The author, forty-five years into a teaching career--seventeen as a high school English teacher, twenty-eight as a university professor--reflects on his career and his relationship with the poet John Keats that began in his second-period English class in 1967.

Sharon Creech's book, "Love That Dog," is the story of a young poet named Jack, a good teacher, and a dog. Using free verse, Jack describes how he becomes a writer in dated journal entries. He is just an average kid, like so many of the kids in one's classes. But Jack has an excellent English teacher in Miss Stretchberry. She assigns freewriting…

In this article, the author narrates his lifelong relationship with a major American poet, Walt Whitman. He describes how Whitman's "Song of Myself" and poetic idea influenced his life and way of thinking.

Three English teachers share their ideas on how their work as a writer helped them as a teacher. One teacher has found that the desire for meaningful response to her own writing has led her to evaluate her students similarly. A second teacher discusses how personal experience translates into teaching how to convey rejection in a useful and tactful…

Presents nominations for James A. Autry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Andrei Codrescu, James Dickey, Allen Ginsberg, Andrew Hudgins, Linda Pastan, and Margaret Walker as poet laureate. (RS)

A tongue-in-cheek appeal for greater recognition and appreciation of a fictitious contemporary poet. (RD)

Describes a teacher's experience in presenting her students with James Dickey's poem "The Leap." Focuses on the primary visual images of the poem, the space where memory lives, the space where contemplation thrives, and the space where emotions dwell. (PRA)

An interpretation of Ferlinghetti's poem, 15." (RD)

Describes a technique for stimulating student interest in poetry by having each student use multisensory approaches to show classmates the value of a favorite poet. (DD)

Compares poetry to a dead body that teachers, like mad scientists, are trying to revive. Suggests that teachers stop trying to teach students to find the meaning in a poem but to simply accept the experience in a nonjudgmental, open way. Offers three activities designed to help students to explore poetry in their own way. (PRA)

Describes the 2000 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the largest poetry event in North America. Notes the festival was designed to create opportunities for personal communication between poets and teachers, who share so many similar concerns for the future of language arts education. (RS)

For the sake of keeping language alive, contemporary American poets must be included in the English curriculum. (JH)

author argues for inclusion of modern poetry in high school English curriculum; he includes lists of critical works and anthologies. (SP)

An exploration of the assumptions underlying current literary experiments might help both teacher and student to find a perspective from which the past may be viewed. (Author/MB)