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Keywords

teaching poetry, student engagement, personal poem sharing

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I stood in front of my class of sophomores, paper in hand, ready to share a poem with them. They had grown used to me sharing poems by that point. At the start of each class, I would stand in front of them and read aloud a poem written by one of many famous poets. However, this day was different. We were starting a new unit—poetry—and I had high expectations for my students. I had toiled with how best to teach poetry to those whose only exposure to poetry consisted of Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, or Shakespeare. There is nothing wrong with these poets—in fact, I enjoy them immensely and feel that their writing is vital, but I am thirty years old and have been reading poetry for twenty-two of those years. Many of my students have only read a few poems, if any. Standing in front of my class, paper in hand, I was determined to help them see the value of poetry. The poem I held that day was one of my own.

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