TEACHING POETRY

 

IntroductionTeaching Creative Writing Very important; great service to the students Creativity is not taught: it is explored, unleashed, released from within

People are creative when young; rules, laws, prohibitions, mores, traditions, ways of doing things, expectations, conventions: all contribute to slowly making the mind go along a certain path (uncreative)

Free-writing is a good exercise

The human mind is capable of even the unimaginableBiggest regret when started CW elective course Do not underestimate the possibilities in your class: Dumol wrote his Paglilitis in High School; student whose outlet was poetry Teaching poetry therefore is not just about the school curriculum: it’s about opening minds, new unexpected horizons, new frontiers For years, Southridge has emphasized “discipline” of the mind (e.g., Latin, catechism memorization, intellectual pursuits, etc.). We claim to be vanguards of the humanities: but where are the Southridge writers? Playwrights? Artists? Politicians: Suarez for Quezon Governor; Bagatsing for Vice Mayor; Cuna and Romulo for Congress; but where are the men of the arts? Musicians: Chino David of Silent Sanctuary; Ikey Canoy and Robbie Joseph of Akafellas; Migs Escueta; Tutti Caringal of Six Cycle Minds; but where are the writers? Nonie B – 2x Best Supporting Actor of Star Awards: for gay partner of Allan Paule But where are the poets? The playwrights? The wordsmiths.

You are more than just English/Literature teachers. Your job is to unleash their power of creativity. To free them of whatever is clipping their wings. Your job is to let them soar, fly like an eagle! Thanks to the Creative powers of writing.

 

Poetry Writing Diagnostic: what’s your definition of poetry?

Definitions of poetry according to some greats

*Jorge Luis Borges: “Poetry is something that cannot be defined without oversimplifying it. It would be like defining love, the color yellow, the fall of leaves in autumn.”

*Wallace Stevens: poetry is revelations of words by means of words

*Ben Jonson: poetry is the craft of making.

*William Carlos Williams: a small or large machine made of words

*W.H. Auden: poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or motorcycle

*Philip Sydney: poetry is counterfeiting, a figuring forth, to speak metaphorically, the end of which is to teach and delight

*Coleridge: synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination

*Shelley: the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds Marianne Moore: imaginary gardens with real toads in them

*Edgar Allan Poe: the rhythmical creation of beauty

Langston Hughes: "Poetry is the human soul entire, squeezed like a lemon or a lime, drop by drop, into atomic words."

*Roman Jakobson: poeticity is present when the word is felt as a word, and not as a mere representation of the object being named or an outburst of emotion, when words, their composition, their meaning, their external and internal form acquire a weight and value of their own instead of referring indifferently to reality

 

You can have as many as hundreds of definitions. In the end, the definition that matters is that of the judges.

 Write a stanza. Elements: Differs from prose by its compression Frequent employment of the conventions of meter and rhyme Reliance upon the line as a formal unit Heightened vocabulary Freedom of syntax Use of metaphor and simile

 The word “poesis” means “making. Difference from prose: Use of metaphorical or figurative language Concreteness, particularity, sensuous shape (imagery) Music/rhythm Should not be read on its literal sense alone

 

SO THEN, HOW DO WE TEACH POETRY WRITING?By making them read poetry! By making them explore the beauty of poetry By seducing them into falling in love with words By opening their eyes to the beauty of language By intoxicating them with the inebriating potent liqueur of words By making them play around with words, fool around with words, cavort with words, have an affair with words…until they are ready to make, POESIA

 

No right to write…unless they’ve read hundreds. Thousands. (Software: Classic Library)

 

Read Some:why Filipino poets? Highly attractive for high schoolers: Suarez, Lourde de Veyra,

 

Copy. Imitate.

 

Try some techniques/strategies of poetry writing:Subjectifying the object. Objectifying the subject. Line donne. Unique voice. Unexpected perspectives. Irony. Tension. Feel for connotation. Imagery. Sensuous.

 

Find your voice.