Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Where did the love of Poetry go?

Kathleen's demo asks a fantastic question...

"How has poetry moved from center stage to the margins of society?"

Wow... quite an issue but Kathleen tackled it well giving us ways of giving kids a different ways to analyze poetry (Junior High Audience) without her being the only one that is breaking it down. Using multiple genres (Bud... you listening?), Kathleen gives kids the chance to explore small sections of poetry to interpret and discover the poet's intentions. It was a great way of tackling a problem that I imagine many English teachers have. She also helped lower the anxiety of people like me (non-english teachers) and encouraged us to continue to utilize it in our classes in unconventional ways. Thanks Kathleen.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup, I'm listening. Sounds wicked cool! I'd've loved to have seen this demo, especially to ask about whether or not it's true that poetry's moved to the sidelines. I see most written forms -- poetry included -- experiencing a big ol' resurgence, particularly online.

Megan E. Freeman said...

Ted Kooser addressed this question in his keynote last fall at the CLAS Writing Conference. He doesn't have much good to say about early and mid-twentieth century literary critics who encouraged elitist, esoteric writing that left the common American reader out in the cold. According to him, we're still undoing the damage in our classrooms every day.

arthur said...

Bud, I think it would be cool to put a couple of video clips on the website. I did a short music video log for one day, but it might be fun to do some others as well. Let me know what you think.

Will Sherman

Anonymous said...

Will,

Makes great sense. Let's talk about getting that done -- it's pretty easy to do if the video's already digital. If you're feeling brave, go ahead and put them up and embed them in a post. Feel free to e-mail me (budtheteacher@gmail.com) if you need help getting going.

Craig said...

Kathleen-

I'm so bummed I had to miss your demo, though I had a great time talking with the early careers peeps.

I'd still like to get a copy of your demo packet...

Craig