why i write poetry - joyce sidman by hannah firmin. eople often ask me—in a slightly mystified...

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A really good poem can reach kids in wondrous and unexpected ways eople often ask me—in a slightly mystified tone of voice—why I write poetry. I know what they’re thinking: poetry is a bit outside the mainstream; many readers don’t seek it out, and some avoid it. So why deliberately choose it? In some ways, I think poetry chose me. I’ve loved it right from childhood, drawn to those tiny sculptures of words on the page. The words themselves enchant me: so vivid, so concise, so rich and full of allusion. I love the music in them—so satisfying to the ear. I love the way a really good poem explodes inside of me, taking the “top of my head off,” as Emily Dickinson so famously wrote. There’s great power in poetry, and great mystery. It’s not easily pinned down, and its allure is difficult to explain. Why do I embrace it? And why do I believe it is absolutely essential for children? Allow me the old Zen trick of answering questions with stories. Story No. 1: Capturing the moment My husband and I have been hiking all morning in the fall sunshine. We reach a beautiful open field, where we decide to eat lunch (hurrah!). Lake Superior glitters in the distance. Bright scarlet sumac leaves dot the undulating grass. Overhead, an aspen gleams yellow against a blindingly blue sky. Heaven. As we drowse in the sunlight, a single raven soars over the field. I’ve just been studying ravens, and I was hoping to see one on this trip! It spots us, does a flip in the air, warbles, bur- bles, rasps, and carries on a comical conversation with itself before disappearing. For me, this is a moment of pure happiness. One that will stick in my brain… until, eventually, it’s relegated to the trash heap of all my memories. Unless I write a poem about it, which I immediately start to do in my head. Poetry can capture a moment—its sights, sounds, smells, feelings—so vividly, it’s like you’re back inside it. “Think you’ll always re- member what it’s like to be 10 years old?” I ask students in schools I visit. “You won’t. Write a poem about your life right now , and you will have it forever.” Story No. 2: Choosing joy As a writer-in-residence in a Minneapolis public school, I’m visiting a fourth-grade class today. I have 50 minutes with the kids, and I will probably never see them again. As I wander around the classroom, passing out the seashells that we’ll be 32 School Library Journal APRIL 2012 www.slj.com

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Illu

stra

tions

by

Han

nah

Firm

in.

By Joyce Sidman

A really good poem can reach kids in wondrous and unexpected ways

PHO TOGR A PH BY PHO T OGR A PH ER

eople often ask me—in a slightly mystified tone of voice—why I write poetry. I know what they’re thinking: poetry is a bit outside the mainstream; many readers don’t seek it out, and some avoid it. So why deliberately choose it?

In some ways, I think poetry chose me. I’ve loved it right from childhood, drawn to those tiny sculptures of words on the page. The words themselves enchant me: so vivid, so concise, so rich and full of allusion. I love the music in them—so satisfying to the ear. I love the way a really good poem explodes inside of me, taking the “top of my head off,” as Emily Dickinson so famously wrote. There’s great power in poetry, and great mystery. It’s not easily pinned down, and its allure is difficult to explain. Why do I embrace it? And why do I believe it is absolutely essential for children? Allow me the old Zen trick of answering questions with stories.

writing about, I notice a boy who seems withdrawn, unen-gaged. I question the teacher. “Oh,” she sighs in vexation, “don’t expect much out of him. He’s—well frankly, he’s a weird kid. He hasn’t given me anything all year.” I just nod, but my skin begins to prickle. The boy studies his shell seri-ously. He stares unseeingly for a long while. Then he starts to write, “Dear Shell…

You look like many beautiful things. You look like a Frisbee. You look like a tornado. You look like a maze, upside down. You make my heart smile wide in the deep-sized earth. You make lizards dance with birds…”

Wow, right? Poetry loves “weird kids.” And nontraditional learners. And kids that don’t quite fit in. Poetry gathers them up, gives them a fistful of words, and lets them sing. The little Einsteins of the world, whom no one really understands, the ESL learners whose grasp of English is a little shaky, the dreamy kids that can’t seem to produce anything: give ’em poetry. Poetry will welcome that unusual vision, that slightly off-kilter sense of reality. A shell that spins like a tornado? Lizards dancing with birds? No problem. The world is full of wonders, says Poetry, and your only job is to be able to see those wonders, to feel them, and to try to communicate them.

Story No. 1: Capturing the momentMy husband and I have been hiking all morning in the fall sunshine. We reach a beautiful open field, where we decide to eat lunch (hurrah!). Lake Superior glitters in the distance. Bright scarlet sumac leaves dot the undulating grass. Overhead, an aspen gleams yellow against a blindingly blue sky. Heaven.

