How do we make our children fall in love with the highest and deepest of….poems?
Children memorize poetry, learn the names of famous poets, and are told what “good poetry” to read…but do ours experience poetry?
As I scanned poetry last week with my high school students, I asked them, “But what makes a poem a poem? Why would we even write poetry?” I’ve often found myself showing my students that a poem, by its form, allows us to experience its theme. When we read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Swing”, our voice literally rises and falls with the moving words, only our voice does the pumping rather than our legs. When we climb the birches with Robert Frost, the poem truly elevates our mind in a way that few things can, outside art, music, and poetry.
But, here’s the twist, – we need to guide our children into that meeting with the poets.
Just as James Mayhew’s character, Katie, steps into the frames of famous paintings, we need to help our children jump into the poetry they encounter. Here are some titles that helped me achieve this experience with my own children, as we explored famous American poets.
These titles are broken into four unit studies, focusing on: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost. The year is so short! At the end, I give a smattering of some favorite miscellaneous American titles.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
He is perhaps the easiest poet to introduce our youngest students to, with his engaging and memorable rhyme and meter! For our backbone, I chose Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from the wonderful series, Poetry for Young People. With my younger children, I then supplemented our study with the picture books, Hiawatha and The Ride of Paul Revere.
For my oldest daughter, I searched out a vintage copy of Evangeline on ebay. Some of these titles are hard to find, but I love this series from the turn of the 20th century, where the editors include one rendition of the poem in prose, followed then by the poem itself. This format allows the students to see the differences between poem and prose, but also allows longer poems to be more accessible, if they are newer to poetic studies. Alternative, paperback editions exist; the Pelican Pouch edition also includes a short historical introduction and maps. We started to run out of time from the very beginning, but The Courtship of Miles Standish was also on our schedule. Unfortunately, we have to resort to one of my anthologies for this one, as I could find no wonderful versions of this one available, though I found a couple as I wrote this post!
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- Walt Whitman
Poetry for Young Readers again provided us with a book of his poetry. This is a wonderful series to keep accessible throughout the years, as the editors have found an illustrator to decorate each page; they have included wonderful excerpts of longer poems, and chosen ones more attractive to the younger eye. An alternative collection comes from Poetry for Kids; this volume arranges the poetry nicely, but I found the illustrations to be more engaging in the first anthology.
To enhance our study of this poet – who is a relatively difficult one for younger readers to engage – we read the picture book, I Heard the Learned Astronomer. I also pulled out my beautiful Leaves of Grass edition from Word Cloud to show my older student. If you are studying Whitman in correlation with American history, your older elementary or middle-school student may also enjoy O Captain, My Captain by Robert Burleigh, which focuses on the connections between Whitman and Lincoln during the Civil War.
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- Emily Dickinson
Here is such a delightful poet to introduce students to. Her format is similar enough to a nursery rhyme to catch the ear of the little ones; her appeals to reason are deep and intellectual enough to engage the minds of the older students. A delightful anthology from the 1970’s named for her famous poem “I’m Nobody! Who are You?” exists to appeal to elementary students. Its pictures are colorful and appealing, and my children enjoyed picking their favorite ones to read. For those wishing a more modern look, the Poetry for Kids series has an Emily Dickinson picture anthology as well, featuring pen and watercolor drawings along the poems, which are organized into seasonal categories. Poetry for Young People also features her. For the older student, a copy of the small but beautifully bound Poems of Emily Dickinson from Barnes and Noble may attract more attention and thought.
To supplement our study, I turned to the charming picture book Emily Writes, which imagines what young Emily may have been envisioning and experimenting with before she could even pen lines and Emily, a biographical picture book featuring Barbara Cooney’s artwork that describes how a young girl befriends the adult Emily.
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- Robert Frost
Once again, Poetry for Young Readers provided the core of our study as a family with Robert Frost and a beautiful anthology from Barnes and Noble called Robert Frost: Selected Poems served as my source for the older student. The former offered a seasonal arrangement of poems which works beautifully with Frost’s work, and the second’s glossy, ornate cover and pages appealed to my older daughter’s flair for all things stunning. Our additional picks included Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, illustrated by Susan Jeffers. Several other beautiful titles are also available: the wonderful anthology Swinger of Birches, the young illustrated collection Poetry for Kids: Robert Frost (though we found the arrangement and selection of poems in Poetry for Young Readers to be more orderly and engaging), the older student anthology You Come Too, and the picture book Birches. I also drew from my other anthologies, as well as the beautiful choral arrangement “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” arr. by David Wagner. There are many striking musical arrangements of Robert Frost’s music available, including “Pasture” arr. By Z. Randall Stroope and “Frostiana” arr. by Randall Thompson.
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- The Hidden Gems
Within our year, I also interspersed some historical treasures, including: Emma’s Poem, featuring the story of how Emma Lazarus composed “The New Colossus”, the poem inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; The Ballad of the Harp Weaver by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a sad but sweet poem about a poor mother’s love for her child; and Casey at the Bat, which my two year old adores, because there is a baseball on nearly every page.
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