National Poetry Month: Forms of Poetry
The poet T.S. Eliot archly and glumly observed that "April is the cruelest month" in the
opening lines of The Waste Land, published in 1922. Almost eighty-five years
later, April also became the month of poetic celebration when the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets established National Poetry Month in 1996.
When the Academy asked the public to vote on their favorite American poet in 2002, the
verdict was decisive: Langston Hughes. In recognition of this poet's enduring popularity,
as well as the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Academy created a special feature on Langston Hughes.
EDSITEment followed suit with a lesson, "The Poet's Voice: Langston
Hughes and You," in which students write journal entries and discuss poems to learn
about the qualities that make Hughes's voice distinctive, forceful, and memorable.
Reading Langston Hughes is doubly appropriate this April, which has also been
designated Jazz Appreciation Month
(JAM); you can find information and teaching materials related to JAM at the
Smithsonian Jazz site. As noted in
the student-oriented biography of
Hughes available from America's
Library (a link on the EDSITEment-reviewed American
Memory), for him "jazz and blues expressed the wide range of black America's
experience, from grief and sadness to hope and determination." You can also
find an EDSITEment lesson plan related to jazz, Jazz and World War
II: A Rally to Resistance, A Catalyst for Victory.
Another American poet of enduring popularity, Robert Frost, is also the subject of an
EDSITEment lesson, "Poems
that Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost." Robert
Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" tells an invitingly simple story; but
as we read and reread the poem, we are drawn into questions and mysteries. In this
lesson, students explore such mysteries in journal entries that build upon narrative
hints in poems chosen from an online selection of Frost's most frequently anthologized
and taught works.
Deriving pleasure from the sounds of poetry is also the focus of a third EDSITEment
lesson, "Listening
to Poetry: Sounds of the Sonnet." At the heart of the lesson are its seven
innovative "sound experiments," designed to help students understand how form,
meter, and rhythm all combine to shape our experience of poetry, and the meanings
we derive from it. After some preliminary sound experiments with Lewis Carroll's
nonsense poem, "Jabberwocky," the lesson
turns to Shakespeare's Sonnet
29, a model of how the sonnet form, with its dense knitting together of
sound and meaning, can suggest an astonishing variety of emotional effects.
For younger students, EDSITEment offers a variety of lessons on poetry and
form. Several of these units feature a special focus on writing skills and the
writing process: "Can You Haiku?" (grades
3-5), "Writing
Poetry Like the Pros" (grades 3-5), and "All Together Now:
Collaborations in Poetry Writing and Recitation" (grades K-2). Another poetry
lesson designed for grades K-2, "Play With Words:
Rhyme & Verse," uses bouncy rhythms and catchy rhymes to develop skills
related to language usage, listening, vocabulary acquisition, and auditory memory,
while also fostering an understanding of thematically related concepts. Many
more age-appropriate lesson plans are listed in the sidebar to the left.
Activity: Learning to Write a Poem: Forms of Poetry
The lessons and websites detailed above all involve students' understanding
of how poetic form influences our reading of the poem. Sonnets, haikus, odes,
and elegies all give the reader some guidance in their poetic interpretation
and appreciation, and likewise guide the writer in their construction. Poets
often practice by choosing a form and trying to write a poem that follows that
structure, or they use a form to contextualize their work within a tradition.
Langston Hughes drew on African-American blues and jazz music in such poems
as "Po' Boy Blues" and "The Weary Blues," reflecting the
influence of African-American oral tradition on artistic development during
the 20th century. At other times, poets choose the form that is most appropriate
for a theme or occasion. Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" is
an elegy—a poem about the death of a person—written in response
to Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
This activity, appropriate for students of all ages, asks students first to
choose a poetic form from the list available via the EDSITEment-reviewed American
Academy of Poets. Some of these forms, like the sonnet, may be quite familiar
to students, while other forms, like the villanelle, may not be. Students should
read the synopsis of the form, and then read a poem written in that form. The
student will answer the questions below about the poem before attempting to
use that form to write a poem of their own. Parents, teachers, and caregivers
are encouraged to participate as their students and children examine the myriad
forms that structure poetry.
While students of every age can enjoy this activity, teachers and parents may
wish to help younger students select age-appropriate poetic forms. Younger students,
for example, might concentrate on forms such as the haiku, the epigram, or the
abecedarian (see in particular Blake’s use in the poem “London”).
Questions:
- List the name of the poetic form you chose and explain how it has been
used in the past.
- How has your poetic form changed over time?
- Does your poetic form have a rhyme scheme? If so, what is it?
- What are the basic features of your poetic form? Does it have a limited
number of lines or stanzas?
- Is there a rhythm to the poetic form? What is the effect of the rhythm?
- Does the poetic form generally encourage the poet to write about a particular
theme?
Students should then turn to a specific poem written in the poetic form they
are studying. Each description in the Academy of American Poets list offers
several examples to choose from. If possible, have students print out a copy
of the poem. Ask them to mark the various formal features of the poem, such
as rhyme scheme and stanza breaks, and to underline the appropriate themes often
found in that poetic form.
Finally, ask students to try writing a poem in the form they have chosen. After
they have completed their poem, students should write a brief paragraph considering
how the form of the poem influenced how they decided to write.
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