As we drowse in the sunlight, a single raven soars over the field. I’ve just been studying ravens, and I was hoping to see one on this trip! It spots us, does a flip in the air, warbles, bur-bles, rasps, and carries on a comical conversation with itself before disappearing.

For me, this is a moment of pure happiness. One that will stick in my brain… until, eventually, it’s relegated to the

trash heap of all my memories. Unless I write a poem about it, which I immediately start to do in my head. Poetry can capture a moment—its sights, sounds, smells, feelings—so vividly, it’s like you’re back inside it. “Think you’ll always re-member what it’s like to be 10 years old?” I ask students in schools I visit. “You won’t. Write a poem about your life right now, and you will have it forever.”

Story No. 2: Choosing joyAs a writer-in-residence in a Minneapolis public school, I’m visiting a fourth-grade class today. I have 50 minutes with the kids, and I will probably never see them again. As I wander around the classroom, passing out the seashells that we’ll be

P

PoetryPoetryWhy I WriteWhy I Write

32 School Library Journal APRIL 2012 www.slj.com

SLJ120401-MAG_0032 1 3/22/2012 11:37:40 AM

Illu

stra

tions

by

Han

nah

Firm

in.

eople often ask me—in a slightly mystified tone of voice—why I write poetry. I know what they’re thinking: poetry is a bit outside the mainstream; many readers don’t seek it out, and some avoid it. So why deliberately choose it?

In some ways, I think poetry chose me. I’ve loved it right from childhood, drawn to those tiny sculptures of words on the page. The words themselves enchant me: so vivid, so concise, so rich and full of allusion. I love the music in them—so satisfying to the ear. I love the way a really good poem explodes inside of me, taking the “top of my head off,” as Emily Dickinson so famously wrote. There’s great power in poetry, and great mystery. It’s not easily pinned down, and its allure is difficult to explain. Why do I embrace it? And why do I believe it is absolutely essential for children? Allow me the old Zen trick of answering questions with stories.

writing about, I notice a boy who seems withdrawn, unen-gaged. I question the teacher. “Oh,” she sighs in vexation, “don’t expect much out of him. He’s—well frankly, he’s a weird kid. He hasn’t given me anything all year.” I just nod, but my skin begins to prickle. The boy studies his shell seri-ously. He stares unseeingly for a long while. Then he starts to write, “Dear Shell…

You look like many beautiful things. You look like a Frisbee. You look like a tornado. You look like a maze, upside down. You make my heart smile wide in the deep-sized earth. You make lizards dance with birds…”

Wow, right? Poetry loves “weird kids.” And nontraditional learners. And kids that don’t quite fit in. Poetry gathers them up, gives them a fistful of words, and lets them sing. The little Einsteins of the world, whom no one really understands, the ESL learners whose grasp of English is a little shaky, the dreamy kids that can’t seem to produce anything: give ’em poetry. Poetry will welcome that unusual vision, that slightly off-kilter sense of reality. A shell that spins like a tornado? Lizards dancing with birds? No problem. The world is full of wonders, says Poetry, and your only job is to be able to see those wonders, to feel them, and to try to communicate them.

Children are closer to this sense of wonder, but we all have a flash of it now and then. There’s a part of each of us that doesn’t quite fit in, that sees things differently, that chafes at the rigid categories of school or work. And lest you are thinking right now, “Not me. I’m a linear kind of person…. ” Well, pull out a shell, or an acorn, or even a stapler, and look at it. Really look. As if you’re seeing it for the first time. What does it feel like? What does it remind you of? What is its purpose, its goal in life? Where has it come from, and where is it going? What does it do in the dark watches of the night? What might it dream about? See where those thoughts take you. I bet they’ll lead you right back into wonder and imagination and—like the little boy in that class-room—into joy. Poetry lets us experience the world with joy.

Story No. 3: Easing the heartI am at my desk, working on my book This Is Just to Say: Po-ems of Apology and Forgiveness. I’m writing a poem from the perspective of a sixth-grade boy whose dog has been recently euthanized. Even though it was a family decision to put the dog down, the boy feels terribly guilty. Suddenly, I am weep-ing. Whoa—where did this come from? Sure, we’d just had to do the same thing with a beloved dog, but I’d understood why and had made my peace with it. Ummm… apparently not. My cheeks are wet, my hands are wet, the computer keyboard is wet, but I have to finish writing this poem. Some kind of deeper understanding is going on here, something I missed,

trash heap of all my memories. Unless I write a poem about it, which I immediately start to do in my head. Poetry can capture a moment—its sights, sounds, smells, feelings—so vividly, it’s like you’re back inside it. “Think you’ll always re-member what it’s like to be 10 years old?” I ask students in schools I visit. “You won’t. Write a poem about your life right now, and you will have it forever.”

