Re-Writing Poetry
Poetry is usually polarizing in the classroom, often met with reluctance or distaste. When poetry is taught in elementary schools across Ontario, often it relies on the teaching of literary devices. The key ideas are rooted in how to identify juxtaposition (a comparison), alliteration (a repeated letter), metaphor (a representation of an idea as something else), or simile (a comparison using ‘like’). These devices are important, of course, but if this is as far as poetry lessons go, then teachers are entirely missing the point of what poetry is, or what it could be.
What is missed is how poetry is not just a piece of writing, but an art form in itself. When someone studies visual art, it is acknowledged that the picture is not just a combination of different colors upon parchment or canvas, but a reflection of beauty, meticulously and thoughtfully captured. When a piece of music is studied, you notice the harmonies and time signatures, but you also acknowledge the feeling that the music is trying to convey. Merely introducing poetry as a combination of literary devices is akin to describing a dance as a combination of steps, a portrait as paint on canvas, or an orchestration as the sound of instruments. Yes, those statements are all true, but they are not why the piece was created. Every piece of art is a product of passion by its creator. True art, art that has lasted over time, has meaning behind its creation, or a purpose behind its construction. The teaching of poetry should be based on the artistic interpretation of the work, rather than merely the basic building blocks of its lines.
One may argue that starting with the interpretation of the piece, especially with young children, may be daunting or hard to understand, but you do not need to begin with William Wordsworth or Shakespeare’s sonnets. Take the poem ‘Since Hanna Moved Away’ by Judith Viorst. You can teach a child to understand the ABAC rhyme scheme, but you can also teach them to read into the poem. How the child’s loneliness and longing for their friend manifests through their daily life losing its luster and shine. Young students can begin to explore that disassociation or losing interest in things that once brought you joy can be a result of grief or loss, a concept that may not have been presented to them in such a visible or relatable way. You can ask them to write their own poems about loneliness, find how they feel, and teach them to choose their words with intention and meaning.
Feelings are not black and white. Rage can be a rough storm or a simmering pot. Love can be a breath of fresh air or a lightning strike. Envy can be a thorn, sharp and sudden, or a hovering cloud, ever-present and dark. Exploring these feelings can help children (help anyone, really) express and understand themselves and the true complexity of emotion in a more nuanced way.
Poetry is so brilliant because every bit of it is thought out. Where a line breaks, where a comma is placed, or where the writer uses ‘like’ versus ‘as.’ Every letter has a purpose. Because of the amount of thought behind each poem, it is very rare to find one that doesn’t have layers of meaning. You can read a good poem time after time and it will not lose its aim, but will add more layers of interpretation. The creation of meaningful poetry takes incredible precision. A person who can construct their words into a picture of emotion, capture what we cannot see, and also add hidden layers of thought and connotation, is akin to a brilliant composer or painter. They are artists, who can mold lessons and meaning beneath a beautiful surface.
Poetry draws us into a story of emotions and circumstances. Poetry can tell an ironic joke with witty wordplay, but can also powerfully describe and picture a broken country and how we can strive to fix it. Every poet who places words down on a page sees the world in a unique way. They will not feel an experience the same way that someone else will feel it, but the way that they write about it, lyrically and concisely, brings us further into their own world and way of thinking. The same way that poetry is a piece of art, poetry is also a person’s experience that they have crafted to tell you, a raw encompassing story of their emotions.
Not everyone will love poetry, and that is perfectly alright. It’s the same way that not everyone will like jazz music or walking through museums or video games – everyone has their own interests and appreciations. But the common idea of poetry, that it is a pretentious medium that only certain people connect with, should be re-invented. Poetry doesn’t need to be something that only the most prestigious educated study and understand. Poetry is everywhere. It is in the song lyrics we hear and speeches we write. Jokes are constructed and told with irony, and we describe our most passionate experiences in simile and metaphor. Poetry is art. We need to stop focusing so much on how to write poetry using specific tools, or trying to restrict poetry to a rhyme scheme or a formula. The focus of learning poetry should be the individual experience that you are immersed in or how to extract the experience and the beauty of the world that the poem describes. The pure artistry behind the construction of language. The way that poems can vitalize the most heartfelt emotion or the most simple, only by using words.
True poetic masterpieces outlast their authors. They are poems whose words linger in your brain and almost beg to be read again. They are poems that are humorous or heartbreaking or joyous or horrifying. They are poems whose emotions are so vivid and true that you cannot help but feel them. They are poems with cherry-picked words, strung together ever so delicately to convey a specific but ever-interpretable meaning. Not every work of art is a poem, but every poem that was crafted and created with pure passion is a work of art.