poetry reading

Today I spent around 25 minutes at Evangeline's school, reading poetry to seventh- and eighth-graders, as a belated contribution to Read Across America.

If this sounds like a peculiar form of punishment, where both the adult and the children suffer -- the students in hearing poetry, and myself in trying to get them develop an appreciation for it -- I can assure you that it was nothing like that. When I finished the students were more than merely politice in expressing their appreciation. One of them actually came up and asked me the name of a poet whose work I had mentioned but hadn't read.

The trick is all in the approach.

So knowing that most middle-schoolers hate poetry, I started out by talking with them about how awful the stuff is, and assuring them that their teachers make them read it solely because they had to suffer it through themselves back when they were in school, and everyone knows teachers enjoy sharing the pain and misery they endured with their own students. What with the unusual language and sentence structure; the fixation on boring subjects like sunrises, flowers and love; and the glassy-eyed manner it's taught in, poetry is pretty boring -- and that's without evening considering that 99 percent of all poetry is crap.

So then, after we had established that I understand and largely agree with their sentiments on poetry, I asked them what they would think of someone who writes about death, going insane, and being buried alive. Naturally, they were hooked, and listened in rapt attention to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven." Several of the students even chimed in on the word "Nevermore," which the raven keeps repeating.

After I finished that one, one of the students asked me if there were any poems about war. So I told him about "The Charge of the Light Brigade," some of the poems that emerged from the trenches of World War I, and suggested he do a Google search on poetry and war.

Next I read Robert Frost's "The Road not Taken," and we had a short discussion about the poem and its meaning on the choices we make. After that I suggested that the boys, who were at the age of taking an interest in girls, should try reading some love poetry to girls in an attempt to win their hearts. ("Absolutely guaranteed to work," I said.) And then I told the girls that if they wanted to get rid of a boy, they should read some of the dramatic poetry of William Shakespeare, particular the lines of Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing," since the insults there are enough to get rid of anyone.

I also suggested that if the girls wanted a good laugh at the boys' experience, they should get the boys to read Emily Dickinson. A good number of adolescent boys get their first crush on Dickinson, even though she's been dead 150 years or so.

For the last poem, I gave them a choice of T.S. Eliott's "The Hollow Men" or a poem about the end of the world. Naturally, they all thought a poem about the end of the world was a good idea, so I read Frost's "Fire and Ice."

My closing remarks were the clincher for at least one reader. I suggested that if they wanted to read a real freaky poem about dead men coming back to life and sailing a ship, and about waking nightmares placing bets on a man's soul, then they should read Samuel Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." One of the boys came up afterward and wanted to know more about it, so I think he's intrigued. Who knows?

So, chalk one up for the poets. When I started out the reading, the kids all agreed that they hated poetry. At worst, I didn't turn anyone off to poetry who had an interest. It looks instead like I might have got a child or two interested.