How do you teach Poetry?

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I love poetry, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a class with a good poetry teacher. An infrmal survey around the store found this to be common, meaning that the only person who had not had a bad poetry teacher had never had a class about poetry.

Have any of you had good poetry teachers? How did they do it?
Do any of you teach poetry? How?

4 thoughts on “How do you teach Poetry?”

  1. Well, yes! As a matter of fact, I DO teach poetry. And I always start my classes by talking about how most people think they hate poetry because they HAD to learn it in school. And we go from there. And we talk about what we like and don’t like and I don’t overanalyze EVER and I tell them quite frankly if I think a poem is boring, and I encourage them to read more Walt Whitman, who makes sense.

  2. LIFE

    I Dream, and my dreams are all broken;
    I love and my loving is vain….
    I speak, and the words are all spoken,
    I look and see nothing but pain.

    —– Louis L’Amour

    I love his poetry. The only time I ever took a class in poetry, I didn’t have a choice since I was in the 5th grade :o) We made a poetry book where we picked out the poems we liked, wrote them out and then drew pictures about what we thought it meant. I liked to draw so I really enjoyed that. I still have that book somewhere.

  3. “I have miles to go before I sleep,
    I have miles to go before I sleep.”
    Robert Frost
    I love certain poems. I share with the students some of a poem I am passionate about. I ask them to read the whole poem silently and then write something similar based on their own experience. A low risk, low stress classroom will help students feel safe in their writing. They can share with partners when some writing is complete and in small groups. Finished pieces would not be required on the first day. But work will be turned in to the teacher.

    You didnt say what age group, but I assumed it was for college students. My opinion is that lots of great poetic writing would need to be read to set the stage for writing poetry. Lots of exposure to all kinds of poetry is necessary to create the classroom environment desired for creative poetic writing. That would be imperative. You will need to provide the poetic literature for the students to be exposed to.

  4. I am retired now. But I taught young children my entire career. Once I taught Kindergarteners poetry. A child in my class won the district poetry writing and was honored at a district presentation of awards. He drew a picture of himself sitting in a tree. The words he wrote in his inventive spelling were, “Up a tree, Me”. He was so happy at his success ! It was my honor to know the district award-winning writer for poetry ! Kindergarten is a wonderful age to teach !

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