“Let us go then, you and I

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table”  

Welcome to poetry class. T. S. Eliot’s line is an odd one to open with, really.  As much as I like the creepy invitation that opens his poem “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock,” I’ve also thought he wrote to keep English teachers in jobs explaining his work. Poetry pushes people somehow, at least after 5^th grade.  Young kids see it as an invitation to play- which it is.  They get the joy of sounds and the pleasures in meanings. Shel Silverstein remains the high water mark here.  The kids at the Akshar school in Calcutta where I taught this summer love him, too. No doubt many of you did as well.  

Somehow around middle school, poetry can become a subject both teachers and students fear. Some students fear forced (and perhaps graded) creativity, and others prefer the security of right answers. Perhaps the middle school movement away from play moves people away from poetry. Later yet, it becomes a litmus test for English students, separating those comfortable with ambiguous, compressed language from those who are not. Perhaps like math class and sports fields where each of us define areas of comfort- or discomfort. And the play, the creativity inherent in poetry doesn't sit well with discomfort.  

As in most things, teachers experiences are no different.  We have our own sense of discomfort writing 'poems.' We struggle to reconcile the demands of academic rigor with personal creativity.  I always intend to write with poetry classes but don't always make the time.  This year, in this moment, I'm committing to doing that.  

Even the editors of poetry anthologies need to somehow defend or justify poetry.  In the introduction to Good Poems, Garrison Keillor says, “but what really matters about poetry and what distinguishes poets from, say, fashion models or ad salesmen is the miracle of incantation in rendering the gravity and grace and beauty of the ordinary world and thereby giving courage to strangers.”  In our anthology, R. S. Gwynn notes that poetry need not be ‘intimidating or obscure” (2).  Watch this short video about a NYC poetry group that shows how some people don’t bother justifying poems, they just live them. These are inspiring images of young people using language in powerful ways. One of my goals for this class is to touch this elemental power of words in and around our community.