Re-Introduction to Poetry: Hearing and Seeing Meaning
Learning Module
- Creator(s):
This learning module is based on a strategies that I have used in a variety of instructional contexts over the past 8 years. It has its origins in a unit I designed to introduce 12th graders to post-war American poetry in a course on 20th Century World Literature. My students were already familiar with a variety of poetic forms, could easily identify rhyme schemes and meter, and were vocally averse to any conception of poetry that allowed for less structured uses of language. The initial lessons relied heavily on James Longenbach's masterful introduction to poetry, The Art of the Poetic Line. To reinforce his understanding of the relationship between sound and syntax I used Diana Deutsch’s research on the Speech-to-Song Illusion to attune their ears to the natural music of spoken English. Once they could hear the poetry in everyday speech they were much more willing to consider that poets like William Carlos Williams and Lorine Niedeker were drawing our attention to the songs we could not yet hear.
I have since used elements of the original lesson to challenge 9th graders to think about how they experience language and how authors use language to create meaning and to introduce 11th graders in a World Literature course to global experiences of poetry. I have also assigned the referenced texts from Kenneth Koch and Basil Bunting in poetry workshops where students were asked to compose poetry in response to some of the prompts used here.
I have chosen to recraft this lesson as a multi-modal learning module in order to create a version of it that would be accessible beyond the walls of a traditional classroom. Much of my teaching practice has been informed by the conviction that literature is best understand in conversation and, until recently, the assumption that critical dialogue can only be effectively facilitated when students are physically proximate to their teacher and to each other. My current experience with distance learning, as both student and teacher, has allowed me to consider the possibility of using online learning environments, not to recreate an approximation of the classroom experience, but to facilitate novel learning experiences using new modes of communication. Since the experience of poetry is often itself multi-modal I thought it appropriate to begin here.
The learning module that follows both uses a range of modalities to introduce students to new conceptions of poetry and challenges them to consider the intersection of textual, oral, audio, and gestural meanings in the assigned texts. In it's current form it is designed for 11th or 12th grade students who are already familiar with poetic forms and devices and who have experience with critical, dialogical apprpoaches to the analysis of literature. Alternative strategies are suggested for teachers who may choose to use a variation of the module with 9th or 10th grade classes.
This learning module is designed to introduce students to poetry as a multi-modal genre of literature and to provide them with the knowledge and skills needed to
To achieve this students will
The module addresses the following essential questions:
This course is designed to challenge your assumptions about poetry, allowing you to experience and engage with a broad range of texts. You will read, recite, and listen to a range of poems in multiple languages and from global cultures. Through reflective writing and discussion you will explore how poets use language to create meaning and how readers experience that meaning. For each activity you will engage in conversation with your peers by answering assigned discussion questions and responding to at least two posts by other students. Comments and responses should be no less than 40 words. When responding to or referring to a poem you must always provide textual evidence in support of your claims.
In addition to participating in these conversations about the assigned poems you will
As we read, hear, and discuss each text, consider the following essential questions:
Self-Reflection Questions:
Before we begin, consider your current understanding of poetry. Answer the following reflective questions to share your current understanding and experience of the genre
What is poetry?
Each of the following videos presents a recording of a performance of poetry. View each video and post your comments in response to the questions. As your listen, consider what these recording have in common and what makes them different.
Maya Angelou reads her poem Still I Rise:
Literature Today UK. (2014, June 10) Still I Rise by Maya Angelou.Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qviM_GnJbOM
Actor Harriet Walter reads Shakespeare's Sonnet 18:
Southbank Center. (2016, July 16)Harriet Walter reads Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 | Festival of Love. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUV7kE4A8hc
English teacher Tim Gracyk reads Stopping by the Woods by Robert Frost:
Tim Gracyk. (2013, July 4)"Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" Robert Frost MOST FAMOUS POEM OF CENTURY powerful voice. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws9PNL58RMw
Discussion (In addition to answering these questions you must also post comments for at least two posts from your peers):
Purpose:
As students begin to pursue more advanced studies of literature they may struggle to effectively engage with the study of poetry. Assumptions about definitions and characteristics may prevent them from understanding modernist and post-modernist forms. Their primarily textual experience of poetry may constrain their ability to appreciate global traditions of poetry that are predominantly oral. While they may be able to identify and describe particular poetic forms and devices their analysis of a poem may be limited to its textual content.
