Day One: Introduction

Your Turn: Freewrite, before discussion, trying to arrive at a personal definition of what poetry is. Try to think of examples of poems that have had some impact on you personally, or perhaps, instances when poems are read as part of a ceremony. Of course, lyrics count! Be prepared to share.

Then check out Poetry 180, a website developed by former poet laureate, Billy Collins. As Collins says, “Poetry 180 is designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year. I have selected the poems you will find here with high school students in mind.” A wonderful example is his own introduction to the site and to poetry itself. . .

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Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

Your Turn Again: OK, now let's beat the poem a little bit “to find out what it really means.” What metaphor is used in each stanza to represent finding meaning in a poem?

Listen to Collins read this poem.