Did you know April is National Poetry Month? This post is the first in a three-part series on poetry. Don’t forget to read Part Two: Five Books of Poetry for Beginners and Part Three: How to Read (And Enjoy) Poetry.
I have a book of poems I wrote in my teen years—none of which feel particularly “good” nowadays—but writing poetry as a teen wasn’t about form or style. My teenage poetry took the form of a lot of questions. There weren’t many metaphors; not a lot of figurative language. It wasn’t poetry that would get any literary awards.
I never thought about being published. I wrote poetry as a way to process my emotions when I was going through hard times. Inspired by the psalms, my poems were prayers. Cries out to God to change my circumstances, or to give me strength to carry on. My teenage poetry was mostly sad. It was emotional. It was poetry that no one could write but me.
Ironically, though I wrote poetry in my high school years, I didn’t like to read poetry. Scarred by my high school English teacher’s questions: “What did the poet mean?” “What was he trying to say?” Reading poetry felt too hard; too scholarly. I didn’t want to think about the meaning behind the poem. I wanted to talk about what the poet was going through. I wanted to know her story. I had no interest in understanding metaphor or personification. I wanted to read something that made me know other people felt emotions deeply too.
I didn’t show anyone the poems I wrote. I kept them hidden in a box under my bed. When I graduated high school and went off to college, I left it at home. It was seven years later, cleaning out a closet at my Mom’s house, when I discovered my forgotten notebook, stuffed to the brim with favorite quotes and original poems.
Last year, I took a poetry course, in an attempt to rediscover the poet I once was. The first assignment was to create a poetry notebook. I groaned at first. Was this going to be another exercise in trying to figure out what the poet meant? But the instructions were different than I expected.
Choose any poem you’d like and copy it in your notebook. Underline words or phrases that stick out to you. Write about the senses: What does the poem make you see? Hear? Smell? Taste? What does it make you feel? Does it remind you of anything? What do you wonder?
These are all questions I’ve used when doing nature study with my kids, but I never thought to apply them to a poem. I soon learned reading poetry isn’t as much about understanding as it is about feeling. In a few short weeks, poetry became fun again. Poetry became a new way to play.
Each term, my kids and I choose a poet to study as part of our Beauty Loop. Study is really a misnomer; it’s more like a Poet Focus than a study. We don’t do much except read a short biography of the poet at the start of a term and one poem each week. Before I began my poetry notebook, I’d read a poem out loud and cross it off our list. But once I began enjoying poetry on my own, I wondered if there was more we could do to enjoy poetry together. We occasionally had poetry tea times—although not as often as I would like—but I wanted to bring my children into this new way to experience poetry.
I wanted them to feel.
One day last fall, we sat on the homeschool room couch, cuddled together like three peas in a pod. Shakespeare was our poet and his poetry feels so hard. It seemed like a good time to experiment and have a little fun.
“Let’s try something new,” I said, grabbing my Teacher’s Guide off the table. “I want you to close your eyes as I read the poem.” My girls nodded their heads in agreement. Sometimes I ask them to close their eyes when we listen to a piece of music, so this request didn’t feel too odd.
“As I read, I want you to think about what images come to mind. What do you see? What do you hear or smell? What do you imagine in your mind?”
They closed their eyes and waited for me to begin. I read the poem out loud, being careful of the meter and rhyme. I discovered meter and rhyme in my poetry course, and I know what fun can be found in a sonnet. It almost makes you want to stand up and march.
“I like that beat,” Autumn said when I finished the final syllable. “It was almost like music.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” I agreed. They smiled and asked if I would read it again.
“I will, but first tell me what you imagined.” In rapid fire they began sharing what came to mind.
“It seemed like he was sad,” Autumn said.
“I saw a big mountain, with a grassy field and flowers,” Eden chimed in.
After they told me all that was on their mind, I told them to stand up. I read it again. This time I saw their bodies begin to sway, moving along to the beat of stressed and unstressed syllables. I stood up and began to clap my hands to the beat as I read the poem a third and final time.
I finally understood the masterpiece of the Shakespearean sonnet. All it took was a little imagination and a little reading out loud.
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