With great success and with both young and older students, we use the following exercise in a first class session to underscore writing about place with such basic literary techniques as sensory details (what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch), metaphor and simile (direct comparisons and those using like or as); and denotation and connotation (dictionary definitions and associative meaning). Nevertheless, defining terms formulaically can be unproductive and may even explain why teachers hesitate to teach poetry. For example, Connolly and Smith conclude teachers are often “stymied” in their attempts for “active engagement in the discussion of poetry” (235). In addition, Mara Linaberger locates three probable sources for the anxiety teachers feel about teaching poetry: among them, the misapprehension that “big words” inhabit any poem (366).
To make terms and techniques have real meaning for students—ones they can readily apply—teachers need compelling examples to illustrate those “big words.” Progressively, these techniques and concepts work into the students’ craft. Writers experience this same phenomenon when entering new environments. David Gessner, an accomplished writer turned university professor, interprets his shift to a new identity as “gradual,” identifiable, he says, when “I catch myself using, as I did the other day, words like ‘pedagogy’ and ‘collegial’” (64). We should expect the same new awareness from students as they move into roles of both reader and writer.
Though inventing examples may appear to be a complicated pedagogy, teachers know it is better to teach by example rather than by precept alone. With that same understanding, the sample exercise follows.
Needed:
The Porpoise
by Greg Pape
Today in the middle of Missouri
the temperature dropped forty degrees
in two hours.Between St. Louis and Kansas City
the traffic was steady.
A banner of black smoke trailedsouth from the power plant stack,
mercury slid down in glass.
By dusk the trees were swimmingin the wind. Rain
muted the sound of the engines
and made the tires sing.Then it was nickels and dimes
falling on the roof of The Blue Note
and The Pow-Wow Lounge.Night came down wherever
it could, fused with the river,
fastened to the windows,stood up and stretched
in the stunted fields of corn.
South of this darknessa woman holds the lost warmth
on her skin. Her steady breathing
adding one more degreeto the quiet air around her
as she sits with a book in her lap
and stares out through the screen doorat some memory swimming
in the trees, a porpoise appearing
and disappearing in the Gulf.And although the dishes need doing
and there’s work in the morning,
she’s composing an idea of beauty—the skin of the porpoise shines
with the light of two worlds,
this one and this one.
Step One: This portion of the 2 1/2 hour class begins with a brief discussion of connotation and denotation, and the power of words. For example, the instructor writes up on the blackboard the word “fireplace” and asks students to give a denotative—or dictionary—definition of the word. Next, as examples of connotation, the teacher asks students to discuss with a partner all the emotions or experiences they associate with the word “fireplace” (“home,” “safety,” “warmth,” “romance,” etc.). Usually the word “fireplace” has a positive connotation. However, if—as one student volunteered—a family’s house has burned down because of a faulty fireplace, the word may have a personally negative connotation of “danger,” “fear,” or “loss.”
As a follow-up exercise and to further convey the power of words, the teacher writes on the blackboard “move.” Students then line up and act out all the different ways they can think of to move (skip, stomp, strut, etc.) and the various emotions associated with these verbs (happiness, anger, pride, etc.)
After briefly demonstrating connotation and denotation as above, the teacher next writes on the blackboard:
List of Words:
In the middle of Pennsylvania roof
porpoise Peg and Bill’s Diner
New Covenant United Church of Christ windows
memory fields of corn
dusk book
dishes engines
Lock Haven Danville
power plant trees
rain the idea of beauty
darkness traffic
screen door Susquehanna river
The teacher should do this slowly, pausing and asking students questions as she/he goes. For example, after writing the words “in the middle of Pennsylvania,” the teacher is to ask students to write down what they see when they think of the middle of Pennsylvania, what they hear when they think of the middle of Pennsylvania, and so on. Because we teach at schools located “in the middle of Pennsylvania”—and because some of our students grew up in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh while others come from towns of less than 200—we receive a range of written images.
Likewise, when writing the word “dishes,” the teacher may ask:
Are they broken?
Are they your grandmother’s good china?
Are they being thrown at someone?
Do they have dried egg on them?
Are they plastic?
Are they on the table for Thanksgiving dinner?
What pattern is on them?
Have they been sitting in a sink for two days?
Are they at a picnic?
What is on them?
Are they chipped?
Teachers should allow thirty minutes to go through the list of words and have students write down answers to the questions. It is important for instructors to note that all of the words in the list are either directly from or adjustments of lines from Greg Pape’s poem “The Porpoise.” (Students are not shown this until late in the exercise.) By substituting area place names—for example, “in the middle of Pennsylvania” for Pape’s “in the middle of Missouri”; “Peg and Bill’s Diner” for Pape’s “The Pow Wow Lounge”—the teacher can encourage students to locate their poem in the familiar while not limiting them to a real occurrence or situation. We have used this same exercise for workshops in several states and for various age groups by merely adjusting the local references. For instance, Marjorie has received wonderfully intriguing answers from elementary school children, who—as “experts” on their hometowns—love to associate the places they know with various sensory details.
Step Two: At this point, teachers ask students to use their long lists of brainstorming to draft a poem or several paragraphs by using all of the words on the blackboard list. The list forces them to use the concrete (“screen door”) with the philosophical (“idea of beauty”) with the somewhat out-of-place (“porpoise”). After fifteen or twenty minutes, the students, seated in a circle, go around the circle and proceed to read what they have written. Next, a brief discussion of each poem or page, along with the choices made while composing, ensues.
Step Three: Using a SmartBoard or projector, the teacher displays “The Porpoise” and asks students to point out the poet’s choices—use of detail, sound, and images. Together, the class can also look at the effect of each line and stanza break before rereading the final stanza. The latter is particularly important to the concept of transformation, which must occur in a poem, as well as to how artists exist in both a physical and an imaginative space. For example, a poem’s readers should experience change or transformation when moving from the beginning to final lines. The most effective poems take readers on a journey. As they move through a poem, readers do not end—physically, emotionally, or spiritually—where they began. Likewise, as in the closing lines of “The Porpoise,” there is transformation. The woman composing “an idea of beauty” lives simultaneously in the physical and imaginative worlds, both of which are “this one.”
Step Four: Finally, if time permits, the class discusses the following student work, all of which grows out of the previously described exercise. Although the included student pieces are written in the form of poetry, student authors of fiction and creative nonfiction find the session equally productive and inspiring.
The Traffic Drowns You Out
by J. Michael Rinard
If your memory holds
maybe you can see: the trees,
forts we built above the traffic
before darkness stretched across the fields and houses
like blankets our mother laid over us at dusk.The soft chirping of crickets, the far-off hoot of an owl
and rain pat-pattering on the roof.
With our noses pressed to the window,
we watched the street rivers and imagined, perhaps,
a porpoise. In the middle of Pennsylvania?Unlikely,
but maybe in the minds of small boys,
imagination is real,
like the screen door slamming when we left mother to the dishes:
bandits climbing trees. Cops, robbers, and Indians whooping through the streets.Our idea of beauty?
Before girls, cars, and money, beauty just is.
Your father’s voice whispering fairy tales before bedtime,
And later, the soft strums of a guitar drifting in and out of your dreams.Like the thrill of riding a bike so fast
that the wind whips your hair across your face,
drying your mouth and stealing your breath
until fear slows you down – but you look back
and for a moment, you really know.And then it’s gone, torn from your hands
like a leaf on a windy day, lost to a fleeting memory
that you visit now and again on rainy days with tea and biscuits
looking out of windows at tree forts, with the noise of the traffic rising above.
But if memory holds, you remember.
In the Middle of Pennsylvania
by Amanda Sportelli
Surrounded by suffocating darkness
in the middle of nowhere,
in the middle of PA,
Lock Haven.
I need to walk into my memory;
the Eden Lounge of my mind.Mill Hall is a power plant – its roof closed tight;
about to burst;
The Texas Restaurant – only a shadow
of a real diner,constantly raining,
I long for the bruised dusk of this
experience, to be back with Mom’s dishes
and the engine Dad and Dave work on.I’d ride home on a porpoise,
down the Susquehanna
to lay under the tulip trees
with a book in hand,
screen door swaying with the breeze,
dogs barking through open windows;my idea of beauty
is the contrast of traffic passing
fields of corn
in the summer
and Dad re-shingling the roof
with friends;
all have beer in hand;not
a train flying past
too fast
in the rain.
Central Pennsylvania Stranger
by Amanda Gogle
Staring out the picture
window of an old
diner once owned
by someone long dead.She hailed from Renovo
a small town lost
in the middle of
Pennsylvania, undistinguishable
amidst the tall corn fields
at dusk. Sweet memoriesof dancing on rooftops
and washing dishes while watching
endless rainfall draw her away
from her novel about
romance, lust, and greed.A steam engine rattles
by, whistles blaring, and for a moment
blocks the view of the old
church. She stares, only able to see
graves. nothing but
death, faith lost until
the train passes.
Works Cited
Connolly, Bill, and Michael W. Smith. “Dropping in a Mouse: Reading Poetry with Our Students.” The Clearing House, vol. 76, no. 5, 2003, pp. 235-239.
Gessner, David. “Those Who Write, Teach.” New York Times Magazine, 19 Sept. 2008, p. 64.
Gogle, Amanda. “Central Pennsylvania Stranger.” Unpublished poem, 2010.
Linaberger, Mara. “Poetry Top 10: A Foolproof Formula for Teaching Poetry.” The Reading Teacher, vol. 58, no. 4, 2004, pp. 366-372.
Pape, Greg. “The Porpoise.” The New Yorker, 25 January 1982, p. 95.
Rinard, J. Michael. “The Traffic Drowns You Out.” Unpublished poem, 2010.
Sportelli, Amanda. “In the Middle of Pennsylvania.” Unpublished poem, 2010.
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Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry, the short story collection What She Was Saying, 4 children’s books, and over 500 essays, poems, and stories in journals and anthologies. Professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University, she is co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania.
Gary R. Hafer is professor of English and the former John P. Graham Teaching Professor at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA. He is the author of Embracing Writing (Jossey-Bass, 2014).