POETRY+PAGE

POETRY PAGE!

You will begin working on a poetry portfolio in our upcoming Creative Writing unit. You In order to write poetry you need to read some poetry. So today you will read and rate a series of poems.

Poem Wars!

1. Read each set of poems (attached at the bottom of this page). For each set, decide which poem "wins" the round. Whichever poem wins in each pair advances to the next round (like brackets in basketball-same idea). For each winning poem in the first round you should jot down specific reasons why you chose one poem or another. You can title this assignment "Poem Wars" in your writer's notebook and write the winner of each round. Be sure to be specific about why a poem speaks to you (is it the topic? the tone? the word choice? the associations? the images?).

2. Once you have chosen your top choices for round 1, you will compare the first round winners in this way:

Winner of Set 1 v. Winner of Set 5 = Winner of Set 2 v. Winner of Set 4 = Winner of Set 3 v. Winner of Set 6 =

3. You should now have a top 3 of all the poems so far. From this round, you will decide on one final winner as your favorite poem. You should cut and paste that poem into a word document and write a bit (a page-ish) about why this should be the winning submission in a local literary magazine. Why is this poem the best of the 12? Be as specific as you can about what you like about it.

4. You also want to award one of these poems the "Worst Poem Ever" award. Why do you hate it? Why do you feel it does not do its job as a poem?



**Be ready to share your analyses in class.**

5. Finally, find a small group and prepare a "performance" of one of these poems. Think of it as a "creative reading" meaning that certain group members read certain lines, read some lines alone, read some in unison, choose certain words to emphasize, repeat, etc. **Be ready to share these in class**.

6. When you are finished feel free to work with your groups again on your Independent Reading Assignment.

__Poetry Prompts: __ **a) List Poem**: create a poem by making a list of things, people, places, etc that are related in some way. Their relationship will be identifiable by the title ("Places I've Cried" or "People I Have Always Wondered About")

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">b) **Goodbye Poem**: Write a goodbye to some abstract idea, like fear, sadness, happiness, etc.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">c) **Object Poem**: Write a poem with the title "Consider the ." You should fill in the blank with some inanimate object and bring it alive.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">d) **Carry the Metaphor** Poem: Fill in the blank: Love is __. You can replace "love" with another abstraction, but you should write an extended metaphor about this abstraction by comparing it to something concrete.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">e) **The Gift I Never Got Poem**: Write about something, abstract or concrete, that you've never received.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Why You Should Read Poetry...Yes, Poetry** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">**John Lundberg**
 * Here is an article that might interest you!**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">In May of 1944, the poet Anna Akhmatova gave a reading at the Polytechnic Museum, the largest auditorium in Moscow. It was her first appearance in the city since World War II, and the room was packed. The poems she read had rallied Russians throughout the war, and her voice had broadcast through the streets of Leningrad to steel the city to the approaching German Army. When she finally closed her books, she received such thunderous applause that Joseph Stalin asked who'd organized the ovation. The man knew power when he saw it. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">If you grew up in America, it might surprise you to learn that a poet has ever had that sort of impact. Poetry here is best known for the simple, sentimental verses found in Hallmark cards and the lyrics of pop music. The word "poet" probably calls to mind some weirdo in a beret. And poetry's power to influence American politics is, at best, a fizzle--if you heard anything about the anti-Bush anthology [|Poets Against the War], then you listen to a lot of NPR. The truth is most Americans have lost touch with the best of what poetry is: a record of some of civilization's greatest writers--and wisest people--taking on the questions and emotions that define us. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Certainly, the world has changed a lot since Akhmatova. Time once devoted to reading books now goes to TV, movies, and the Internet. When people do read, most prefer to pick up something they can relax with like John Patterson or Augusten Burroughs. But one only needs to look down the aisles of inspirational books at Barnes and Noble to know that the search for meaning that has always driven the great poems still resonates. Classic themes like love, despair, life, death, and hope still infatuate us. Heck, you can find them all in one episode of "Grey's Anatomy." Yet the poems of faith John Milton wrote after he'd gone completely blind, the atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley's passionate explorations of a godless world, and Sylvia Plath's struggle just to hold her world together all go under-appreciated and under-read. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">So why //aren't// we reading poetry? Here are some reasons I often hear that will probably sound familiar. Here, too, are some reasons to reconsider. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Reason 1: I've never understood it.** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Poetry can be difficult. Learning to read Shakespeare is difficult, and I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone take on T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" without some guidance. But most poets are far more accessible than Eliot or Shakespeare. Also, it's important to note that your expectations for a poem should be different from your expectations for, say, a newspaper or a novel. A poem often has multiple layers of meaning that will unfold over a few readings--and it's important to give a poem that opportunity. It's a good idea to read a poem more than once in a sitting or go back and reread it over the course of a few weeks or even a lifetime. Remember that the process of exploring a great poem should be part of the reward. As Walt Whitman asked in "Song of Myself": <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">//"Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? Have you reckon'd the Earth much?// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">//Have you practic'd so long to learn to read?// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">//Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?"// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Reason 2: I can't get past the whole rhyming thing.** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Rhyming verse can fall a little hard on the modern ear, which is why most contemporary poems are written in "free verse" with no set meter or rhyme scheme. Rhymes are a part of poetry's music: the rhythms and sounds of words from which a poet draws power. Like a great soloist or orator, a poet with a good ear can infuse what he's saying with emotion and immediacy. If you're reading a poem with end rhymes and they're bothering you, ignore the line breaks and try reading the poem as if it's prose. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Reason 3: Poetry is for angst-ridden teens, hopeless romantics and the aforementioned weirdos in berets.** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Sure, you run into a few aspiring poets at your local coffee shop that fit this bill, but I guarantee you couldn't pick a practicing poet off the street. We're surprisingly normal. Just like you, we're obsessed with things like fantasy football and //I Love New York 2//. I was on track to be a doctor before I stumbled on poetry (yes, my parents were real happy about that one). That's not to say that your experience with poetry will be as all-consuming as mine, but for all that poetry has given me, I have no doubt that it has something to give you. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">So how should you begin? I'd recommend you start with an anthology. You can't go wrong with the [|//Norton Anthology of Poetry//], which covers everything from medieval English verse to Bob Dylan. When you find a poet you like, buy a book of his or her work. Volumes of poetry aren't as daunting as the word "volume" implies. In fact, they're relatively small. And you can read through most poems in a fraction of the time it takes to finish a Sudoku. You should also check here each week, where I'll be posting a great poem as a blog. Think of it as a weekly cultural aperitif.