Teacher's Salon #1- What's Your Line?T

Poetry: What’s Your Line?

Do you have a favorite line of poetry? For example, many readers are drawn to William Shakespeare‘s “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” He creates beauty using the sonnet with its iambic pentameter rhythm and set rhyme. Another favorite line might be “I wandered lonely as a cloud” by William Wordsworth, who floats us above the earth for a panoramic view and slows and softens time with the use of “W” and “L,” which are letters we can verbally hold as long as we want. If colloquial speech appeals to you more than the traditional language of the past, you might like the line Langston Hughes uses in “Mother to Son” when the mother states metaphorically, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” In addition, if you like colloquial language and irony, then Gwendolyn Brooks’ line “We Real Cool,” as stated by seven school dropouts at the pool hall, might be your choice.

Sometimes choosing a favorite line can be harder than marking the moment you fell in love with poetry. For me, Cupid’s arrow struck when I was a junior in high school, and my English teacher had us do more than simply read. She taught us to analyze. Then she had us write. My friend Hal, a music fan of the Rolling Stones, wrote this haiku: “A rolling stone may/ gather no moss but five can/ cause the earth to quake.” The teacher showed us how we could read this poem as a message for the band or as a universal truth. Immediately, I saw the higher-level thinking. I wanted to know how to write like that or at least teach someone to write like that. Through the years some wonderful teachers have given me tips.

Maybe you fell in love with poetry when you read Shel Silverstein’s account of “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out” in Where the Sidewalk Ends. Who can read that poem without laughing out loud? This girl lets the garbage get so out of hand that it stretches from New York to San Francisco. Reading this explains the power of exaggeration, or in an English teacher’s jargon, “hyperbole,” and writing like this unleashes the imagination and prepares the reader to write. What if an everyday activity got out of hand? Maybe like this girl, a chore is not completed. What would be the consequences over a period of time? Or, take the reverse and start an activity that you cannot stop. Perhaps it is as simple as drinking water from a fountain. If this goes on and on, forever and ever, what will your fate be?

Another way people have been introduced to poetry and have come to love it is through the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. At this festival Bill Moyers filmed his interviews with the poets and created the PBS Language of Life series. From the festival, people grew attached to poetry when they heard Mark Doty read “Golden Retrievals,” from his book Sweet Machine. His dog is the speaker in the poem, telling him like a “bronzy gong” to stay in the “entirely now: Bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.” You can use this technique also. Choose something that is not human to narrate your poem. If you want to be more creative, put that non-human speaker in an unusual setting and have it give a report. For example, your beach umbrella could become a famous meteorologist on the Weather Channel.

Often people turn to poetry in times of stress. As a child, poet Naomi Shihab Nye felt so bad that she asked her mother how people know if they are going to die. Her mother told her that she would not die as long as she could continue “Making a Fist,” the main idea and the title of the poem by Nye which is published in her book Words Under the Words. Eavesdropping on this conversation between a mother and daughter where the child keeps “clenching and opening one small hand” intrigues readers and offers a writing possibility. Use dialogue and create a dramatic poem. Follow the speakers’ voices without knowing where they will end. Surprise yourself.

The 1997-2000 poet laureate Robert Pinsky asked a question, received surprising answers, and used them to write a poem. He asked four student poets at the Illinois Schools for the Deaf and Visually Impaired: “If You Could Write One Great Poem, What Would You Want It To Be About?” This question is also the title of the poem that lists their answers--Fire, Music, Romantic Love, and Sign language. The poem is printed in Pinsky's book The Figured Wheel, New & Collected Poems. What would the focus of your great poem be? Would it concern something that puzzles or intrigues you? If you choose an abstract subject, like love, try describing it in concrete terms. Tell what you see, hear, smell, taste or touch when you think about the abstraction. If you want to model Pinsky, interview others and create a great poem from their answers.

One of Li-Young Lee’s great poems is “The Moon from Any Window” printed in his Book of My Nights. Poems help us question and ponder. Do you and your sister see the same thing when you both look at the moon from your own windows? Lee looks at the moon and remembers his mother’s voice. His sister looks at the moon and keeps everything to herself. Nights and poems allow this. Because night is also a time of dreaming, you could try this. Think of an object, perhaps a single candle, and allow it to peer through a window at the moon. What would it dream?

