Poetry as argument

Breanne‘s demonstration this morning asked us to reconsider the place of creative writing in the English classroom, and we were tasked with recrafting an argument we’ve made before into a piece of fiction.  I tried fiction for a minute, but then I realized I’d probably have more success if I just wrote a rant with line breaks and called it a poem.

Signpost

I do not need you to tell me what I need to learn.
Your goals are not my goals.
You render my work in numbers
That erase the unpredictability that defines development,
The diversity that is my students,
The nuance that imbues my craft.

I learn from my students,
By listening to them and reading their work
To find the signpost that tells me
“Here’s what I can do.  Respect that. And help me decide
What can we do together next.”

Found poem!

In her demo, Elizabeth asked us to choose a number of words or phrases from some of our personal writing, so I grabbed some snippets of text from this post about my old dog’s worsening asthma.  I cheated and added one word, a “the,” which I don’t consider too much of a cheat.

The original post had a relatively clear and predictable sense of suspense organizing it.  The poem works differently, by recasting the “it” to an unknown aggressor.  All we know about it from this cryptically telegraphic text is that it is older than the Boston Terrier it pursues, it catches the Boston from whom it elicits loud noises before an implied respite of silence.  ENJOY!

As is custom,
It doubled his splayed efforts,
Catches the somewhat more youthful Boston Terrier.

Ridiculously loud cough—
Sigh of annoyed compliance—
Actual deafness:
Rescued.

Multimodal poetry fusion mix-and-mash-up

First, a sonnet from Richard Wright (yes, he wrote poetry, too…maybe you’ll see why you don’t know more about it); then something rather sonnet-like from Seamus Heaney.

Bar-hopping

After reading Ralph Fletcher’s What a Writer Needs in preparation for the UIWP Summer Institute, I decided to try my hand at writing small about something big.  That afternoon, I watched Colin as he played on the monkey bars at Meadowbrook Park, and I took a few notes in the back of the book.

This morning, I turned those notes and memories into a poem.  With at least a couple nods to Seamus Heaney, I try to reflect on what this act of play suggests about Colin as he grows up.

Bar-hopping

The other boys make the metaphor ring true,
racing lithely across, each easy grasp followed by another,
with grace not usually paired with being six.

But no part of this kid, leg or otherwise, is hollow.
He is solid: ten pounds for every year.
Every move preceded by careful thought made evident
by eyes that are always focused up—not out.

He marks his progress in moves a foot apart, at seven feet.
He measures time with legs swinging like a pair of drunken, ruined metronomes.

Yet the work is play.
And he stays aloft—
Or not.
Then he scales the metal canopy again, for another chance
to get to the other side.