What Happens When Poetry Teaches?

Poetry means different things to different people. This article examines poetry as a genre of literature where writers deliberately select words and artfully arrange them in such a way that they paint vivid images on the canvas of the reader’s mind. It notes that some schools neglect to include poetry as a part of the English Language Arts curriculum, and that even when it is included, there is an imbalance between teaching prose and poetry, and classrooms are fraught with fledgling uninspired teachers fumbling to get students engaged in this neglected literary form. The writer makes the case that by employing innovative best practices in their lessons, educators should create opportunities for students to read, memorize, write, appreciate, and analyze poems. In taking the stance that poetry is an avenue to thinking and making inferences, the article makes the point that training the minds of the students to “dig deeper” will build higher-order thinking skills, an attitude that will be transferred to other areas of the curriculum. It calls for teachers to model and be enthusiastic about teaching poetry.