Meeting the Muse: Teaching Contemporary Poetry by Teaching Poetry Writing

When William Stafford is asked when he started writing poetry, his response is always, "When did you stop?" Pretty young, by all accounts. In Children's Poetry Preferences: A National Survey of Upper Elementary Grades, Ann Terry has studied not only children's preferences but also their feelings about poetry. She has found, not surprisingly, that student preferences in poetry tend to the rhymed, the repetitive, the metered or rhythmical. Children like haiku and free verse the least. They're attracted to the funny, the upbeat, the playful, and put off somewhat by the serious, the less structured. She has also found that as elementary students get older, their enjoyment of poetry diminishes. Why? Is it because they get other interests, or because they lose their inherent appreciation for language play? Or could it be because, though they are changing, the kind of poetry they are given does not?

There seems to be a contradiction here—though they like rhymed verse better, even while liking it, they outgrow it and begin to think poetry is babyish. As children, we do prefer rhyme and strong rhythms, and yet the stereotype of poetry we have as adults is that it's all rills and daffodils, perhaps the very thing that attracted us to it in the first place. At the same time that we seem to prefer rhymed, metered poetry, we are beginning to ridicule it. We may be teaching students the poetry they like as children, but not the poetry they'll like as adults.

The causal relationship between student preferences and teaching is also troubling. Do students like rhymed, metered poetry because that is what is most often presented and dislike free verse because it is not given a fair presentation, perhaps because teachers themselves don't feel comfortable with it? While children should be exposed to all kinds of poetry, an exclusive diet of rhymed and metered poetry can instill a mindset that can be dangerous, especially if that kind of poetry doesn't "grow" with the student.

We're not suggesting that rhymed poetry not be taught or that free verse be emphasized; we're only suggesting that teachers make a special effort to give free verse, especially contemporary free verse, a chance in the classroom because it may be a more durable poetry to read as students grow, and may better answer their need to write poetry as they mature. There was once an article in the London Times that suggested that cat owners not "pull a face" when opening a can of cat food that smelled especially bad, because that would influence the cat's preference for the food. We're suggesting teachers try not to "pull a face," no matter how slight or even subconscious, when dealing with contemporary free verse. And how nice it would be if they really liked it.

In poetry writing workshops that emphasize the writing of free verse, many teachers, even eighty years after Ezra Pound introduced imagistic free verse to the world, are often skeptical that there is anything in it, that it's not an elaborate hoax. It approaches too closely, perhaps, to the poetry in contemporary magazines that no one reads or understands, and is too unlike the comforting nursery rhymes and narrative verse of our childhood. It might seem formless (Robert Frost called it playing tennis with the net down), pointless, and unnecessarily obscure. Perhaps it seems not as teachable as more traditional forms. But it is. We'd like to make a sales pitch on the benefits of teaching free verse writing as a way of developing an appreciation in the student for contemporary poetry.

When children are born and start learning to talk, before anyone tells them that language is one thing, and should be used a certain way, children naturally play with it. They think it's fun, amuse themselves, make jokes, are delighted when language seems to make its own jokes, skip rope to it, and generally treat language as the pliable thing it is. They seem to know intuitively the wisdom of Humpty Dumpty...