Judith J. Katz
My final goal is to give my students the tactile experience of writing in a well-known, recognizable, historically important poetic form. We will begin with the Modern English Haiku. Working with this respected poetic form places my students squarely in a writing tradition that is steeped with history, beauty, meaning, and creativity.
I like to explain to my students that the idea of working within an existing poetic context places them as working apprentice writers and me as a master-artist-teacher. These are time honored roles that I want them to become comfortable and familiar with as understanding your place in a historical context can be comforting and will serve them in their lifelong pursuits whether those pursuits turn out to be artistic in nature or not.
I want my students to reach a point of familiarity, if not mastery with each form they practice, in this case the Haiku. I want my students to be able to recognize the form when they see it, wherever they see it. And I want them to begin to notice that writing poetry is a way of communicating messages that is alive and in use today in venues far beyond the classroom not the least of which is the medium of advertising: a medium with which they are more than passingly familiar.