Teaching tips:
Begin by asking students to reflect on their own experience of poetry, identifying examples that typify their definitions and assumptions. For students with less experience of poetry, you may consider providing them with examples that represent the broad parameters of the genre. Responses to the reflection questions can be used to gauge the level of student experience with the genre so that the subsequent updates can be modified if needed.
"Experiencing the Known & New:" This update requires students to consider their prior experience of reading or hearing poetry while building upon it with a range of recordings that subtly introduce the concept of aural meanings in poetry. The questions challenge students to consider new definitions that can used to explore poetry beyond the textual mode.
"Conceptualize by Naming & with Theory:" While a fixed definition of poetry is not offered, this update requires advanced students to reflect on and reconsider their own conceptualizations of poetry. .
"Analyzing Functionally & Critically:" The questions in this update requires students to think critically about their own experience of language and to analyze the assigned texts towards the goal of developing novel definitions of poetry.
"Applying Appropriately & Creatively:" Both the recorded texts and the knowledge created by students in their comments can be used to further address the texts that appear throughout the learning module.
Listen to the following recorded lesson and the complete the activity below:
In many parts of the world, poetry remains a mode of literature that is heard rather than read. Poetry is recited by professional vocalists who are often accompanied by musicians, even dancers. To understand how poetry is experience beyond the pages of a printed book we will listen to recordings of Alif Allah, a poem written by the 17th century Punjabi poet Sultan Bahu. The poem remains popular in contemporary India and Pakistan where it recited in a variety of styles. As you view each video, consider the following questions for discussion:
Sain Zahoor is a world renowned master of Punjabi folk music. His recitation of Alif Allah is accompanied by the ektara, a single stringed lute indigenous to Pakistan and Northern India.
Nupur Punjabi. (2014, July 29). Sain Zahoor - Chambe Di Booti | Punjabi Sufi Folk Songs | Full Punjabi Video Songs | Nav Punjabi. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhY0KkO5lt
Arif Lohar is a popular folk singer in Pakistan famous for his use of the chimta, metal tongs strung with bells.
Yasir Tv. (2018, March 29) Alif Allah Chambay Di Booti By Arif Lohar Live Tv Show Program. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d2PJ-2p5t0
Owais Raza Qadiri is famous for reciting poetry in a range of languages spoken in Pakistan, including Punjabi, Urdu, and Arabic. This video is quite long. It would be sufficient to listen to the first 3 minutes.
Qadri Ziai Sound. (2020, March 21)Kalam e Bahoo 2020 - Alif Allah Te Chambe Di Booti || Owais Raza Qadri || Arfana Kalam 2020. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_7MDBVfVvI
Now, read the translation of the poem.
Discussion (In addition to answering these questions you must also post comments for at least two posts from your peers):
Purpose
This activity is designed to introduce students to a working definition of poetry that will allow them to develop a habit of listening and seeing, not just reading, for meaning. It also provides them with an opportunity to reconsider their assumptions about the textuality of poetry and to consider how those assumptions are informed by their experience of the Western canon of literature.
To accustom their ears to hearing the meaning of a recited text students are first asked to speculate about the content of the recorded poem before reading the translation. Alternatively, they may be asked to read the translation first and the propose a style of recitation informed by the content of the text.
Teaching tips
Identify a single poem from an oral tradition of poetry that includes multiple performative interpretations of the original text. You may either provide students with a translated text first, asking them to consider how the content might inform a recitation, or you may begin with recordings and ask them to speculate about the content of the poem based on each style of recitation.
The following texts are quoted in the recorded lesson and explore the relationship between sound and meaning from the perspectives of poets and readers. Advanced readers in the upper grades can be asked to read the relevent excerpts from these texts prior to viewing the lesson.
Chapter 3 from Bunting, B. (1999). Basil Bunting on Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Chapter 2 from Koch, K. (1999). Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. New York: Touchstone.
