Poetry CentralDelia M. Turner, Ph.D.The Haverford School

www.dmturner.org/Centered/

Teaching English is a challenge.

You already juggle too much. How can you add poetry?

Don’t add it on top. Put it in the center.

Your boys will learn more.

Why?

Boys love poetry

Boys like to write poetry

Boys listen to poetry already.

It’s short, it’s intense, it’s rewarding.

Poetry is useful for boys.

Poetry gives boys language to talk about life.

Good poetry is a juggling act, and boys like athletic performance.

Reading poetry helps develop text stamina, knowledge, and language skill.

You can do more with short poetry.

You can read more widely in less time.

Your students can learn a wide variety of skills.

There’s a poem for every topic and every taste.

How can I get started?

Become a poetry reader yourself.

Start anywhere you like.

Read, and collect your favorites.

Memorize a few.

Choose poems to teach.

Choose powerful poems

Choose clear poems.

Choose poems with depth.

Use easily available resources.

www.dmturner.org/Centered

Investigate poetry anthologies.

Buy a book on reading poetry.

Find, borrow, and modify lessons.

What?

Read aloud and teach discussion.

Ask: What’s going on with this poem?

Wait, listen, write, and repeat.

Try many different discussion methods.

Ask them to write.

Write every day.

Write for homework.

Assign formal writing tasks.

Use poetry to teach other things as well.

You can teach grammar with poetry.

You can teach sentence variation with poetry.

You can explore themes and questions with poetry.

Ask students to memorize and recite poems.

Boys value challenge.

Memorized poems become part of you.

Reciting teaches other important skills.

Place poetry in the center.

www.dmturner.org/Centered/

The SharkMy dear, let me tell you about the shark.Though his eyes are bright, his thought is dark.He’s quiet—that speaks well of him.So does the fact that he can swim.But though he swims without a sound, Wherever he swims he looks aroundWith those two bright eyes and that one dark thought.He has only one but he thinks it a lot.And the thought he thinks but can never completeIs his long dark thought of something to eat.Most anything does. And I have to addThat when he eats his manners are bad.He’s a gulper, a ripper, a snatcher, a grabber.Yes, his manners are drab. But his thought is drabber.That one dark thought he can never completeOf something—anything—somehow to eat.Be careful where you swim, my sweet.

John Ciardi From FAST AND SLOW: POEMS BY JOHN CIARDI, 1975

When You Forget to Feed Your Gerbilthe mother eats her newborn babies.Pink furless heads without traces of bloodlie on the newspaper with droppings and wood chips.Mother-gerbil sucks at a cloudy dry water-bottlethat you also forgot to fill as though she is dragging on a cigarette.When you finally notice, you finally providewith the terror and guilt of a prisoner's guard,imagining the sound of tin cups like mad scales against her bars.Your gerbil doesn't try to scramble away when you open the metal door,toss in pellets and an old leaf of lettuce.And after she eats, she seems almost happy on her exercise wheel,the one she's gnawed a little plastic off of. You can't bring yourselfto clean her cage, tip out the babies' remains. You can't bring yourselfto do your homework. It's always your faultwhen you're a child taking care of a mother.

by Denise Duhamel

from GIRL SOLDIER, 1996

The Portrait

My mother never forgave my father

for killing himself,especially at such an awkward

timeand in a public park,that springwhen I was waiting to be born.She locked his namein her deepest cabinetand would not let him out,though I could hear him thumping.When I came down from the atticwith the pastel portrait in my hand

of a long-lipped strangerwith a brave moustacheand deep brown level eyes,she ripped it into shredswithout a single wordand slapped me hard.In my sixty-fourth yearI can feel my cheekstill burning.

by Stanley Kunitz

from THE POEMS OF STANLEY KUNITZ, 1928-1978

The Panic Bird

 just flew inside my chest. Somedays it lights inside my brain, but today it's in my bonehouse,rattling ribs like a birdcage.

If I saw it coming, I'd fend itoff with machete or baseball bat.Or grab its scrawny hackled neck,wring it like a wet dishrag.

But it approaches from behind.Too late I sense it at my back –carrion, garbage, excrement.Once inside me it preens, roosts,

vulture on a public utility pole.Next it flaps, it cries, it glares,it rages, it struts, it thrustsits clacking beak into my liver,

my guts, my heart, rips off strips.I fill with black blood, black bile.This may last minutes or days.Then it lifts sickle-shaped wings,

rises, is gone, leaving a residue –foul breath, droppings, molted midnightfeathers. And life continues.And then I'm prey to panic again.

Robert Phillips