When I was in the 8th grade, our language arts teacher in what was then called junior high school had us memorize our first real poem, "In Flanders Fields."
Adolescence is a complicated enough time for those passing through it, and generally coincides with a student's first serious introduction to the concept of poetry beyond the Dr. Seuss books of childhood. Unfortunately, it can also become associated with unpleasant aspects of school life, including occasionally bad teachers, and teens develop a skewed perception of the literary form and even an aversion to poetry itself.
A savvy teacher will associate the popular lyrics of the day with the introduction of poetry to middle school students, and not just rely on the time-worn opportunities to memorize a piece like "In Flanders Fields," which for all its power and sincerity is far removed from the realities of today's teen.
Middle school students should be exposed to poetry in a way that energizes and excites them and helps them see the association to song lyric as a way to communicate something in distilled form. They should learn the joy of the sound of words and not just stumble over the complication of words.
Here are some of my favorite poems appropriate for introducing middle schoolers to the form, grouped in categories that have relevance in contemporary life.
Self-esteem:
"I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?" Emily Dickinson's famous lines reach out to the outsider in all of us and assures it's okay to be different, to not be part of the in crowd. Yeats takes a student through a lyric daydream in a boring classroom to a "brightening glance. How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
I'm Nobody - Emily Dickinson
Provide, Provide - Robert Frost
The Silken Tent - Robert Frost
Among School Children - William Butler Yeats
Fragility of life:
Most students will understand by adolescence that life can be taken in an instant. They will know about 9/11 and Columbine. Maybe they've lost a friend or a family member. Stevie Smith's famous "Not Waving But Drowning" is an excellent piece to have students at that level memorize. Millay's bittersweet sonnet has been set to music, a good find if the teacher can locate it.
Out, Out - Robert Frost
Not Waving But Drowning - Stevie Smith
Ozymandias - Percy Bysse Shelley
If I Should Learn - Edna St. Vincent Millay
Fragility of the planet:
Teens are also keenly aware of current issues like global warming and the concept of world community in saving the planet. Hopkins last stanza of "Inversnaid" should go past the wonderful sound of the words to something very real for them: "What would the world be, once bereft/Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,/O let them be left, wildness and wet;/Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."
Fire and Ice - Robert Frost
Inversnaid - Gerard Manley Hopkins
For Whom the Bell Tolls - John Donne
Still Life:
In poetry as in art, sometimes a piece is just a snapshot of life, an illustration of an image, whether it's longing for home in England in April, the stirrings of bedtime, the contents of a refrigerator, or a spider web.
This Is Just to Say - William Carlos Williams
Home Thoughts, from Abroad - Robert Browning
This Englishwoman Is So Refined - Stevie Smith
maggie and milly and molly and may - e.e. cummings
Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock - Wallace Stevens
(The Silken Tent - Robert Frost)
Poetry:
Students should be taught not to be afraid of poetry, but to use it like just another tool at their disposal, like their digital camera, their smart phone, their laptop. Snyder's "How Poetry Comes to Me" captures perfectly the tentative introduction "over the boulders at night. . .frightened outside the range of my campfire," and Parra's poem brings it all home: "In poetry everything is permitted. With only this condition of course, You have to improve the blank page."
How to Eat a Poem - Eve Merriam
How Poetry Comes to Me - Gary Snyder
Young Poets - Nicanor Parra
(This Englishwoman is So Refined - Stevie Smith)
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Ted Frier
Cleverley
J. P. Major
ohsillyme
Lauren B. Davis
Rochelle Skaar
Salon.com
Comments
I think Emily's will be a great introduction for him... printing now...
That teacher should be tarred and feathered.
My first thoughts about poetry and junior high came from my mother whose English teacher at that time would simply read poetry to them one day a week. My mother loved those classes and from what she said, so did everyone else. Miss Grenier. Nice memories flooding in. Thanks.
I'm sure you're a great teacher.
ANY poetry that can inspire or excite a child to words is a good thing.
I remember discussing Ozymandias with my eighth grade ESL students (really an EFL class.)
I always get choked up at the end with this one. My students think it's the funniest thing, not the poem, but the teacher getting all teary-eyed!!!
Nope. You've got some pretty sharp 6th-8th graders if they understand that.
I was lucky enough to have a junior high teacher who KNEW how to teach Shakespeare. I will thank her until the end of my days.
Excellent piece and recommendations. Thank you!
If they get that learning poetry is good in and of itself, I die a happy woman. I will admit here to thinking that most curriculum pitched towards middle schoolers tends to be, imho, "dumbed down". It's work, but the students really get excited when they "get" a difficult word or poem.
"Home Thoughts, from Abroad"
"Fire and Ice"
"Not Waving, But Drowning"
"Among Schoolchildren"
"I'm Nobody"
"How to Eat a Poem"
"Young Poets"
- others if I get time. Thank you again!
Oh woe is me, oh woe is me
I used to have a hamster tree.
But it got eaten by a newt
And now I have no cuddly fruit.
Oh woe is me, oh woe is me
I used to have a hamster tree.
(Note to self: don't let kids read this just before a long road trip).
My personal favorite is Anyone lived in a pretty how town. "Down they forgot as up they grew..."
And, of course, the kids aren't old enough to handle Donne's "The Flea." But it's an inspired and brilliant poem.
Ann, what kind of teacher makes 4th graders write poetry and then tells them it's wrong? Poetic form, rhyme, meter, structure, should never be coming at that age. High school, advanced middle school, maybe, unless they want it sooner. I would say, again, it comes with the ardent listening to and study of music to help with structure. Kids do eventually need to understand structure and poetic devices in the study of poetry. . .but not at that age.
Catherine, patricia, Terry, Cranky, thank you, too, for your kind comments. I hope those of you who found unfamiliar poems, or poems you'd forgotten, will (re)discover them.
In college, the poem that hit me in the gut was The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarell. His imagery was morbidly effective. (Obviously not a middle school assignment.) I was prejudiced here because one of my functions in the Navy Air Corp was as a waist gunner.
You have two comments regarding a fourth-grade experience with poetry -- one positive and one negative. I think that, if done right, elementary school would be a fertile field for teaching poetry.
I get the impression that there will be a lot of poetry reading this evening -- thanks to you.
Until I found that one poem that connected to my soul I hated poetry. Once that first connection was made I wanted more. I felt bitter for not ever having one teacher who really tried to help me understand, or who never reached beyond the syllabus to guide us by feeling alone.
I love the ideas you've expressed here. What an amazing thing it would be to see teachers using such a guide, reaching teenagers by finding the words that will connect with them.
I'll slip you a note when I publish my experience. I think you may be one of the few who will understand the connection that I was speaking of. At least I hope you will. No- you will. I feel positive of it. As they say... it takes one to know one.