February 5th, 2010

Why/how do we teach poetry?

I’m wondering why we “teach” poetry to say, 5th graders.
From my own personal experience, there are a few poems out there that I like, but I find much poetry to be bullsh__t, in that it is so personal to the person who wrote it that you can never understand it.
What elements of poetry can we emphasize to elementary kids to get them to like it and want to write their own poems?
I had an 8th grade teacher who got our whole class into writing poems but I cannot remember how she did it. I do know that she inspired us.
I ask all of this because I subbed today and poetry was part of what we did and it was 5th grade.
Thanks

We teach poetry for the same reason we teach literature; because it’s important to learn to understand it. Most poetry is actually very relatable, once you analyze it. That’s the problem with society; no one takes the time to analyze anything, so they assume it’s worthless. For instance, my favorite poet is Sylvia Plath. You can’t always understand exactly what she’s saying until maybe the fourth or fifth time you read it, and then you finally understand and it becomes beautiful. And we teach it young because the younger you are when taught analytical skills the better they are.

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