Because I can
teach all the literary devices I want them to learn throughout the year by
using poems for examples:
Metaphor in
"Dreams" by Langston Hughes:
"For if
dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."
Repetition in
the same poem:
"Hold
fast to dreams... Hold fast to dreams...."
Theme (with
perhaps a life lesson thrown in):
What is the
poet saying here? Don't let go of your dreams or you become, in a sense,
crippled, unable to move forward. Is there something important that you want to
do in your life? Whatever it is, you can do it. The path to your goal may not
proceed in a straight line, but keep that end destination in your sights;
you'll get there. How did the poet know this? He lived it.
A more
challenging theme in a different poem by Langston Hughes:
"What
happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
Point of view
and tone in "Bike Ride with Older Boys" by Laura Kasischke.
(I do this
one early in the year with my freshmen because I want them to learn that
reading a poem is sometimes like unlocking a small cupboard door to find a bit
of truth just sitting on the shelf, waiting to be discovered, and to show them
that in poetry, titles can be an essential key.)
The first
line of the poem is this: "The one I didn't go on."
The next two
lines are: "I was thirteen/and they were older."
In this poem
I love "My afternoons/were made of time and vinyl" and "I have
been given a little gift." We don't know what the gift is until we're
nearly finished reading the poem. Some students are mystified by the lines
"When I/stand up again, there are bits of glass and gravel/ground into my
knees." They ask hesitantly, "What happened? Did she fall off the
bike?" Others, when the impact of the narrative hits them, say,
"ohhhh" in soft tones, and I know they are moved by it, perhaps even
warned by it.
(As an aside here, that 'title as key' concept can also be seen in "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House" by Billy Collins, which never references a gun at all in the poem, but does reference a dog that barks incessantly.)
Some poems
should just be fun, so we do "Summer" by Walter Dean Myers, but
they're still learning assonance, alliteration and internal rhyme as we go:
"Bugs
buzzin from cousin to cousin/juices dripping/running and ripping" and
"Lazy
days, daisies lay/beaming and dreaming...."
And there
must be classics because, well, if you don't know Frost, you're not American.
"Whose
woods these are, I think I know."
"Two
roads diverged in a yellow wood."
"Something
there is that doesn't love a wall."
Billy Collins is my hero, of course, and sometimes it's fun, especially with high school students, to discuss extended metaphor by reading "Schoolsville."
("Their grades are sewn into their clothes/like references to Hawthorne./The A's stroll along with other A's./The D's honk whenever they pass another D.")
And speaking
of classics, we read "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" so that
we can discuss the concept of carpe diem, but I introduce it to them by showing
them the scene from the movie Dead Poets Society in which Robin Williams as Mr.
Keating has one of his new students read the poem.
I follow that
by teaching them "O Captain! My Captain!" (because, in my humble
opinion, Whitman was the most courageous American poet of his time), and then
we watch the heartbreaking scene in Dead Poets in which Keating's students
stand upon their desks in deference and respect, each one proclaiming "O
captain my captain!"
I have shared
tears with some students after such a lesson.
I allow Emily Dickinson to teach them that "hope is the thing with feathers" and also that "I'm nobody" can be a strong statement of defiance for an introvert.
I teach them
"Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson toward the end of the
school year because I want them to understand how subtle poets can be:
"He was
a gentleman from sole to crown/clean favored and imperially slim," but
mostly because I want them to fully understand what isolation can do to people,
how desperate and alone it can render someone who feels incapable of making a
human connection with anyone else. I tell them to consider the folks around
them... and who might be suffering despite walking among them as if everything
is fine. At fourteen and fifteen, they are still challenged to find empathy and
compassion. ("If he killed himself, he's stupid. That's just
stupid.") But we work on it. We work on it.
Generally we
end the year with Frost's declaration that "Nothing gold can stay"
because I want to remind them about that whole "seize the day"
attitude and that, while they are perfect—just as they are—life is going to lob
some considerably large stones at them, which may alter them. But that's ok.
Because "hope springs eternal."
