5 Poems that My Undergraduate Students Got Me to Appreciate About Speakers
- Kristi My
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
The thing about poetry is that it can be a very personal thing. While this post originally started as “Poems I Used to Teach My Students About Speakers in Poetry” for National Poetry Month, it evolved as I flipped through the textbook and realized I, on my own, appreciated just one poem in the entire chapter.
I believe that is the power of book clubs and discussions: that appreciation can deepen as we discuss our ideas and impressions of the poems. So with that in mind, I am going to share the 5 poems that my Literature and Culture students got me to appreciate more with their discussions, analyses, and papers.
The Norton Introduction to Literature: Shorter 14th Edition by Kelly J. Mays
I’ll reiterate again that I got assigned a textbook when I started teaching this Literature and Culture class, so much of the poems and notes that I share will be coming from that textbook. To be more specific, the poems from today’s list will come from “Chapter 12: Speaker: Whose Voice Do We Hear?” in this textbook.
Okay, I might actually argue that I appreciated this poem before we discussed it, but I was hesitant to teach this poem because of its content and the state of politics today. I think that is where I benefitted from “You can write about any poem that you are interested in within this textbook,” because then they chose to write about the poem without me pushing it down their throats. No one can accuse me of pushing it down their throats.
The reason this poem fits in with this chapter on speakers is that it is a lyric poem. That means that, “we know we have a fictional speaker to contend with and the point (or at least, one point) of the poem is to observe the characterization carefully” (796). Or in Brooks’ case, she’s working from an invented speaker to personalize the experience being shared.
My students were more attached to this poem than I was because I think they found themselves relating to it more. There were parallels of them connecting their worth to whether or not their video on TikTok went viral, and how it would cause them to go through a similar existential crisis as a man Googling themselves “closer to the end” of his life.
Another win with this is that I had a student try to say that he had not before read any modern-day poems, so this poem was on the table for him to choose. He obviously chose not to read it, but he can’t say because it was never offered to him. I think he is missing out, but it seems like this class hasn’t been his cup of tea.
Initially, I was drawn to the poem because of the formatting of the title. I felt the poem was very patriotic, and as a new teacher, I was not trying to start little fires in my classroom that I could not put out. But just like “the mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks, they had the option to read this poem, and they chose to.
On the breakdown of this poem, I learned that it actually refers to the Star-Spangled Banner and a different poem about Defence (I checked to make sure I spelled that correctly, but I forget the poem now). With this poem, I appreciate it more because it was a chance for me to learn from them about the poem instead of feeling like I had to teach them everything. They found the information as they were researching the cultural context and shared about the poem, which is what I wanted for their Cultural Context discussion boards.
Another poem I was afraid to touch because I didn’t want to start a fire (maybe that is an ongoing theme with the poems that I have shared here) is “cream of wheat” by Lucille Clifton. There are racial themes of prejudice involved in the poem if you know what to look for.
This poem is related to a speaker of a specific time period. There are references being made that require a bit of research, such as Rastus, Ben, and Jemima for one to fully grasp the meaning of the poem. For that reason, I listed the poem as one that could be read, but I didn’t require that they read it. But students chose to read it, and I’m glad that they did.
Often times, I find that poems need to be read a few times before I can truly appreciate them. That is called mere exposure effect, and I would say that idea applies to this poem. I could see why “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway” would be included in a textbook for cultural context, but I don’t think I appreciated it until I discussed it with my students.
Or rather, I don’t think I appreciated it until I realized that there are multiple versions until one of my students wrote about a version different from the one that I had in the textbook. Then in talking about those differences, I was able to appreciate the poem more. That is how my students got me to appreciate this poem.
Honorable Mention Poem: “Hades Welcomes His Bride” by A.E. Stallings
This poem was actually a hit with many of my students, and was the one poem I liked in the chapter. Several of them wrote papers about it, and could connect it back to their knowledge of Greek mythology. The reason I included it was that it was a dramatic monologue, which means that the poem “has no narrator. Rather, it consists entirely of the word a single fiction speaker speaks to a fictional auditor in a specific time, place, and dramatic situation, as much as would a character in a play” (794).
From reading the poem, the fictional speaker here is Hades, Greek god of the underworld. His auditor is Persephone, who is his bride. We were able to get into discussions of the different iterations of this story, of how the trembling at the end could be fear, or nerves, or the fact that she would have to be dead in order to fit into Hades' world.