Poetry.
Does the word conjure up your 10th grade English teacher, droning on and on? Or being made to dissect, analyze, and beat to death phrases that had no meaning to you?
Or perhaps the word makes you think of a lovesick fool trying to “get his feelings out”?
Are you a person who thinks that poetry is only something for English professors, knights trying to win the hand of a fair lady, or people who feign sophistication?
(Raises hand.)
I was, too! Even though I wrote my own poetry as a teenager and young adult, I was intimidated by “real” poetry and consequently, avoided it. So why in the world would I make poetry a part of my homeschool curriculum- even for my 4-6 year olds?
Well, first I should answer the question: Why does poetry exist?
Today, poetry is an absolute necessity. The world needs it for its vitalizing strength. Poetry came into being for this need, and it is perpetuated for the same reason.
Poetry has nearly everything that music can give – melody, rhythm, sentiment – but it has this advantage: it can come closer to the heart. Therefore it can have a more personal and a more lasting appeal.
It satisfies a hunger for beauty that is a part of nearly every person’s normal makeup.
It recaptures vanished moments and recreates scenes that have grown dim through passing years.
It entertains, it inspires, and, in time of need, it comforts.
- Edward Frank Allen (from the forward to The Best Loved Poems of the American People)
Poetry is a part of our human culture that is often closest to a person’s heart. Sometimes, fewer words can express more than entire volumes. My mother, like David of the Bible, has written many poems that were a comfort to her at the time of her life, but have carried on to encourage others to this day. Some poems tell about our history. Others memorialize a person’s life. And yet others speak of God’s glorious creation. Yes, there is “junk” poetry that is not worthy of our time. But it is not the genre that is the problem, but rather, the person writing it.
A second thing to ask when you discuss the reason for reading/teaching/studying poetry is: What separates poetry from the regular text of a picture book?
Helen Ferris, who collected the poems found in the book Favorite Poems, Old and New, recounts how her mother shared with her and her brother a love of poetry:
Later I was to learn that Mama had an articulate theory about reading poetry aloud to children, a theory not surprising for she was a pianist. It did not matter, she was convinced, if we could not understand all the words. We could enjoy the beautiful sound of them. So it was that…Mother Goose flowed easefully into Alfred Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow into Shakespeare. (p. iv)
Poetry has a rhythm to it.
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”Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” – Edgar Allen Poe
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In addition to the flow and rhythm of poetry, something else separates it from regular picture book text: descriptive language. The descriptive language found in poetry helps children to understand figures of speech, such as simile and metaphor, that they’ll encounter in everyday life. For example, in the poem “Fog” by Carl Sandburg, the line -
“The fog comes in on little cat feet…”
- helps a child to see how the fog came in because they can relate it to something they are familiar with. This is a different type of thinking that takes more “brain work” and as an educator, I love things that promote more brain work. 
Poetry helps children to think more creatively, by showing them that it is possible to describe an object in many different ways. For example, can you guess what the following poem is describing?
White sheep, white sheep
On a blue hill,
When the wind stops,
You all stand still.
When the wind blows,
You walk away slow.
White sheep, white sheep,
Where do you go?
A little poem that my children like is entitled “Brooms”:
On stormy days
When the wind is high
Tall trees are brooms
Sweeping the sky
They swish their branches
In buckets of rain,
And swash and sweep it
Blue again
-Dorothy Aldis
They like how the descriptive words in the poem create a picture they can clearly see in their mind, without a photograph or painted canvas nearby.
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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. – Rita Dove
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How do we study poetry in our home school?
We get acquainted with 1 poet for 12 weeks (1 term). By the end of the term, we have a good idea of the style of his or her poetry and what differentiates the poet from others. We like to read a short biography about the poet, if it is available, to “get to know” him better. During the exchange between poet and reader that comes from simply reading a poem, we have “made friends” with many different types of people. Choose the right poets and poems, and you can broaden your children’s range of the expression of ideas.
By simply reading the poems, we discover the same thing that the poet Walter de la Mare found when out when he was a child -
“…The more I read, the more I came to enjoy [poems] for their own sakes. Not all of them, of course. But I did see this, that like a carpenter who makes a table, a man who has written a poem has written it like that on purpose.”
- from the introduction to Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems For the Young of all Ages
When we come to realize that a poet writes his poem on purpose, we can begin to ask ourselves the question – “Why did he write it this way?” Interest and curiosity lead to inquisitiveness which leads to analysis. You don’t just start by analyzing something that you have no interest in. It just doesn’t work that way!
Another way we study poetry is that we seek out nature poetry that relates to a new season that we are entering or poetry written by someone in the period of history we are studying. Poetry then becomes an integral part of the study of mankind, not merely a “subject” to be checked off the school to-do list.
Some ways in which we learn to love the poems that we study:
Illustrate them.
Narrate them back.
Use them for handwriting (copywork) practice.
Read them aloud to learn good oratory skills such as inflection, facial expression, and timing.
Memorize and recite them before an audience.
Reciting in 2011
Reciting in 2012
Here are some of the poets that we’ve studied that would be good choices for you just starting to introduce your children to poetry:
A Child’s Garden of Verses (Our favorite version is the one illustrated by Tudor)
Robert Louis Stevenson: Storyteller and Adventurer by Katharine Wilkie (biography)
Now We Are Six
When We Were Very Young
Favorite Poems
Bells and Grass
My children have also enjoyed these poets, but only after we had “broken the poetry ice” with the others:
Some books about Emily’s life that we enjoyed include Emily Michael Bedard, The Mouse of Amherst by Elizabeth Spires and My Uncle Emily by Jane Yolen.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, illustrated by Susan Jeffers
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Paul Revere’s Ride by Ted Rand
Hiawatha illustrated by Susan Jeffers
The following book is a wonderful introduction to poetry for a very young child. The poems are short and silly.
Busy in the Garden by George Shannon
Poetry Books to collect:
Poetry for Young People series - They have these for most of the “famous” poets. They include the poet’s most child-friendly poems, along with beautiful artwork.
Childcraft, Volumes 1 and 2 - Volume 1 contains nursery rhymes and shorter poems and Vol. 2 contains longer works.
Favorite Poems, Old and New, edited by Helen Ferris – If you just want to dip your big toe into poetry with your children, this is a great one to start with. The poems are divided by subject for easy choosing.
The Best Loved Poems of the American People, edited by Hazel Felleman
By studying poetry with my children, I have come to realize that I actually enjoy it! So far, from what we’ve studied, I’ve enjoy the poems of Robert Frost and Edgar Guest the best. I also enjoy reading the poems that my mother wrote years ago that she has entitled “Psalms of a Woman”. You can find some of them on her blog.
Is there a particular poet that you or your children enjoy reading? If poetry is not a part of your life (whether you homeschool or not), I encourage you to check out one of the above mentioned books, choose a poem and just start reading it with your children around. You may be surprised at how much you (and they) enjoy it!
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Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
- Jean Cocteau
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For more Learning Together Tuesday posts, click HERE.
(*The above unnamed poem is “Clouds” by Christina Rossetti)
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