Apol, Laura

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Michigan Reading Journal Volume 37 Issue 3 Article 24 April 2005 Poetry: The Magic Want for Reading's Ills Laura Apol Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mrj Recommended Citation Apol, Laura (2005) "Poetry: The Magic Want for Reading's Ills," Michigan Reading Journal: Vol. 37 : Iss. 3 , Article 24. Available at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mrj/vol37/iss3/24 This Other is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Reading Journal by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact scholarworks@gvsu.edu. THE STATE OF READING IN THE STATE OF MICIIlGAN heard the horror stories of the parent conferences, the parents who attack before you get two words out. But this is one of the few places we have to make some changes in perception, to persuade, to get the message out that we are doing a good job, often in the face of some horrendously difficult circumstances. complexities of schools, I am fearful about whether we are doing enough to prepare them well and keep them working in the profession. I know the simplistic faith in testing won't get us there. Embracing and thriving in the complexities of real classrooms will. Reference We need to stick together. We need to keep bonding over the mission of bringing young people into the profession. Their passion keeps me young. But as I regularly travel between their passion and the Bush, G. W. (Feb 27, 2001). Message to Congress (Budget outline). Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Poetry: The Magic Wand for Reading's Ills BY LAURA APoL MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY I n the movie Miss Congeniality, when the beauty pageant contestants are asked, "What is the one most important thing our society needs?" they each respond, in turn, "World Peace." However, when Gracie, the protagonist, herself a beauty contestant but really an undercover FBI agent, is asked, she responds, "That would be ... harsher punishment for parole violators." The pageant hall is silent, until Gracie adds, ''And world peace!" at which point the crowd cheers enthusiastically. So here I am, confronted with the question, "What would you change if you had a magic wand?" and I imagine around me a chorus of voices giving answers that center on standardized tests and the debilitat-ing effects they're having on our teachers, schools, and students. Professional journals, politicians' promises, NCTE listservs, newspaper editorials, and a president's mantra all seem to circle around what standardized tests can do for our kids, what standard-ized tests aren't doing for our kids, and what stan-dardized tests are doing to our kids. As professionals, we literacy educators are pretty clear that something needs to be done and it's not a small task. The magic wand answer, then, might look something like, "an intelligent plan (funding, education, classroom teacher support) that genuinely leaves no child behind." In the middle of that chorus, imagine the respondent who, when asked "What would you change if you had a magic wand?" answers "Poetry-the reading of it. The writing of it. The teaching of it." The silence in the teacher's lounge would be deafening. Poetry is not in vogue these days; it's not a talking point among those concerned with teacher preparation or account-ability. It is not a topic that propels us toward raising standards or measuring outcomes. Still, that probably says more about the current political and educational climate than it does about human souls and what they need. And outside the classroom, poetry is flourishing in the form of poetry slams, novels written in poetic form, poems posted on buses and subways, and rap music. So why a magic wand wish used for poetry? Laura Apol is an associate professor at Michigan State University, where she teaches children's and adolescent literature. She is also a published poet; she has two full-length collections of her own poetry, Falling into Grace and Crossing the Ladder of Sun (winner of the 2004 Oklahoma Book Award), and she has edited an award-winning collection of poetry for children, Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems by William Stafford. SPRING 2005 - VoL. 37, No. 3 61 THE STATE OF READING IN THE STATE OF MICHIGAN When he was selected U.S. poet laureate, Joseph Brodsky advocated that poetry be sold in supermarkets and left in every motel room in America, right next to the Gideon Bible, because "Poetry doesn't just make you feel good, it makes sense out of the world, and it can be neglected only to the nation's detriment." Brodsky was simply articulating what poets from Robert Frost to Rita Dove, from Donald Hall to Audre Lorde have all expressed: Poetry is not a luxury. Poetry matters in our everyday lives. Poetry makes us human. And we are born with an ear and a voice for poetry. As William Stafford put it, "The question is not when I became a poet, but when other people stopped." Most children enter school with this love for poetry-the play of language, the images and ideas, the taste of words. But somewhere along the line, poetry becomes to most of them something other-something written by people who are unusually gifted, and understood by people who are unusually smart. They stop imagining poetry as a way of being in the world and start imagining it as language bound by rules-rhythm and rhyme-and limited to funny topics, but-terflies or flowers, or angst over things like love and tragedy and death. And who can blame them? They are often assigned to write poems in which they slot in words ("three adjectives that describe your locker" or "a phrase comparing yourself to an animal") with little sense of why they might want to read a poem, much less why they might want to write one. Poetry is not, for them, "a momentary stay against confusion" (Pritchard, 1984); poetry is confusion itself. It belongs in a world utterly "out there"-far removed from their interests or concerns. My understanding of the power of poetry in the lives of children is much, much different. Poetry gives students language, perception, beauty, power, art. These students write because they have something to say, and they find in poetry a forum and a form for saying it. Poetry gives shape to their anger and their joy, their dreams and their fears, their senses and their emotions. How does that happen? By reading poems that mat-ter; by learning some rudimentary poetic techniques; by finding authentic things to say and believing that poetry is the best way to say them. By having an audience that matters, and a place to hear and speak the language of poems. By having teachers who offer poetry as a way of being in the world, rather than as a unit reluctantly completed in the year. Higher test scores? Perhaps. For when students begin to pay attention to the best words in the best order, as Coleridge has said, they begin to notice in language what they may not have noticed before. When students think about the craft of writing, the art of paying attention, the power of expression, they bring those skills to other reading and writing tasks as well. Really, though, it's the wrong question. Poetry isn't about test scores. It's about soul. As one of our nation's greatest poets, William Carlos Williams wrote in his 1955 poem "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," "it is difficult/to get the news [or, one might add, higher test scores] from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack of what is found there" (Microsoft, 2005). Perhaps our self-proclaimed "education president" would benefit from the words of another president, who once said, "When power leads man towards arro-gance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses" (Wikiquote, 2005). A magic wand? Maybe poetry doesn't need a magic wand-maybe it is a magic wand. That's what I hope. Oh-and I also hope for world peace. References Pritchard, W.H. (1984). On "Nothing Gold Can Stay." In C. Nelson (Ed.), Modern American Poetry: An Online Journal and Multimedia Companion to Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Retrieved April 7, 2005, from the Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: http://town.hall.org/ Archives/radio/ IMS/HarperAudio/012294_harp_ITH.html Microsoft® Corporation. (2005). ''Williams, William Carlos." In Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2005. Retrieved April 7, 2005 from http: //encarta.msn.com/text_761560921_1William_ Carlos_ Williams.html Wikiquote. (2005). "John F. Kennedy." Retrieved April 7, 2005 from http:! /en. wikiquote.org/wiki/JFK 62 MICHIGAN READING JoURNAL 

Poetry: The Magic Want for Reading\u27s Ills

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Poetry: The Magic Want for Reading\u27s Ills

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