“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” Robert Frost.
Kenneth Koch published his Rose, Where Did you Get That Red? in 1973 to enormous acclaim. His book revolutionized the way children are taught to read and write poetry. Around 2000 Mary Cunningham gave us a copy of this book and it changed the way we teach poetry for ever. Gone are the Haiku and Limerick lesson plans. This year we have taught the entire school using Kenneth Koch’s brilliant ideas. Currently the 6th – 8th grade students have written poems that have taken our breath away. For inspiration we considered the power of music (Rhapsody in Blue), themes such as ‘The Third Eye’, ‘I used to be but now I am not,’ ‘I seem to be….’ and most recently we studied a poem by Elizabeth Bishop. After our initial mini-lesson the children get to work and the click clicking sound of their fingers on keyboards brings joy and anticipation. Here are two poems from these sessions.
My Third Eye
By Maia
Eyes are jealous and greedy things
Feasting upon beauty
That’s not their beholders.
The jealousy they produce,
From the sight of seeing others with something,
Anything
More then what they have.
With those two eyes
It’s so easy to feast upon the things you don’t have,
Spending unwanted hours
Staring at a computer screen.
Eyes are cherished for the prize of sight
But sometimes they block out
Seeing what they cannot see,
Closing your eyes to listen close using your third eye
Your third eye can
Hear
And feel
And smell
It shows you the greed you possess
When you only use sight
Your other senses are not put to use
Your other senses are there for use
And when you cannot see something
Use your eyes,
Your smell,
Your sense of touch,
Just because you cannot see something
Does not mean all is lost.
I used to be….
By Ace
I used to be different, and I am forever changing
Shifting from shadow to shadow
Thoughts change, and so does the world
Following my shifts
Reality bends and twists and soon all will be different again
Because we are ever changing
First we need safety
Then we need love
But when we lose our grip, then we change again.