But
largely, c’mon — you and I both know — real live American poetry is
absent from our public schools. The teaching of poetry languishes, and
that region of youthful neurological terrain capable of being ignited and
aria’d only by poetry is largely dark, unpopulated, and silent, like a
classroom whose door is unopened, whose shades are drawn.
This
is more than a shame, for poetry is our common treasure-house, and we need its
aliveness, its respect for the subconscious, its willingness to entertain
ambiguity; we need its plaintive truth-telling about the human condition and
its imaginative exhibitions of linguistic freedom, which confront the general
culture’s more grotesque manipulations.
We need the emotional training sessions poetry conducts us through. We need its previews of coming attractions:
heartbreak, survival, failure, endurance, understanding, more heartbreak.
The
first part of the fix is very simple: the list of poems taught in our schools
needs to be updated. We must make a new
and living catalogue accessible to teachers as well as students. The old
chestnuts — “The Road Not Taken,” “I heard a fly buzz when I died,” “Do
not go gentle into that good night” — great, worthy poems all — must
be removed and replaced by poems that are not chestnuts. This refreshing of canonical content and tone
will vitalize teachers and students everywhere, and just may revive our sense
of the currency and relevance of poetry.
Accomplish that, and we can renew the conversation, the teaching,
everything. . .
If
anthologies were structured to represent the way that most of us actually
learn, they would begin in the present and “progress” into the past. I read Lawrence Ferlinghetti before I read D.
H. Lawrence before I read Thomas Wyatt.
Once the literate appetite is whetted, it will keep turning to new
tastes. A reader who first falls in love
with Billy Collins or Mary Oliver is likely then to drift into an anthology
that includes Emily Dickinson and Thomas Hardy. . .
In
the spirit of boosterism, I have selected twenty works I believe worthy of
inclusion in this curriculum — works I believe could empower us with a common
vocabulary of stories, values, points of reference. The brief explications and
justifications I offer below for nine of these poems are not meant to foreclose
the interpretive possibilities that are part of a good poem’s life force.
Rather, I hope they will point to areas worthy of cultivation in that
mysterious inner space, the American mind.
~Tony Hoagland, Poet
Okay, Tony. I
accept your challenge. The thing is, I
don’t care for your list of poems, so I’ve chosen my own. Class, here are twenty (plus one) poems to
whet your appetites, and to entice you into the joys of poetry.
~ Jim MacArthur, Teacher
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Click to enlarge. |
Okay, here's what to do with the poetry packet. Two things.
1. Interact with the poems as you read them. Have a conversation with the poet. (See an example to the right as I read two poems by Marie Howe -- at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in Farmington, July 12, 2015.) If you're not sure how to read a poem -- no seriously, it's different from other reading, go here. The completed, annotated set of poems must be turned in no later than September 4, 2015.
2. Leave a comment on the blog (below). As you're reading, if you have a favorite poem (or even a passage from a poem -- that's fine) share it with your classmates. Or if you're puzzled by something, ask what others have come up with.
By the way, I encourage all of you to drop by the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival this summer. (Although I must warn you, they are now charging a $15.00 dollar admission fee.* Well, considering I'll pay $50 dollars for a seat at Fenway, plus another $20 to park, plus gas and tolls -- it's still a great deal. But poetry is for everybody -- not just the elites.) Ted Kooser, United States Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006, opens the Festival on June 24th. Other Poet Laureates who have read there include Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins, Philip Levine, and Natasha Trethewey. (Natasha has been here twice -- once as a young unknown and then later in her first reading as Poet Laureate.) Many of the poets in your packet are Sunken Garden alumni. There's food and drink. live music, then a poetry reading -- all in a beautiful setting on a lovely summer evening. One can hardly get more civilized that that.

* Update -- Well, they are and they aren't. If you're 18 or under (like you), it's FREE! If you're over 18 (like me) it's still $15.00. And only $12.00 if you buy your ticket online.