This guide contains a short introduction on the value of teaching poetry in elementary school and some ideas on how it should be taught. The guide presents seven classroom activities to make poetry come alive. Seven figures illustrating the activities are included. (MS)

Muses on such topics as the importance of teaching students about the craft of poetry and of helping them see that life can turn into literature. (GT)

In an instructional experiment in poetry in a college English literature course, chronology of publication and labels of authorship were ignored in the study of Wordsworth and Coleridge's "Lyrical Ballads." In the original plan for the "Lyrical Ballads," Coleridge was to supply poems treating supernatural elements as real,…

In teaching poetry to unenthused students, a teacher began as though the student have never seen a poem they liked. Teachers are advised to keep to free verse whenever possible, and when possible to stay contemporary, especially in the early stages of poetry teaching. Poems that don't need footnotes for clarity can be taught and whatever texts are…

Teachers teach literature to help students expand and develop their image-making powers, "to imagine, conceive, fancy, picture," to think. To get students involved in literature, especially poetry, Robert Frost's poem, "The Witch of Coos," is particularly useful because it is so immediately accessible. In order to help engage…

In the name of responsible argument, persuasive rhetoric need not eschew all the devices used by propaganda. Emotion is not only inevitable in discourse, it is the necessary base for action. Educators should not consider propaganda evil for the very reason they consider poetry good: its emotional power. This kind of thinking creates a specious…

Each of these ten creative writing assignments includes a model poem, a writing idea, and suggested discussions or activities related to the writing idea. The assignments can be used to stimulate either poetry or prose writing. (Author/AA)

Secondary school teachers of English often avoid teaching T.S. Eliot's poetry because they consider his work too difficult for young readers and too full of esoteric allusions. However, at the heart of his work is a variety of rich, concrete images which can be used to reveal his meaning and which can be offered to students in the form of drawings…

The art of poetry is being worn away by democracy, the rule of the average, and by an attitude of narcissism which equates sincere endeavor with significant endeavor. The opening lines of several poems taken from a poetry journal reveal a distinct lack of significant emotion. While poetry is the most significant expression of the Self, the…

This paper describes an approach for teachers to use in editing students' poems. The general editorial tactic recommended is for teachers to edit first drafts toward figures of speech, and towards the schemes and tropes that are latent or emergent within the students' writing. It is suggested that teachers avoid dealing directly with the contents…

Takes a new look at the importance and the oddity of John Donne's "The Exstasie" through a feminist critical perspective. Discusses certain major elements in the poem: the situation, the the persons, and the images that carry key meanings. (EL)

Presents autobiographical reminiscences about the author's experiences with poetry as a child, a student, and a poet, and as a Black American. (GT)

John Milton presented a wide spectrum of materials and ideas illuminating the literary landscape like a rainbow which critics and authors have been discussing for centuries. One example of the multiple layers of meaning in Milton's poems is found in Sonnet XIX, which can be useful for both forensic discussion as well as for composition…

An assignment for high school or college students that requires them to interpret what a poem may have communicated to the poet's contemporaries can be valuable in that it teaches them that there is more than one way to interpret a poem and that the rules of interpretation are neither universal nor unchanging. Such an approach to poetry…

Poetry therapy is the method of therapy based on the principle that a poem is a special medium for expressing emotions and that this expression can have psychotherapeutic value. A survey taken in 1973 showed there were over 400 therapists treating 3,500 drug addicts, alcoholics, and mental retardates around the country. Poetry therapists…