Chapter 1 from Longenbach, J. (2007). The Art of the Poetic Line. St. Paul: Gray Wolf Press
"Experiencing the Known & New:" The recorded lesson builds upon the student reflections from the previous update and provides a new working definition of poetry that anticipates students reaction to the recordings in the first update. That definition, focusing as it does on the experience of the sound of poetry, also seeks to broader student conceptions of poetry by referencing their experience of song and text.
"Conceptualize by Naming & with Theory:" The definition intorduced in the recorded lesson is based upon theories of poetics devised by Bunting, Koch, and Longenbach. That definition, which emphasizes aural meanings, is references throughout the updates in the module.
"Analyzing Functionally & Critically:" The discussion questions requires students to use that conception of poetry to first consider the purely aural meanings in the recordings of the text. They then read the text in translation to critically examine both the relationship between sound and meaning and how they experience the sound of language.
"Applying Appropriately & Creatively:" The recordings present the recitation of a poem written in a language that students likely do not speak. The task of analysing a poem that they cannot engage with textually prepares them for exploring the aural meanings in the texts assigned in later updates.
Listen the recorded lesson and complete the activity that follows:
Now that you have experience the natural music of the English langauge you will discuss how one poet draws our attention to the music already present in language. Read the following poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins and answer the discussion questions that follow.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Discussion (In addition to answering these questions you must also post comments for at least two posts from your peers):
Purpose:
By introducing students to the Speech-to-Song Illusion, this lesson and activity allows them to hear the music already present in the spoken language so they can begin considering how poetic devices convey meaning.
Teaching Tips:
Provide students with a poem that uses familiar poetic devices in ways that obviously enrich the textual content. Avoid poems written in iambic pentameter or any other singsongy meter. Choose texts that use alliteration, enjambment, slant rhyme or other devices that disrupt the reader's anticipation.
The Speech-to-Song Illusion can be further explored at Diana Deutsch's website where she provides additional recorded examples.
http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=212
This video of a 5th grade music class listening to Deutsch's recording will give your sense of how your students might react:
thenthorn (209, July 7). Deutsch's 'Sometimes Behave So Strangely.' Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zr9BU0bJoc&feature=emb_title
Research building upon her work is discussed here in the context of how musicians hear language:
12tone. (2019, Spetember 27) The Speech-To-Song Illusion. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1OlTY0PEu0
Both resources can be shared as supplementary materials for more advanced students.
"Experiencing the Known & New:" The recorded lesson allows students to experience everyday speech in remarkably new ways. Deutsch's recordings immediately tune the studenst ears to the sound of language as they will be expected to hear it in the assigned texts in other updates
"Conceptualize by Naming & with Theory:" This update adds to the definition of poetry a new conception of the poets role as someone who creates textual meaning but also allows us to hear new aural meanings that they uncover in the the language as it is spoken.
"Analyzing Functionally & Critically:" The assigned text and discussion questions provide students with their first opportunity to critically examine the relationship between textual and aural meanings. The poem was chosen because of the accessible relationships between its content and the sound of the language produced using Hopkin's concept of sprung verse. Advanced students may find this video useful:
Her Aeolian Harp. (2011, April 4). Hopkins and Sprung Rhythm. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_vv76M_KG0
"Applying Appropriately & Creatively:" The concepts and questions explored here prepare students for critical engagement with other assigned texts in the subsequent updates.
For this activity your will '"translate" a poem written in a language you do not speak. Relying solely on the sound of each word your will consider what each word might mean. Your translations need not make semantic sense but they should convey your understanding of the sound of the text.
Once you have complete your "translation," read the linguistic translation.
Purpose:
The practice of translating poetry from languages that the translator doesn't speak was introduced by the French collective of poets known as Oulipo in the 1960's. Oulipo writer use ornate and even absurd constraints on their own use of language to inspire Similar strategies emulating the Oulipo mission of broadening our conception of poetry and poetics have been used by American poets like John Ashberry and his student John Yau. I was introduced to the practice by Ashberry while enrolled in his workshop at Bard College. For Ashberry the purpose of these translation exercises is to accustom your ear to hearing the words you writer while and even before your consider their meaning. He described it as an ideal strategy for disrupting the adolescent tendency to use excessively emotive language.
