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Poet Roundtable with
Children's Poets
6.
AOTW: Many people say, "Poetry --- too difficult for me." Could you convince them they're wrong? How?
Nikki Grimes: Today's marketplace offers poetry on every conceivable subject, in every imaginable style. There is, quite literally, something for everyone. The challenge, as with all literature, is to connect the right reader with the right book. The minute you find a title to which your reader can relate, in terms of subject, in terms of style, you've made a convert. I've seen it happen again, and again. I can't tell you how many times someone, old or young, has said to me "You know, I never liked poetry, until I read yours." I know I'm not the only poet who's had that experience!
Andrea Perry: I think that reading and analyzing poetry has its place, but I just want kids to have fun with it. A poem can be as short as two lines and perfectly complete. I use the example of something I wrote years ago, my shortest poem:
"Does it seem like the spider has six legs too many
considering rattlesnakes do not have any?"
I invite them to play with rhyming sounds, or the name of a city, or an idea about something absurd and see where they can go. I also use a partner exercise in some workshops where two students sit together and each contribute a line. I like kids to think outside of the box.
April Halprin Wayland: Writing poetry can be very threatening. I tell them that my favorite writing is that in which the author shares a secret. It doesn't have to be a big, awful secret ("I killed my gardener last Tuesday.") It can be some small detail of life ("I love the good, strong smell of gasoline" or "I hate the number 19.") I tell them some of my secrets ("My bangs are too long--they're driving me crazy!" ... "I will not eat light brown M & Ms."), and the poems that came from them. We all list secrets and share them. Then we pick one secret --- it can be our own secret or someone else's --- and begin a poem about it. It's a fun way to begin writing poetry.
Ron Koertge: It'd be easy to convince people that SOME poetry isn't difficult by giving them people to read like Billy Collins or Denise Duhamel. The trouble with the question is that it lumps all kinds of poetry together. There is very difficult poetry, like the so-called Language Poets. There is also Sentimental Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Confessional Poetry, etc. It reminds me of "I don't like vegetables." Really? Every vegetable all the time? "Well, maybe carrots are okay." So what kind of poetry are we talking about?
Jane Yolen: Start with fun modern verse --- Silverstein, Bodecker, J. Patrick Lewis. Move on to slightly more difficult, but still easy to parse poetry --- David McCord, some Emily Dickinson. Move on to the lilting but dense with meaning: Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats. No need to tackle the old-fashion poet-diction yet of Shakespeare, Donne, Wordsworth, Keats and the like.
Brod Bagert: The idea that poetry is hard comes from the practice of teaching poetry as literary criticism. I personally love literary criticism, but most normal people hate it and should not be subjected to it. Literary criticism should be limited to English majors studying at the university level. The rest of humankind should choose the poetry they like and enjoy it.
So this is what I'd say to convince someone to take another look at poetry:
"Each of us gets to pick our favorite sports, our favorite music, and our favorite movies. Nobody tells us what we're supposed to like. We choose. So take another pass at poetry and this time you be the boss. Find the poems you like. If the world agrees that a particular poem is wonderful but you don't like it, strike it from your list. If you think a poem is difficult to understand and you don't enjoy reading it, strike it from your list. In this way you'll find the poems you love, the poems that entertain you, perhaps even a poem that helps make sense of our human existence. You're entitled to have poetry in your life and you shouldn't let anyone run you away."
Tony Mitton:
This poem's round
and it's stuck on a stick.
This poem's stripey
and nice to lick.
This poem's shiny,
and sticky and sweet.
It's a lollipop poem
for anyone to eat.
Too difficult? I think not. It can be as light and simple as that. Poetry embraces any kind of language use and ranges from the lightest, lyrical ditty to the most challenging, obscure and arcane text. Prose ranges from "The Billy Goats Gruff" to James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Poetry's range is likewise broad. But poetry is not to be defined by its most difficult texts, any more than prose. The form itself is neither difficult or hard. Some people call me a poet, and there's poetry out there that I can't make much sense of. But it doesn't stop me writing my stuff, or reading other people's if I find it rewarding.
Maria Testa: I think we tend to talk about poetry sometimes as if it is a sub-genre of literature instead of its own art form. If we are discussing thousand-page epic Russian novels, I might easily conclude, "Novels --- too difficult for me." There's a lot of poetry out there. I'd encourage people to explore their interests through poetry, to try sports poems, nature poems, feminist poems, political poems. Check out the beat poets and poets of your own --- and other --- ethnic backgrounds. Try some novels in verse if it's a good story that turns you on. We don't dismiss music, sports, movies in their entirety. Why poetry?
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