who needs poems

also, children draw the best pictures. this is from colby a 2nd grader I met when I gave a haiku workshop at his school.

don't be too clever

One of the things I like most about teaching poetry to younger students is their ability to accpet that there is no need to be reasonable all the time. Today I tried a new activity where I incorporated the idea of Mad Libs into poetry. I asked the students to make a list of nouns, verbs, adverbs, abstractons etc; then I handed them a poem by e.e. cummings with all the nouns, verbs etc. removed and had them fill their words in the blanks. It's best to choose the words in advance and fill them in rather than give them the blank poem promt -- it would be too easy for them to become bogged down with trying to make it "work."

At first they were reluctant as they complained the poems "made no sense" but they started to enjoy the weirdness by reading the resulting poems aloud. It was fun and we discussed the function of words and enjoyed some brilliant poems.

here's mine:

shrunken axe's shrunken axe

slowly i have never want, carefully beyond
any table, your sugar has its fury:
in your most blue meat are things which slip me,
or which i cannot sing because they are too watchfull

your stingy look meaningfully will unrun me
though i have gained myself as a noun,
you lose always, book by book myself as a poem find
(choosing, wanting, itchy) her margianalized table

or if your table be to help me, i and
my bookworm will itch very makingly, slowly,
as when the pen of this table aches
the computer slowly everywhere screaming;

nothing which we are to push in this new york run
the alice of your hot foot: whose dog
sleeps me with the waterway of its inn,
asking coffee and sugar with each asking

(i do not bring what it is about you that takes
and sweeps; only something in me stings
the wheat of your sugar is smelly than all poem)
paris, not even the tower, has such slow dog.

larissa & e.e. cummings

why do kids write the best poems?

I've been coordinating workshops with young students and I'm amazed with their unselfconscious genius. This poem was created by a student in 2nd grade during a two hour haiku workshop:


Rain get a monkey
made of wind, to dance with
and to play with