Mornings you can open Jane Hirshfield’s The Lives of the Heart and join her in a litany of “Not-Yet.” Look out your window as you sip your coffee or eat your toast. What blessings do you see? List them after “not yet” as she does with “Not-yet-dead,…Not-yet-silenced,…not-yet- .” A list poem will find you not-yet finished.

If you are a fan of the Today Show, you might have watched with interest when its Book Club chose Nine Horses, a book of poetry, by 2001-2003 poet laureate Billy Collins for one of its selections. His poem “Poetry” serves as a definition. “Call it a field where the animals/who were forgotten by the Ark/ come to graze under the evening clouds.” He suggests in “Poetry” that plot and characters be developed in other genres, while as poets, “We are busy doing nothing--/and all we need for that is an afternoon,/a rowboat under a blue sky….” Imagination will not sit twiddling thumbs as we tell how we stay busy doing nothing. Begin with a time and place and continue to stack the images of what you need.

The poet laureate from 2004-2006, Ted Kooser uses images to move from complexity to simplicity. He likes to go for the small and particular. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book Delights & Shadows, he writes about “Dishwater,” a simple picture of his grandmother on the porch, heaving the dishpan of water that “hangs there shining for fifty years.” If you could write about a person, who would it be, what would the person be wearing, where is the person, and what object does the person hold? Keep it simple. Be specific.

This specificity reinforces what poet Robin Behn, author of The Red Hour, Paper Bird, and Horizon Note taught in a workshop in Oklahoma at Quartz Mountain in 1995--the more specific you are, the more universal your message will be. She also noted that we are drawn to poetry because it touches our feelings, brings laughter and tears, gets us to think, and helps us sense things we have no answers for, like death. Robin Behn and Chase Twichell are editors of the book The Practice of Poetry, Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach, an excellent guide for novice or advanced poets.

What if you love poetry so much that you begin your day at 4:30 a.m. writing it? What if you fill ten volumes, retire from an insurance company, fight and win a battle with cancer, and receive a call one day from the Librarian of Congress asking you to serve as the nation’s poet laureate from October to May and after that to serve a second term to help people appreciate the reading and writing of poetry? That is what happened to Ted Kooser from Nebraska. Why not you?

To answer this question, follow the instructions of Robin Behn. Find a trigger, something to get you started. Perhaps it will be one of the exercises already discussed here. Draft a poem, writing at least thirty lines. A long draft allows a shift, some change in direction, to take place.

Next revise using these suggestions collected from several teachers. Decide what you want to add, delete or rearrange to clarify the main idea. Check to see that you have used active verbs, vivid and descriptive words, strong images, and one or more poetic devices, like simile or personification. Because poetry is concise, when possible omit a, an, the, and possessive pronouns like my and his. Saying “Mother told me” is as clear as saying “My mother told me.” Omit the obvious. Some colors do not need to be stated. For example, the sky is blue, and clouds are white unless stated otherwise. Avoid clichés. If you have heard it before, like “twinkling stars,” change it or omit it. Plus, write a title that adds meaning to the poem and do not use it as a line in the poem. If your poem is about summer, you might use a more specific title—“Sixteenth Summer” or “At Sixteen.” If you cannot think of a title, consider lifting the first line for the title and starting the poem with its second line. Check spelling. Then look at your poem on the page. Is it arranged as a poem and not as a paragraph? If the poem is not aligned on the left margin, is there a good reason? Are all the lines approximately the same length? If not, why? If the poem is about the high diving board, then the first line might be very long like the diving board and the ones after that short like the steps on the ladder leading to it.

Finally, share your poem with an appropriate audience. Help someone else fall in love with the art of poetry.

Vivian Nida teaches Pre-AP English II at Harding Charter Preparatory High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She is a National Board Certified Secondary Language Arts Teacher, and since 1987, she has been a teacher/consultant for the Oklahoma Writing Project, affiliated with the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma.

Teachers take a moment to visit Poetry 180: A Poem a day for American High Schools