This is just to say. (The scholarship of teaching and learning).

Abstract

In this article I discuss methods of teaching poetry to prospective English teachers and to students in secondary English classes. I focus first on ways of undoing writers' fears of writing, fears perpetrated by former English teachers themselves. Secondly, I recommend Kenneth Koch's book, Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? - for use in English education programs and in the English classroom. Finally, I provide specific examples from Koch's book to highlight his approach to the teaching of poetry.

Be Thou Assured

Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, And breath of life.... Gertrude, in Hamlet

Lub-dub lub-dub. I am. Iam. Iamb. Poetry. As near to the heart as words can go. As near to what's human as words can say. Natural as the heartbeat, the words of poetry, breath of life. Words beat the rhythms of life. "Every word," writes Emerson in The Poet, "was once a poem ... and poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down...."

In this brief discussion about teaching poetry I recommend two strategies, linked to each other, in which we - English teachers and our students - can penetrate where the air is music, hear those primal warblings, and write them down. The first strategy, one of my main goals from the start when teaching poetry, is to undo some of the damage wrought from students' past experiences in reading and - especially - in writing poetry. The second strategy, more of a recommendation, is to use Kenneth Koch's book, Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? - as a primary source for teaching poetry. The imaginative writing prompts in Koch's book enable teachers and students to work through or get over their fears of writing poetry. With Koch's guidance and suggestions, writing poetry daunts not but delights. I refer specifically to two of the prompts in Koch's book in the ensuing discussion.

But first, undoing done damage. We all have memories of how some of our English teachers dimmed, dulled, thwarted, slowed, or stopped our natural impulse and ability to speak from and write from the heart. Using correct grammar meant more than saying what we thought and felt. Many English teachers have ignited and inspired us, too. But here I duel the dimmers and dullers.

I have read many accounts of students talking about the dread red pen of the English instructor, the stern guardian at language's gates squawking no, no, no to our words. What does this mean when it comes to teaching poetry to our middle and high school students and to those in teacher education programs preparing to teach middle or high school English? It means freedom. Liberating students from their past negative experiences with reading and writing poetry. Woe to the writing teacher who governs or constrains by fear. People who want to speak what's on their minds and in their hearts should not be ridiculed or intimidated. Freedom. We writers of poetry demand our freedom. How to free students?

   This is just to say. English teachers:
   Lose your view
   That nonstandard won't do
   When students write in verse.
   Think what means
   When you still the old heart -
   Whatever could be worse?

Not all students have to write like Shelley or Gwendolyn or Shakespeare. Great if they do; but, if not, no boo hoo. Swell if they write like Shel. And if they write like Shelley, then roll on your belly and shout, "I did it, I helped that girl write with such swirl, such curl and bite." If they write unlike Shelley or Gwen or Bill [Shakespeare, don't fear], then chill. They gon' be alright. Gon' be just fine. Every word once a poem. English teachers, if you've had "painful experiences" with writing, work through them as you work with students. Write your heart out with them. Tell them and yourself, it's OK to say it this way. Shout hey, hey. This is just to say.... Play with words. All poetry does not have to rhyme either. No rhyme, sublime.

This Is Just to Say

When I teach poetry with preservice teachers, I use Kenneth Koch's Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? I tell students to read about 100 pages of the book and respond to some of the poetry writing prompts from the wealth that Koch provides. Over the last several years, I have noted that many students choose the prompt related to William Carlos Williams's This Is Just to Say. As Koch notes, "This Is Just to Say ... has a theme children find irresistible, and which I used for the poetry idea, apologizing for something you're really secretly glad you did.... They enjoyed, too, asserting the importance of their secret pleasure," he goes on to say, "against the adult world of regulations. They apologized, and were pleased about, breaking things, taking things, forgetting and neglecting things, eating things, hitting people, and looking at things" (100-101).

As Koch demonstrates with his example of the Williams's poem, This Is Just to Say, we should provide students with similar writing prompts that they will find hard to resist: telling secrets, tall tales, devilish or delicious wishes, gossiping, boasting, jabbing at authority. Times when they beat the odds, won the race, upstaged the star. Funny stories - moments in classrooms or in other silent or sacred settings, when, contrary to social expectations and politeness, they giggled or laughed. Those life incidents that they remember well because they did what they wanted to do and were ready to take the consequences no matter what. Make poetry writing irresistible -- by giving students the license to say what they want, when, how, and why they want. Ask students themselves what they find irresistible -- that they would like to write about.