Teaching Tips:
Other Oulipo exercises can be employed to address other assumptions about the craft of poetry. A comprehensive list can be found here:
http://www.languageisavirus.com/creative-writing-techniques/oulipo.php#.Xp25b9VKjIU
"Experiencing the Known & New:" The exercise in this unit is meant to disrupt student expectations that a poem is textually rather than aurally created.
"Conceptualize by Naming & with Theory:" If the teacher chooses to introduce the Oulipo poets and their work then this update would further enrich student understanding of the aurality of poetry.
"Analyzing Functionally & Critically:" By comparing their aural translations to the linguistic translations students will be able to analyze the aural meanings in the original texts.
"Applying Appropriately & Creatively:" The experience of hearing the meaning of the assigned texts prepares students for the analysis of the poems assigned in Update 6 and for the final critical analysis.
As we have observed in the recordings of three artists reciting Alif Allah, the oral recitation of a poem provides the poet or reader with opportunities to manipulate the sound of a text in order to enhance or even alter its meaning. Record and upload a video of yourself reading the attached poem by William Blake. Read the text carefully first and consider how the content will inform your volume, pace, intonation, and rhythm. Consider also how the text might inform gesture and facial expression. Use the attached Poetry Out Loud rubric to guide your choices.
After you have submitted your recording. View the following three recordings of the Tyger and respond to the discussion questions that follow.
The poet Daniel Moore reads the Tyger:
Daniel Abdalhayy Moore. (2013, Aug 21) TYGER TYGER BY WILLIAM BLAKE / Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFHw-lnDT0
Singer-songwriter Patti Smith recites the Tyger:
Wadsworth Atheneum. (2011, December 12). Patti Smith - The Tiger (by William Blake) (Performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum). Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSLjYScyaBo
Scottish actor Ian Richardson reads the Tyger:
Roman Styran. (2017, April 25) The Tyger by William Blake - Read by Ian Richardson. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4sz2lCKg-U
Discussion (In addition to answering these questions you must also post comments for at least two posts from your peers):
Peer Review of Recitation:
Purpose:
To assess their understanding of how the sound of language conveys meaning students will record themselves reciting an assigned poem. They should be instructed to enhance their performance with appropriate gestures and facial expressions.
Teaching Tips:
The recordings can be evaluated using the Scoring Rubric and the Judge's Guide from the Poetry Out Loud competition.
"Experiencing the Known & New:" Students will use their developing undeunderstandingpoetry and an aural and textual genre to create interpretive readings.
"Conceptualize by Naming & with Theory:" This update builds upon the working definition of poetry introduced in Update 2 by revealing that the aural meanings in poetry can be uncovered or manipulated through performative recitation.
"Analyzing Functionally & Critically:" The discussion questions and the peer reciew exercreviewquire students to critically explore the convergence of oral, aural, textual, and gestural meanings in the performance of poetry.
"Applying Appropriately & Creatively:" The texts, recordsing, and recordingsxercises in this update prepare students for the multi-modal analysis they will create in Update 6 and in the final critical analysis project.
View the recorded lesson and complete the activity that follows:
Now that we have explored a range of ways that poets use the sound and shape of language to compliment, enhance, and play with the meanings of words we will look critically at four very different poems. Each poem addresses the same theme of ocean waves yet each poet explores the sounds and sights of rolling and crashing waves, and even the sound and shape of the word "wave," to produce a text that is unique in both form and content. Read each poem and answer the discussion questions that follow. Remember Bunting's advice to read aloud to hear the music of each word.
Discussion (In addition to answering these questions you must also post comments for at least two posts from your peers):
Purpose:
This activity allows students to test out their new understanding of the sound of language before developing formal critical responses to the assigned texts.
Teaching tips:
The three poems may be substituted with other texts. Be sure to identify texts that both address the same theme and do so in a variety of ways. The Academy of American Poetry database allows you to search for texts by occasion, theme, and form:
"Experiencing the Known & New:" The recorded lesson challenges students to reconsider the value of their knowledge of poetic forms. The objective of this lesson is not to diminish the value of the knowledge but to consider how it may not be useful for making sense of the aural meanings in poems. The visual content of the lesson provides students with a more familiar but analagous experience of artists manipulating a single modality to create new meanings.
