“Poetry Is Not a Luxury”: Why We Should Include Poetry In the Writing Classroom

Abstract

Recently, the director of the composition program where I teach sent out a link to an editorial piece from Salon. She explained the piece wasn’t a new conversation but that it was a conversation still worth having. In “Death to High School English,” Kim Brooks ponders the effectiveness of traditional high school curriculum, with its focus on “standardized test preparation and the reading of canonical texts” (par. 2). She questions these practices because she believes they may lead to “the creation of a generation of college students who, simply put, cannot write” (par. 2). As evidence for her claim, she mentions “their shocking deficits,” “all the things they don’t know how to do when it comes to written communication in the English language,” as well as “all the basic skills that they surely need to master if they are to have a chance at succeeding in any post-secondary course of study” (par. 3). But her diatribe against this generation of students does not end there. She continues: