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6.
AOTW: Many people say, "Poetry --- too difficult for me." Could you convince them they're wrong? How?
Sonya Sones: Well, let's face it. Some poetry IS "too difficult." I open up the New Yorker every week and turn to the poetry pages, hoping to find one that will speak to me in a language I can understand. But most of the time I just don't get it. Which makes me feel stupid. And I hate feeling stupid. But, fortunately, there are lots of poets out there who are writing extremely accessible poetry that is beautiful, funny, moving and thought-provoking. So I would tell adults who feel that poetry is "too difficult" not to give up. I would tell them to read poems by Billy Collins, Ron Koertge, Donald Hall, and Mary Oliver. And I would recommend that teens who are reluctant to read poetry, begin by reading some novels-in-verse
--- especially Stop Pretending and What My Mother Doesn't Know, by me!
Betsy Franco: I would have them read the poetry anthologies I compiled: You Hear Me? and Things I Have To Tell You (Candlewick). They would realize that poetry is very accessible. They would see that some of the authors aren't technically perfect but that their poetry packs a punch. I would also have them play with some of the ideas in The Secret Life of Words(Teaching Resource Center).
Paul B. Janeczko: Unfortunately, that's the feeling that many people have about poetry. I can't convince them that their feelings are wrong. I can only ask that they give poetry a fair chance. Take a few anthologies home with you for the weekend, and dip into them, looking for poems that touch you, rather than looking for poems that befuddle you. Yes, many poems are incomprehensible. But that's okay. There are far more that can change the way we look at poetry.
Robin Hirsch: See above [question 5].
Marilyn Singer: Lots of poems ARE difficult, you know. You have to relax and think of some poems as delicious puzzles to solve. I must say, though, that when I taught, the "nonacademic" kids were better at understanding poetry, including "difficult" ones such as Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." They keyed into the images. I think if people used their right brain, as well as the left, they'd understand poems. It might help to talk about dreams, pictures, music, even to encourage daydreaming, drawing, listening, and see how these relate to poetry.
X. J. Kennedy: Well, you can try. You can give 'em a few poems that are plain and unthreatening. Like A. E. Housman's "When I Was One and Twenty" or Robert Frost's simple but deep "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," or that wonderful childish parody of a Christmas carol (from the streets of Edinburgh): "We three lads from Liverpool are, / Paul in a taxi, John in a car, / George on a scooter blowing his hooter, / Following Ringo Starr."
Alan Katz: I am not the right person to convince anyone that poetry is not too difficult. But if they like poetry after reading my book, I'm glad.
Mary Ann Hoberman: A lot of poetry is too difficult! I would not start a neophyte reader off with a poem by John Ashbury. Much of today's poetry is obscure and over-intellectualized. But there is so much poetry, both old and new, that is both beautiful and accessible. And there are poems that, while difficult at first reading, gradually reveal themselves over time. To convince the confirmed poetry skeptic, one can always start with light or humorous verse, just to get the ear acclimated. And there are so many wonderful poems by Dickinson, Whitman, Frost, Yeats, to name just a few, that are both simple and deep and that once read continue to reverberate. I strongly recommend the anthology edited by the Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, A Book of Luminous Things, to anyone wanting to begin a voyage into contemporary poetry.
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