"Conceptualize by Naming & with Theory:" The definitions of poetry from Williams and Dickinson and the visual content of the lesson add a sense of physicality and sensuality to the expanding definition of poetry. This will allow students to consider the layers of experience in reading a poem from the phsyical text on the page, which may contain both visual and tactil meanings, to the textuality of reading the poem silently, to the orality and aurality of reading and hearing the poem aloud.
"Analyzing Functionally & Critically:" The discussion questions allow students to use their new conceptions of poetry as a multimodal genre to critcally examine the assigned texts.
"Applying Appropriately & Creatively:" The exanded definition of poetry, along with the new modalities explored in this update, prepare students for the final critical analysis in which they may choose to either create an interpretive recitation or a formal critical essay examining the aural, visual, and textual meanings in a single poem.
As a final assessment of your conception of poetry you may choose one of the following prompts to complete a summative project in which you share your knowledge and understanding of the experience of poetry.
Option One: Recorded Performance and Rationale
Option Two: Critical Essay
Purpose:
The summative assessment is designed to facilitate student sharing of new knowledge about the multi-modal experience of poetry. Building upon prior experience with analytical writing is allows them to use a new range critical reading strategies to thing and write about literature beyond mere textual meanings. Two options are provided to accommodate students whose conceptual understanding may be more advanced than their current writing skills.
Bahu, S. (1998). Death before Dying: The Sufi Poems of Sultan Bahu. Elian, J. (Trans.) Berkely: University of California Press.
by Sultan Bahu (Author), Jamal J. Elias
Blake, W. (n.d.). The Tyger by William Blake. Retrieved April 15, 2020, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger
Bunting, B. (1999). Basil Bunting on Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Daniel Abdalhayy Moore. (2013, Aug 21) TYGER TYGER BY WILLIAM BLAKE / Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFHw-lnDT0
Deutsch, D. (n.d.). Speech-to-Song Illusion - Diana Deutschs Web Page. Retrieved April 17, 2020, from http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=212
Gunn, T. (2009). Selected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Her Aeolian Harp. (2011, April 4). Hopkins and Sprung Rhythm. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_vv76M_KG0
Koch, K. (1999). Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. New York: Touchstone.
Literature Today UK. (2014, June 10) Still I Rise by Maya Angelou.Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qviM_GnJbOM
Longenbach, J. (2007). The Art of the Poetic Line. St. Paul: Gray Wolf Press
Nupur Punjabi. (2014, July 29). Sain Zahoor - Chambe Di Booti | Punjabi Sufi Folk Songs | Full Punjabi Video Songs | Nav Punjabi. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhY0KkO5ltQ
Poetry Out Loud . (n.d.). Judging A Contest. Retrieved April 18, 2020, from https://www.poetryoutloud.org/teachers-organizers/judging-a-contest/
Qadri Ziai Sound. (2020, March 21)Kalam e Bahoo 2020 - Alif Allah Te Chambe Di Booti || Owais Raza Qadri || Arfana Kalam 2020. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_7MDBVfVvI
Roman Styran. (2017, April 25) The Tyger by William Blake - Read by Ian Richardson. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4sz2lCKg-U
Snyder, G. (1970). Regarding Wave. New York: New Directions.
Southbank Center. (2016, July 16)Harriet Walter reads Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 | Festival of Love. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUV7kE4A8hc
thenthorn (209, July 7). Deutsch's 'Sometimes Behave So Strangely.' Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zr9BU0bJoc&feature=emb_title
Tim Gracyk. (2013, July 4)"Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" Robert Frost MOST FAMOUS POEM OF CENTURY powerful voice. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws9PNL58RMw
Wadsworth Atheneum. (2011, December 12). Patti Smith - The Tiger (by William Blake) (Performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum). Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSLjYScyaBo
Yasir Tv. (2018, March 29) Alif Allah Chambay Di Booti By Arif Lohar Live Tv Show Program. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d2PJ-2p5t0
12tone. (2019, Spetember 27) The Speech-To-Song Illusion. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1OlTY0PEu0