific poetic techniques and will include: 1. a narrative portion summarizing the particular literary devices; 2. exercises which will enable students to flex creative muscles; and 3. an appreciation/analysis component including poems and songs demonstrating those devices explained. The first chapter, “Definition of Poetry,” attempts to isolate specific differences between poetry and prose forms, as well as to establish the various links between the two. The chapters that follow will each create spokes in the poetry wheel. Starting with the notion of “Word Choice,” the sparks of an idea, the unit will work through the creation of a poem: “Rhythm,” “Rhyme,” and “Figurative Language.” These sections will form a sequential curriculum which incorporates various aspects of the creative process from beginning to end. A final section will offer additional songs and poems which students can analyze utilizing all devices covered in the preceding chapters.
Although the unit does isolate the major aspects of the poetic process, it is essential to view a poem as the final reintegration of a series of interdependent processes. The rhyme scheme must mesh with the rhythm; the figurative language with the choice of a particular word or group of words. The student will experience, will rebuild a poem from its parts. Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” will be studied for its various techniques as well as from a thematic perspective. At the end of each chapter, a few lines from the poem will be viewed and then reviewed until the piece is seen in its structural entirety. It is noteworthy that the poem not only describes an urban experience, but does so through a mixed sense perception where music, an important focus of this unit, forms the backgrcund of a meaningful memory.
Since teachers will be familiar with most terms relating to the structure of poetry, each chapter is presented as a working manual, strengthened by exercises and examples. A glossary of terms follows the unit. Poems used are listed in the bibliography under anthologies in which they can be found. A separate list of songs follows the bibliography.
While paying due respect to such devices as rhyme, the unit places a strong emphasis on figurative writing. Students must realize that a chief difference between prose and poetry is the use in poetry of images which target emotion. Young people with misconceptions about poetry must be reeducated to know that it is the creation of a good image that leads to original and fluid writing, whether poetry or prose. It is true that this unit will strive to teach the student how to shape his ideas, but first he must learn to rethink his experiences in fresh and unique ways. A mastery of poetic appreciation and creation should lead to an increased awareness and care in all writing endeavors. Because of its limited length, a poem affords a student the opportunity to express his or her thoughts in only a few choice phrases. Learning to read with precision and to create with both imagination and skill must be the ultimate goal of a unified language curriculum.
Definition of Poetry
It has been shown that poetry is hard to define. It is even more difficult to limit. Poetry ranges from one extreme to another in idea and emotion, in music and meaning. At one extreme poetry is all sounds, at the other it is all sense. The ideal combination is the perfect union of music
and
meaning; but we often find great pleasure in poems which sing themselves into our minds without meaning much, while, on the other hand, we also enjoy poems that are not particularly musical but are extremely meaningful.
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With the exception of drama, poetry is the only art which appeals both visually and aurally. Although it looks unique, poetry is also more closely related to our lives than any other art form. People—adults, children, teachers, students—repeat bits and pieces of verse and song that date back to earliest memories without even realizing that they have absorbed morsels of poetry.
Common experiences (including a wide range of emotional and physical activities) can be simultaneously personalized and universalized. Richard Le Galliene’s poem, “I Meant To Do My Work Today” hits home incisively for many of our students. They can identify with an organized expression of their exact thoughts:
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I meant to do my work today
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But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
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And a butterfly flitted across the field,
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And all the leaves were calling me.
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And the wind went sighing over the land,
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Tossing the grasses to and fro,
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And a rainbow held out its shining hand—
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So what could I do but laugh and go?
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Haven’t they, haven’t we all felt the way LeGalliene’s speaker feels? In the eight lines, rhyme and meter rule the patterning of the idea.
Poetry is also the art of condensation. Haiku, a form that uses only seventeen syllables (often in a 5Ð7-5 line pattern), generates a single picture or effect through limitation and selection. In only nineteen syllables, Adelaide Crapsey evokes reactions through careful word choice and rhyme:
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On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees
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Is it as plainly in our living shown
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By slant and twist, which way the wind hath blown?
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The overall effect of a poem, therefore, depends on the pictures it generates.
Basically, then, three guidelines should be stressed when attempting to define poetry:
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1.
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Poetry is concentrated thought that focuses our attention simultaneously on a combination of sound and idea.
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2.
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Reading poetry must be participatory: the reader must want to express the “spirit” orally while, cooperatively, the listener must be sensitive to shades and nuances of meaning.
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3.
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The ability to listen is an art in itself and should be cultivated. Poetry should be swallowed slowly; a leisurely reading allows time to capture the music and to grasp the significance.
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Remember, also, that there are important differences between prose and poetry. Whereas prose has little or no regular rhythm, it is basic to the very nature of poetry to be rhythmic. Prose movement is irregular and cannot be diagrammed; poetry usually follows a particular measure. Lastly, the shape and structure of poetry is always patterned—even in its lack of familiar scheme. Prose has no particular pattern, even the accents and pauses are irregular and hard to determine. With poetry, line division automatically directs the eye and ear. Of course, “prose poems” must be considered poetry in the broad sense of the definition. An obvious example is Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, an inspired combination of repetition and metaphor. As students become more sophisticated, the teacher will probably want to point out more and more
similarities
between prose and poetry; however, as a starting point, specific elements which are distinct to each genre should be emphasized.
Poetry is an interpretive art, a work-in-progress. Each time a piece is read aloud—or heard—it is transformed into something different. The rhythms change with every voice; the figurative language and sound patterns take on new dimensions. Poetry, then, is language in motion and must be taught as a dynamic process.
Exercise: How Does A Poem Mean?
Directions
In order to familiarize students with the differences between poetry and prose, give them a poem written first as a prose paragraph. Then, on a separate sheet, give them the same poem in its original form. Presuming the teacher has given students notes on differences between prose and poetry, now discuss why the second form is more effective in expressing the author’s meaning, referring to students’ notes.
Example: “I Went To The City” by Kenneth Patchen
