O Taste and See that the Poem is Good

O Taste and See that the Poem Is Good

Poetic Knowledge is the immediate, direct apprehension of reality that inspires wonder and awe.

To found a school (of this kind) requires only the listening heart of perhaps just one courageous, poetic soul who has come to see—intuitively and positively in an awful delight of wonder, as well as from the heights of reason and deliberate serious thought — that our land, our homes, the heavens and the earth, and those dear and those distant from us are important not only in their nature, but have meaning and purpose far beyond the reach of the current means of analysis and measurement… Science sees knowledge as power; poetic knowledge is admiration—love.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

Stopping (cont.)

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistakeThe only other sound’s the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely dark and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleepAnd miles to go before I sleep.

To name a thing, in other words, is to bless God for it and in it. In the bible to bless God is a way of life. God blessed the world, blessed man, blessed the seventh day, and this means that he filled all that exists with His love and goodness. The only natural reaction of man, to whom God gave this blessed and sanctified world, is to bless God in return, to thank Him, to see the world as God sees it and –in this act of gratitude and adoration—to know, name and possess the world. Schmemann

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

Emily Dickinson

We grow accustomed to the Dark--When Light is put away--As when the Neighbor holds the LampTo witness her Goodbye--

A Moment--We uncertain stepFor newness of the night--Then--fit our Vision to the Dark--And meet the Road--erect—

We grow (cont.)

And so of larger--Darknesses--Those Evenings of the Brain--When not a Moon disclose a sign--Or Star--come out—within

The Bravest--grope a little--And sometimes hit a TreeDirectly in the Forehead--But as they learn to see--

We Grow (cont)

Either the Darkness alters--Or something in the sightAdjusts itself to Midnight--And Life steps almost straight.

Alan Shapiro

If all great art is symbolic of a kind of moral plenitude, of conflicting attidudes and ipulses explored and worked through twoard some ideal carlity, the act of reading is itself a model of ideal human relations, aspiring toward a perfect attentiveness in which emotional possession and intellectual comprehension—what experience conditions us to see and what the text insists we see—inform and alter one another. Reading well, in other words, is symbolic loving.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

A Noiseless Patient Spider (cont.)

And you O my soul where you stand,Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Sonnet 73

Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

Sonnet 73

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Simplified Plan

1. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know2. Read aloud a poem to start the day3. Memorize a poem together regularly4. Start talking slowly about form and content,

about the elements of the poem (images, etc..)5. Begin to build a library of books and a ‘library’

of references in your classroom—a shared language, have students start choosing read aloud poems

Building a collection

Talking like the Rain (Kennedy)A child’s Anthology of Poetry (Sword)Poetry for Young Readers SeriesPoet’s Choice (Hirsch)The Book of Luminous Things (Milosz)The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry (Parini)The Norton The Psalms

Schoolwide

Poetry contestPoetry out loudPoetry liturgy (example)Elective/workshopPoetry notebooksPoem shared schoolwide