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6 Poems that I Used to Introduce Poetry to My Literature Class

  • Writer: Kristi My
    Kristi My
  • Apr 8
  • 10 min read

It is April, which means that it is National Poetry Month! Since I am teaching literature for the first time, I thought that it would be fun to share the poems that I am teaching in my literature class. When I set up the class, I actually told them that it would start hard and get easier, because I knew I was going to start out teaching poetry.


Why might that mean that the class is starting out hard? Because a lot of students struggle when working with poetry. I’ll even admit to struggling with poetry sometimes, both while in graduate school and now as a professor. Supposedly, I'm an expert, but I think part of being an expert is accepting that you're always learning yourself.

 

Anyway, here is how I went about structuring that first poetry lesson and the introduction for my class.



 

The Norton Introduction to Literature: Shorter 14th Edition by Kelly J. Mays

I feel that I have previously touched on the fact that when they hired me to teach this literature class, it was so "at the buzzer" that they felt it would be easier for me to teach from the textbook that they chose. I didn’t disagree, so I went ahead and started flipping through the textbook when they handed it to me in the office. Most of my content for this month will probably reference poems in the chapters of the book.


I noticed that the book was already divided into three sections, so that’s how I divided my class, adding on a fourth because I believe in the importance of portfolios. So, I knew that I was going to start with poetry as a unit, followed by a fiction unit, and then wrap it up with a drama unit. There’s a part of me that believes drama combines the elements of poetry and fiction, which is why this order made sense to me. 


To start them off, I assigned them to read “Chapter 11: Poetry: Reading, Responding, Writing.” The notes I have will be from that chapter, as well as the poems that I have chosen to include on this list. 


This is a photo of the version of The Norton Introduction to Literature" textbook that I am using in my Literature and Culture class. It is the shorter 14th edition by Kelly J. Mays that was published in 2022.

Advice from the Chapter of How to Read and Respond to Poetry

The chapter gives a set of guidelines on how to go about reading and responding to poetry, and I think it is a pretty good approach on how to do it. It will help to break down a poem whether you’re a beginner or an expert. 


  1. “Listen to the poem first” (771). 

I think this has always been my approach when it comes to poetry. I like finding as space where I can sit and comfortably read the poem aloud. Not only does this let me hear the poem in my ear, but I can feel it around my mouth. I’ll make notes of places that feel awkward or places where I might speed up or slow down. These places might just be unique to me, but it also could be an intentional move by the poet to make readers notice something. 


The textbook notes that following this step “will help you hear the poem’s sound qualities, get a clearer impression of its tone, and start making sense of its syntax, the way words combine into sentences” (771). Which, if you ask me, sounds like the more technical version of what I was just saying. 



  1. “Articulate your expectations, starting with the title” (771).

When my literature teacher in high school had us analyze poems, this is actually where she had us start. We would look at the title of the poem and ask ourselves, “What do we think this poem is going to be about?” And then our analysis of the poem would start with how much the poem would align or not align with those expectations.


This is also a fair place to start, but I will admit that this is not something I practice often. Sometimes, the poem doesn’t come with an original title and is actually just the first line of the poem. Other times, the title doesn’t make sense with the poem until other outside factors come into light. For these reasons, I don’t often focus too much on the title until I’ve read the poem, then I would go back and see how much the title factors into how I read the poem.




  1. “Read the syntax literally” (772).

I never really thought about it before, but I guess it would make sense to start with what the poem is literally saying before breaking it down into what it is figuratively saying. Maybe I would have a better grasp on poetry if I took this approach. 


The textbook further breaks down the steps of what reading the syntax literally could include. Here are those steps to consider:

  • “Identify sentences” (772): Since poems are broken up by line breaks, it might help to identify sentences to see if those might help you make sense of what is literally happening in the poem before trying to analyze and break it down on a deeper level. 

  • “Reorder sentences” (772): Just like stories, not every poem is told in order. Is your confusion happening because the poem’s progression does not make sense to you? Then it might help to reorder the poem in a way that makes sense in order to determine any deeper meanings you might find. 

  • “Replace each pronoun is the antecedent noun it replaces” (772): the translation of pronouns might make what a poem is talking about ambiguities at times, so replacing each pronoun with the antecedent noun it replaces might help to keep things straight. 

  • “Translate sentences into modern prose” (772): there are times where the poems we are reading might come from an older version of English, such as a Shakespearean sonnet. In those situations, some translating might need to be done in order to make sense of the poem. 

  • “Note any ambiguities in the original language that you might have ignored in your translation” (773): I believe this is just a reminder to double check the work that you have done, just to make sure that you didn’t miss anything that you should have paid attention to. 




  1. “Consult reference works” (774).

Since metaphor plays such a significant role in poetry, it is important to consider any and all references made in the poems you read. I know I am not an encyclopedia of knowledge, so I will often underline things I am unfamiliar with in a poem in order to remind myself to research it further once I am done. The knowledge that comes from this research often adds another layer of my understanding of a poem; even if it doesn’t, I often learn something new. Which is the whole point of being alive.