Story No. 2: Choosing joyAs a writer-in-residence in a Minneapolis public school, I’m visiting a fourth-grade class today. I have 50 minutes with the kids, and I will probably never see them again. As I wander around the classroom, passing out the seashells that we’ll be

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something I hadn’t let myself feel. Suddenly, the poem is a lifeline to understanding and peace. I write furiously.

Could it be that many of our rational decisions are under-pinned with difficult emotional baggage? Fears and worries that we think we must bear alone? Students writing poems in my classes are giddy with relief at the end of the day. Some-times they cry, sometimes they laugh, but the overwhelming feeling is liberation. Through the lens of poetry, they look in-side their hearts and confront whatever truths they discover. And they find just the right words to set those truths free.

Story No. 4: Everything is connectedI’m walking with my six-year-old nephew along a sunny beach. We dance in and out of the waves. The tide has strewn shells across the sand, and he pounces on them, one after the other. “Look!” he cries out, “this shell’s like a hat!” He holds it trium-phantly. “And this one looks like a fish! And this one’s a ham-mer!” He dashes about, consumed by his discovery both of the individuality of each shell, and of its link to something else in his life. Using his eyes and imagination, he’s making sense of what he sees—and taking delight in it. This power, which we call metaphor, is at the heart of poetry.

Aristotle said that “ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh.” Comparing one thing to another—“Fear is a spider web in the heart,” as one of my students once wrote—creates a new and flexible understanding of both things. Chil-dren are natural metaphor makers, but research has shown that they lose this capacity as they grow older, probably from learning more linear ways of thinking. Poetry—both the read-ing and the writing of it—creates links back to that more imagi-native, explosive, creative way of thinking. The whole world is connected, says Poetry. It’s up to you to figure out how.

And so… why do I write poetry? For the chance to feel con-nected to everything around me. For the chance to capture a moment of joy. For the chance to ease the heart. And why do I encourage children to write poetry? To watch them take a crisp, clean dive into the mysteries that confront them every day, find what glitters beneath the surface, and emerge trium-phant. Try it. You’ll see.

Newbery Honor–winner Joyce Sidman’s latest book is Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature (Houghton Harcourt, 2011), illustrated by Beth Krommes.

Alarcón, Francisco X. From the Bellybutton of the Moon and Other Summer Poems. illus. by Maya Christina Gonzales. Children’s Book Press. 1998. Rich, lighthearted summer poems in Eng-lish and Spanish; he also has volumes for the three other seasons (this one is my favorite). Ages 6–9

Fleischman, Paul. Joyful Noise. illus. by Eric Bed-dows. HarperCollins. 1988. Playful poems about insects with parts for two spoken voices. This Newbery Medal–winner was groundbreaking. Ages 9–12

George, Kristine O’Connell. Little Dog and Dun-can. illus. by Julie Otani. Clarion. 1999. Warm, delightful haiku-like poems about two dog friends. Perfect for ages 5–6.

Grandits, John. Technically, It’s Not My Fault. Houghton. 2004. Witty and often hilarious con-crete, or shape, poems about the brain of an adolescent boy. Ages 10–14

Greenberg, Jan, ed. Heart to Heart. Abrams. 2001. Poems by prominent poets inspired by modern art works—a visually beautiful book. Ages 8–14

Grimes, Nikki. What Is Goodbye? Hyperion. 2004. Siblings deal with the death of an older brother. Powerful, sad, yet triumphant. Ages 9–12

Janeczko, Paul B., ed. Dirty Laundry Pile: Po-ems in Different Voices. illus. by Melissa Sweet. HarperCollins. 2001. Poems taking the voice of inanimate objects; great as models for “mask” po-ems. Ages 5–10

Myers, Walter Dean. Here in Harlem. Holiday House. 2004. Varied, pitch-perfect voices from Myers’s beloved hometown. Ages 12–16

Mordhorst, Heidi. Squeeze: Poems from a Juicy Universe. illus. by Jesse Torrey. Wordsong. 2005. Exuberant, tactile poems about child-hood. Ages 8–12

Schertle, Alice. Button Up! Wrinkled Rhymes. illus. by Petra Mathers. Harcourt. 2009. Humor-ous rhyming poems about treasured articles of clothing. Ages 3–6

Singer, Marilyn. Mirror, Mirror. illus. by Jo-sée Masse. Dutton. 2010. A collection of “reversos”—poems that can be read from top to bottom or bottom to top. Each pair of poems portrays two differing viewpoints in a fairy tale. Brilliant. Ages 8–12

Worth, Valerie. All the Small Poems and Four-teen More. illus. by author. Farrar. 2002. A classic. Astoundingly simple yet vivid poems about everyday objects; perfect for teaching metaphor. Ages 8–12

A dozen books I love to share with children

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