And, as always, teachers should write what they ask students to write. If students see that the teacher cannot resist writing about certain events, they will be more willing to write themselves. I have shared, for example, the following with students:

   This is just to say that
   I'm terribly sorry that my large old oak tree I chainsawed down
   Crashed through the roof of your garage,
   Made you frown,
   Silenced the infernal internal combustion engines
   That cough and gag, spit, sputter, stammer, and roar all over town
   As you try to fix them.
   I think you're fixing them
   But I can never be sure....

I discovered that children were not the only ones who enjoyed asserting the importance of their secret pleasure against the adult world of regulations. Adults also enjoyed asserting themselves against the world of regulations.

   English teachers can be haughty
   And they're known to curse.
   But this is just to say
   I'm gladdest when I'm naughty
   When I verse.

Writing This Is Just to Say poems might enable writers to get the monkey off their backs. Rid themselves of the malingering feelings they carry from the past, ridiculed for using language "incorrectly," breaking a sacred covenant of how best to use words. Nuts. With This Is Just to Say they write anything they damn well please and flout authority at the same time. What an invitation to write. A liberating act, an essential first step in freeing students to say what they want to say and how they want to say it. For, "if we want truth," Erasmus (1992, p. 180) writes in 1519, "every man ought to be free to say what he thinks without fear."

I find -- as I think students find - the This Is Just to Say prompt irresistible because it encourages writers to use everyday language and write about topics that genuinely engage them. Further, the prompt gives writers permission to transgress boundaries. It is human nature to now and then want to take a poke or a swipe at established norms, at authority, at powers that be. Swipers gain a sense of power. Writing This Is Just to Say poems places the power of language in the hands of the writers; gives the authors authority. Power and authority, however passing, are irresistible, especially to students and young people who often feel that they have little or none.

Kings and Queens of Writing

I have also found a second prompt in Koch's book - among scores - that kindles students' ideas and words, gives them the green light to write freely, with gumption and gall. Based on Three American Indian Poems, "the songs [poems] are full of praise and boasting - the idea behind this is that if you say how good and strong and beautiful something is, it will help it to be that way. It's like wishing, but instead of saying you wish something were true you say it is true ..." (290-91). Writers need a healthy ego and boasting is a way to kick-start the most reluctant poet. Long live the braggadocio.

   I am the king of writing,
   Breathtaking and breathmaking.
   My verse makes women swoon and old men croon.
   Wild-eyed patrons read my short stories while throned or dethroned.
   Tom Cruise calls me late at night begging to play lead roles in my
   plays.
   I toy with him: show me the money.
   Even my grocery lists, jewels,
   Have brought grocery clerks to their knees:
   Cinnamon, Turkish apricots, honey,
   Mellifluousness....

I write with students as much as I can. When they see how silly I am and how willing I am to shoot off my mouth, shout, shuffle, and shilly-shally, the more likely they are to give it a shot and shaboom themselves. "You have nothing to lose and all to gain," I tell them, "by writing down what's on your mind and in your heart, no matter how simple, sane, contrived, inane, or wise it seems." The essential first step in writing poetry is saying, like the beat of the heart, "I can, I can."

The examples that I have provided from Koch's "Rose" serve as brief introduction only to his book, a rich jewel. He provides many provocative and engaging ideas for teaching the poems and for students' writing their own poems based on the models he provides. Because Koch presents both classic and contemporary poems, he avoids the either-or dilemma of teaching one or the other, an important message. We don't need to debate whether or not to teach the classics or contemporary poetry, fiction, plays, and nonfiction. Teach both. Shakespeare and Shel; Blake and Brooks. Further, in the book's afterword, subtitled, "Mainly for Teachers," the author talks about "Teachers' Doubts" [about teaching the reading and writing of poetry] and the need for revision.

Responding to the writing prompts in the book might not eliminate all the fears students and teachers have about writing or exorcise all the old writing demons, but it gets the heart pumping and the words flowing. Words from the heart to poetry on the page. Koch gives English teachers and their students the grit and grin to take on their nemeses. Hook or crook his book and discover this is just to say and I am the greatest. Begone once and for all those dime demons that chant I can't. Hear the beat of the heart, the origins of poetry and life in your own words, diamonds and pearls. Primal warblings, breath of life.

Writing poetry draws us closer to Nature and our human nature. Write poetry as an act of humanity, of freedom. I am. I AM.

Koch, Kenneth. Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Erasmus, D. (1992). In W. Manchester. A world lit only by fire: The medieval mind and the Renaissance. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

John Gabriel, DePaul University, IL

John is assistant professor of secondary English teacher education. His teaching-research agenda focuses on literacy and writing.