CHAPTER FIVE - The Poetry Lesson

Abstract

This chapter discusses the essence of poetry lesson and the manner in which poetry lessons should be given. It is misleading to say, to young teachers especially, that the main aim of the poetry lesson should be enjoyment, unless it is made clear that the enjoyment is not restricted to the immediate and easy appreciation of pleasing sounds and pictures. With children of any age, the aim of the teacher should be the aim of the poet, to create experience in a perfect and permanent form that, while releasing the poet from the strain of having felt, opens the possibility of feeling to the reader. The thrill of poetry is the thrill of truth clearly presented and perceived, and its beauty is a part of the truth. The truth is not, or not merely, the rational truth for which prose is adequate. The presentation of a poem or, more usually, a group of poems can vary according to the type of experience offered by the poem and the poet's manner of creating that experience. Occasionally, it is good to choose a long narrative poem, listening to which can be almost the whole experience of the lesson; however, even in this case, it is useful to select—for choral reading—a passage redolent of the atmosphere of the whole poem so that the class can make some active contribution, and so that it can return to the reading aloud of the extract later on and so recall the poem as a whole. Learning by heart should never be demanded as a matter of course. If a poem has been successful, a short extract, chosen after discussion, should first be read chorally.