  1. “Figure out who, where, when, and what happens” (774).

I remember being in maybe second or third grade and being asked these questions whenever we read a story, so it makes sense to me that we would ask these questions whenever we read something well into adulthood. Even when reading a poem, knowing the answers to these questions will give us some insight into the purpose of the poem. But this also kind of reminds me of step three that we went over. 


  1. “Formulate tentative answers to the questions, Why does it matter? What does it all mean?” (775).

These questions will get at the theme of the poem, which will ultimately get at the purpose of the poem. Why it might be important, why it might be considered literature, or why it might be something to note and pay attention to. And that is part of why literature and culture classes exist.



  1. “Consider how the poem’s form contributes to its effect and meaning” (776).

As previously touched on, poems have different genres that may point to its purpose. Therefore, considering the form might help you to uncover the effect of the poem or it’s intended meaning. For example, if you are reading an elegy, then you know the poem is going to be centered on death.



  1. “Investigate and consider the ways the poem both uses and departs from poetic conventions, especially those related to form and subgenre” (777).

This might be harder if you’re not well-versed in poems, but it might point to a shift in genre, or an intentional subversion being made by the poet. There might be a specific point being made about the convention if you can pick it up, but it shouldn’t destroy your understanding of the poem if you can’t. 



  1. “Argue” (777). 

I’m not asking you to go to war with anyone over a poem, but I would ask that you develop your own meaning of the poem and then be able to articulate it. It’s important that, during the reading of a poem, you can develop your own ideas of what it might mean and whether they make sense. It is important to be able to have these conversations about poems, because other perspectives might help you further develop your understanding of the poem. 



Defining Poetry and My Activity

There’s a section in the chapter about defining poetry, and while I took some notes, I also combined it with an activity that I practice in my Composition classes. 

Here are the quotes that I would pull from this section that talks about defining poetry:


In combination with this chapter, I also had them read “Chapter 29: Basic Moves: Paraphrase, Summary, and Description.” So, when it came time to coming up with a definition of what poetry was and how we can work to understand it, I combined the two chapters and came up with this activity. 


Before coming to class, I had the following poems printed on paper and organized into groups:


Quote card from Billy Collins' "Introduction to Poetry" that says, "But all they want to do/ Is tie the poem to a chair with a rope/ And torture a confession out of it."

These poems were also in their textbooks in other chapters, which gave them an opportunity to have more exposure to the poems. Anyway, I broke them up into about nine different groups. Each group would receive a poem, and they would then also be assigned to either paraphrase, summarize, or describe the poem that they were assigned. Not only did they receive an opportunity to practice paraphrasing, describing, and summarizing skills, but they would also have practice reading poetry.


I collected their work at the end of class, and ultimately planned to return to it to see if the class could properly guess whether their peers were trying to paraphrase, describe, or summarize the poem. This assignment also gave us an opportunity to see how other poets defined poetry and the process of reading it. Moreover, the practice of paraphrasing, describing, and summarizing was a good skill for them to have when it came to writing literature papers in class. 



Poems I Chose to Note From the Chapter

This poem stood out to me as I read the chapter because of how specific it is and the way the poem depicted this particular love story. The textbook also includes an interview that Boland did with Elizabeth Austen for KUOW Public Radio, where she has a “sense that the love poem is another form of official history. It records glamor and desire and the beauty of a moment [...]” and I found that answer to be quite beautiful (760).


It is introduced as a narrative poem, and this is the note that I took from that section: “In centuries past, narrative poetry was a–even the–dominant subgenre of poetry. As a result, there are many different kinds of narrative poems, including book-length epics like Homer’s Iliad; chivalric romances; grisly murder ballads, often rooted in actual events; and a range of harder-to-classify works of varying lengths[…]” (759).




As much as I would consider myself to be a feminist, I appreciate this poem because it highlights the double-standards of how sex impacted the perception of people based on gender during the time that it was written. While the man has fallen in love with this maid, he has expectations that have ruined her but not him. With its easy rhyme scheme, you might read it and think the situation is simple, but it is more complex than meets the eye. 


When introduced in the text, it is introduced as a form of dramatic poetry. What I would want to note is, “Dramatic poetry thus meant and still can mean actual plays in verse (or verse drama). But any poem that consists wholly of dialogue among characters, unmediated by a narrator, counts as a dramatic poem” (760). And so, Thomas Hardy’s “The Ruined Maid” is considered a dramatic poem. 




This poem stood out because it was so short, but also because the metaphor that Collins uses in the poem is so strong. The people getting divorced were once spoons when they get married. Now, overtime, they have thinned out into forks instead, more pointed than the round spoons they once were. 


And then the poem mentions knives as well, which is probably a metaphor for the lawyers that they have hired to handle matters. The poem is meant to showcase more descriptive or observational lyrics, and I think it is a good example of that. 




Works Cited


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