Poetry Friday Announcement: A New Series

Hey there, Poetry Friday crowd. I'm starting a new series today. Anyone can join in. If you'd like to  guest post, leave me a note in the comments.

Find more Poetry Friday
posts at Poetry for Children.

My favorite part of summer isn't the beach (we haven't been there yet), the hot weather (I prefer blizzards, thank you), or no school (can I have my routine back yet?) It's summer reading.

My nephew, demonstrating that a book
can be enjoyed anywhere, even
sitting on the floor by Auntie's front door.

I've been on a Sharknado-worthy reading binge, chomping up novels, gliding through the library looking for delicious fantasies, never roaming far from shore without an audio-book to satisfy my story-hunger.

Sometimes, I have to remind myself to slow down and *enjoy* what I'm reading. Taste the flavors. One way to stop my book-hopping and think about each novel I'm reading is through poetry.

The idea for this series dates back to my years teaching high school. My ninth graders were about to do a unit on Betty Smith's classic coming of age novel, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN.

Find it here.

I wanted to add more poetry to my lessons, so I used the poem "The Lake Ilse of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats to help introduce the themes of the novel. The class talked about dreams, especially dreams of place.

When we finished A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, we went back to the poem. What a rich discussion we had. The students' ideas about dreams and the importance of place had developed as they read the novel. Circling back to Yeats' poem gave them a way to focus their thoughts.

How about you? During your summer reads, have you come across a book that made you think of a favorite poem? That's what this series is all about.

Summer Reads: Chapter & Verse

To participate, you can go simple and share a pairing of book and poem. I'll post as is, giving you credit for the contribution!

If you want to step it up, include a paragraph about the book you read and a few lines about why you paired it with a particular poem.

For those of you who really want to dig in and discuss your Chapter & Verse, write a blog post of 500-750 words. Tell us what you liked about the novel you're sharing. Expand on what made you think of this poem as you were reading the book. How does one complement the other? Explain how reading the poem with the book deepens your understanding of novel, poem, or both.

Here is a sample pairing from my own summer reads.

Author Amok's Chapter & Verse

Find it here.

Genevieve Valentine's retelling of "The 12 Dancing Princesses" is a historical YA novel, set in 1920s New York. Here, the dancing princesses are society sisters. The Hamilton girls are locked in their ritzy home by a misogynistic father who is embarrassed by his large family and lack of male heirs. The girls sneak out several nights a week to dance at New York's speakeasies and get a taste of life outside their father's walls.

I'm pairing THE GIRLS AT THE KINGFISHER CLUB with Edna St. Vincent Millay's most famous poem.

First Fig
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

The Hamilton girls are burning the candle at both ends. What I love about this pairing is how the poem emphasizes the balance between frenetic joy and risk. That's what keeps drawing the twelves sisters back to the dance floor. It can't (and doesn't -- gasp!) last forever.

If you'd like to share your Summer Reads: Chapter & Verse, leave me a note in the comments or send an email to mrspoems@gmail.com. I'll post another sample next week.

Have fun out there, book sharks!

Find it here.

National Poetry Month Issue 12

During National Poetry Month, are you looking for ways to add poetry to your English/Language Arts classroom?

One of my favorite suggestions is to use a poem when you introduce a new work of literature. My students and I used to read "The Funeral," by Gordon Parks before diving into his novel, The Learning Tree.

The poem helped generate some pre-reading discussion on themes related to the novel. At the close of the unit, we looked at the poem again and saw that our ideas  had developed over the last few weeks.

I've also paired W.B. Yeats' poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which helped students work deeply on the theme of aspirations vs. dreams.

Here is Maryland poet Patricia VanAmburg's poem, "World Literature." The prince of Denmark makes a cameo appearance in this poem, so why not pair it with your unit on Hamlet?

World Literature

by Patricia VanAmburg

Wherever one thing stands,

 something stands beside it.

~ Dr. Chudi Okpala

Do we read another culture with

our eyes or its own? Will either way

of looking work? Must we soften

the focus—novice seekers hoping for

an aura—gazers of stars in the night

sky whose steady stare can make light

vanish.  The camera obscura, and

our own brains, see things backwards

first—projecting silhouettes and

ghosts.  Like Hamlet, we know “there

are more things under heaven, Horatio…”

Like seers, we sense “wherever one

thing stands, something stands beside it.”

When those things fall like dominoes,

we  choose to see, or not.  Stories tell how

love and faith cure blindness—love and

faith and spit.  Spirit.  The physical thing

and the thing beside it—reading all that is.

Posted with permission of the author.