Discusses how one of the main responsibilities of the poet laureate of the United States is to encourage an interest in poetry. Discusses how Billy Collins, the current poet laureate and the author of six collections of poetry, has brought to the position his own style and set of concerns. Notes how he is particularly interested in American high…

Quotes the last section of a 17-page poem entitled "Summer at St.-Nazaire." Discusses the various definitions of the word "expertise." Notes that each plant and animal operates in the world from a complex system of expertise. Explains expertise as a journey, not a destination. (PM)

Offers advice to younger writers. Defines poetry as a loving power, visiting writers along its way. Rejects idea that a poet is a creative writer, and states that poets need no imagination. Proposes a writer should disregard mind in favor of mindfulness. (PM)

Presents an interview with poet John Ashbery about how to teach one of his poems to people of high school age. (RS)

Presents two writing educators' teaching responses after September 11th. Notes that the challenge for students of poetry is to respond to and incorporate tragedy by creating drama through language and form rather than borrowing it from the events. Discusses the use of a two-line etude to respond to September 11th. (SG)

Presents words of encouragement to a young poet. Includes empathetic words and motivating ideas. Presents a letter including a quote from "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth and ideas about that quote. (SG)

Suggests three ideas for writing poetry: photographic portrait poems (writer looks at a photograph and describes it); fashion statements (writer picks out a style of dress and writes about what it suggests); and advice poems (writer gives advice to himself/herself in the form of a poem). (PA)

Presents an interview with Daniel Paley Ellison. Discusses how Ellison's time in Poland and Japan has influenced his approach to educating children about the nature of suffering and the necessity for empathy. Describes how his Seamless Monument Project uses historical conflict as a springboard to explore the roots of violence and the issues of…

Presents a teacher's journal entries for poetry classes she conducted for fourth and fifth graders at Anthony Chabot Elementary School in Oakland, California, located in a middle class neighborhood with an ethnic mix of students. Describes two poetry writing ideas: "What Matters" and "100 Words." (PA)

Gives examples of poems (in English) of six writers of Spanish, Latin American, or Latino poetry: Nicanor Parra, Vicente Huidobro, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, Martin Espada, and Ana Castillo. States that all can be used as models for the classroom. (PA)

Provides step-by-step directions for various creative writing strategies for teachers to use with their students. Illustrates each strategy: the sneak attack; the poetry cafe; videotaping a poem; and choral reading and coloring meaning. (PA)

Explains how the author invites young poets to tromp through the landscape of their minds in search of all things broken by using two of her favorite poems: Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Broken Things" and Bei Dao's "Comet." Outlines how the students write their own poems dealing with loss. Notes that for poets, a heap of broken images becomes an immense…

Explains that the quintet or cinquain is a poetic form developed by the American poet Adelaide Crapsey. Contends that the cinquain is a particularly appropriate form for physically and cognitively disabled students to write in. Notes that for the special needs classroom, the syllabic requirements of the poem can be replaced with a specific word…

Discusses a survey of ekphrastic writing (poetry that takes its inspiration from visual art) by contemporary poets that "barely scratches the surface" of a genre as varied as the writers who employ it. Points to the rich interactions and crossovers that occur when "word-folk" try to express their encounters with the work of "image-folk." (SG)

Notes that teachers and writers across the country were called upon to share poems and prose that they had turned to in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Notes that the response was a testament to literature's ability to transform experience of events as well as its capacity to be transformed, to be rendered anew by tragedy.…