Describes Youth Speaks NY Fifth Annual Teen Poetry Slam. Considers how Youth Speaks offers free after school writing workshops for teens. Notes that this nonprofit spoken word program Youth Speaks plays host to an auditorium of teen poets who "bust at the seams with verse." (SG)

Notes that the best teaching, like the best poetry, can often be found in reflection, lingering in the margin, in the periphery, in any place you would not expect to find it. Describes the author's personal experience with poetry in teaching her high school class. Suggests that poetry acts as a natural, personal, imperfect force for truth and…

Examines how 10 kindergarten through fourth-grade teachers shared poems and stories with their students. Notes that readings of poems were characterized by expressive reading style, multiple readings in one sitting, and children's active participation. Concludes poetry has the potential to draw children's attention to the resources of literate…

Examines apparent aberrations in the visual structure of the story-poems in Leslie Silko's "Ceremony." Suggests that the poems' texts act as skeletons for a series of illustrations that reflect the texts' content and provide the final ingredient necessary for "Ceremony" to become a ceremony--the invisible spirit helpers. (SV)

Examines how eighteenth-century critics treated the visual format of traditional verse as a determinant in readers' appreciation of form and meaning. Explores correspondences between eighteenth-century work and modern criticism. Argues that twentieth-century appreciations of the visual format of verse are limited by their concentration upon more…

Examines the relationship between self and modernism in the context of Sri Lankan poetry in English. The dissolution of the unitary self and the problem of its representation in literature are closely linked to the dynamics of writing in English in a country in the Outer Circle. (24 references) (JL)

Offers 12 activities based on Mother Goose which lend themselves to various content areas and are easily adaptable to any grade level. (MG)

Describes a writing exercise in which students write alternate versions of poems, and observes that interesting discussions about the nature and quality of poetry result when the class tries to identify the original poems. (MM)

Perceives a need for new translations and reinterpretations of classical Greek literature. Considers reasons that some translations have passed into oblivion while others remain unsurpassed. Discusses the relationship between modern and ancient languages, the small size of the extant body of classical Greek literature, and the influence of modern…

Explores the context within which the early masterpieces of Tennyson and Picasso were created, the style and substance of the work themselves, and the possible relationships between their young and old selves as mediated by their own artistic creations. Notes similarities between Tennyson and Picasso. Contends people may also transcend their…

Argues against Thomas O. Sloane's allegation that John Milton's "Artis Logicae," a commentary on Pierre de la Ramee's "Dialecticae libri duo," manifests antihumanism characteristics of Milton and Ramus. Reexamines Milton's account of probability, the links between Ramus and Cicero, and the roles Ramism played in sixteenth- and…

Discusses the problem of criticizing students' interpretations of poetry. Argues that faulty interpretations should only be ignored for artistic reasons, but should be called mistakes for factual and experiential reasons. (MM)

Discusses briefly four recent anthologies of poetry by members of ethnic and racial groups traditionally underrepresented in the poetic canon. Concludes that much contemporary multicultural North American poetry can be of value to poetry therapists, who should familiarize themselves with it. (SR)

Argues that the teaching of poetry teaches sequential comprehension, the process of reading and rereading a poem by making sense of connected images, metaphors, or conceits. Investigates the question of how poetry should be dealt with in the schools to make good use of its specialness. (TB)

Looks at the interaction of the professional writer, the teacher, and the child that leads to the development of voice which informs poetry. Discusses poems shared with children and shares examples of children's poems written in response to poems by adult writers. Analyzes the connections between the sociocultural contexts of the professional poet…