Teaching Poetry in Senior High School

“A rose is a rose is a rose, and is more than a rose. But a rose is not an ink blot. Nor is a poem.” (Laurence Perrine)

This essay offers some strategies for teaching poetry to students at the senior high level. I have used these strategies successfully with sixteen to seventeen year olds. I propose the following “rules” for introducing poetry at this level:

1. Let the poet have something to say to students in this age range
2. Let the poems be simple in structure and style (that they may be readily understood)
3. Let the instructor select strictly limited aspects of poetry, so that she may establish them firmly

The two aspects of poetry that I sought to convey in my introductory sessions were that poetry operates through images and through rhythm.

We may assume that our students have been taught poetry in previous years. We would do well to find out what impression it made on them. At the best they have enjoyed it, have developed if not a thirst, at least a taste for it; and some may secretly read or even write it themselves. Alternatively, they may have a violent antipathy toward it; they may rejoice in the anti-poetic prejudice. But worse yet, they may be apathetic, prepared for the sake of the quiet life to go through an unengaged ritual, without ever being really touched, exhilarated, quickened or saddened by it: in short, emotionally cast. Discussion will not move such a position.

The instructor can reach such students only by employing all her wiles: crashing, or insidiously worming her way, past habitual defences of sloth, ennui or-an encouraging sign-violent disparagement.

General observation such as this essay cannot prescribe the proper technique for the instructor to adopt. However, once it is established roughly where the group of students stands in relation to poetry, time must be given to mapping out the best strategy. The following suggestions are offered for consideration.

• The instructor may read selected poems aloud
• Students may read selected poems aloud
• Students may read poems privately
• Students may make an audio anthology of poems they like
• The instructor may lead “chalk and talk” explanatory sessions
• The group may hold round-table discussions of selected poems, or a selected poem
• Students may write poetry of their own
• Students may make a written anthology of poems they like
• Students may write answers to assignment questions about poems
• Students (and perhaps additionally the instructor) may make an audio-visual appreciation of poems they like

It might be felt that the more distant the group is from an enjoyment of poetry, the more activity-centered the instruction ought to be; the less the group has to be persuaded of the merit of poetry, the closer an examination can be made of what that merit may be, based on in particular cases.