“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”  ―  Oscar Wilde

It’s National Poetry Month!  I was not a fan of poetry when I was in school, and when I first started teaching, I was also not a fan of teaching it.  Students notoriously struggle with, and dislike, poetry.  It’s so…well poetic, that it just takes more effort to analyze.  The figurative language is usually so heavy and the plots usually so brief that students easily become lost.  

The memory of feeling so MEH with poetry, and the initial couple of years of dragging my students through Dickinson or Shakespeare sonnets, helped me in refining my poetry-teaching tactics to make poetry units as manageable, simple and fun as possible.  I try to make no assumptions when it comes to any lesson, but especially when it comes to poetry.  Therefore, each lesson is scaffolded, often by stanza by stanza analysis, or guided annotation, to help students not only understand whatever poem they are working with, but to enjoy it and feel more confident with the breakdown process.

If you’re looking for any resources to add to a poetry unit, or to give your students some poetry practice before the frenzy of testing season kicks in, here are a few of my favorites!

“Because I Could Not Stop for Death”  –  Emily Dickinson

I don’t think I worked with this poem personally until college, however I taught it with my Juniors when our focus was American literature for the year.  There is something about that first stanza that I find particularly memorable:  Because I could not stop for Death— / Death kindly stopped for me—  / The carriage held but just Ourselves—  / And Immortality.  

It’s so perfectly rhythmic that it’s easy to memorize and sort of just sticks in the brain.  Additionally, and somewhat randomly, though the final vignette in the Coen Bros. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, was ultimately very different than Dickinson’s great poem, there are couple similarities and so now when I think of one, I don’t fail to think of the other.  However, I can’t say there was a whole lot of civility in the Coen Bros. carriage as the perplexed passengers struggled to tolerate each other.

My unit for “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” contains the poem with guided annotations and high-order thinking, stanza by stanza analysis.  A personification post-reading poetry activity and rubric is also included.

“Jabberwocky”  –  Lewis Carroll

Well known and loved for its use of nonsense words, “Jabberwocky” is a great poem that can help students have fun with language while building their context clue and linguistic skills.  My resource for it is concise and helps students slay the Jabberwock of analysis to ultimately create their own fun, nonsense poem.

A Haiku Unit

Okay, clearly this is not a specific poem, but I enjoy a good, little haiku unit.  Haikus are easy and fun for students to write, but the limited syllabic line count forces them to be creative and think outside-of-the-box when crafting their mini-narrative.  Some students really come up with stellar poems.  

And, if you want a free resource for poetry month, I have a brief analysis for Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry” that is great to kick off any poetry unit (or just refresh on some poetry 101)!

It’s easy to have students analyze good poetry from genuine feeling when you have the right resources!

A dog beach haiku

Dogs at the dog beach—
frolicking and playing, in
the sun, sand and surf.

Okay, so Nike and Novah are not frolicking and playing in those pictures, but there was certainly frolicking and playing to be had! 

Happy Teaching!

M.D. Saints
Reading the Rapids
Liberty Dog Writing Co.