Use Of Poetry Research Articles

Als Clinicus over de Grenzen van de Psychiatrie. De verwantschap tussen literatuur en wetenschap in het werk van de psychiater H.C. Rümke (1893-1967)

As a clincian beyond the boundaries of psychiatry. The congeniality of literature and psychiatry in the work of psychiatrist H.C. Rumke (1893-1967) One of the most important Dutch psychiatrists in the interwar period was H.C. Rumke (1893-1967). With his eclectic interest in psychiatric approaches such as both psychoanalysis and phenomenology, Rumke is most well known for his remarkable diagnostic and therapeutic skills. The life and work of Rumke has been studied in detail, most notably by the Dutch historian Jacob Van Belzen. Despite this extensive research, in this paper it is stated that a relevant aspect of Rumke’s work has been largely disregarded – namely his profound interest in and use of poetry and literature. Not only did Rumke write poems himself under the pseudonym of H. Cornelius, in his scholarly work he frequently refers to fictional literature and at the end of his career he wrote a comprehensive analysis of Frederik van Eeden’s novel Van de Koele Meeren des Doods. For the eclectic clinician Rumke literature and poetry are a source of knowledge to gain insight into the human psyche. Furthermore, according to Rumke, often literature succeeds better at expressing the human condition than the science of psychiatry can. In this article it is argued that for a coherent interpretation of the life and work of Rumke this literal and poetic aspect of his work cannot be disregarded. It is precisely Rumke’s profound interest in literature and poetry that reflects his two main theses about the science of psychiatry. These are on the one hand the centrality of clinical practice and on the other hand the boundaries of psychiatry. As a clinical practitioner Rumke’s aim was to be able to understand the suffering of the patient – literature and poetry could help him do that. Rumke’s use of literature and poetry can be understood by taking into account the context of the clinic, but the intertwinement between psychiatry, literature and poetry in Rumke’s work also reflects a broader issue. Namely that the science of psychiatry is not omnipotent and that sometimes the arts are better equipped to grasp the human condition.

Poetry as self-supervision for mental health professionals: The use of poetry to process and understand clinical work

There is a growing body of literature suggesting that “self-supervision” is an option when other means of supervision are not present or are insufficient. Writing poetry in response to sessions can be a valuable form of self-supervision in and of itself as well as a supplement to conventional supervision or a positive self-care outlet for the seasoned professional or novice therapist. The development and awareness of metaphor and meaning as a path toward better empathy for a client as well as more skilled responsiveness are outcomes from a personal use of poetry responding to clinical work. Examples of responsive poetry and the methodology of such will be shared in the context of the current literature on expressive methods in conventional supervision and self-supervision.

“With Edges of Rage and Despair”: Anger and the Poetry of Office Life

In the past two decades, management studies have made significant use of poetry both in research projects and teaching contexts. During the same time, numerous collections of poetry have appeared focusing on business life with contributions in particular by office workers. This article addresses the relationship between management research on poetry and the actual poetry in these ever more frequently appearing collections. Most work in management studies focuses on the form of poetry, rather than the content. By applying the concepts of “evoked knowledge” and “shared texts” from Antonio Strati’s organizational aesthetics, the content themes are made visible. Persistent in these collections is the appearance of the related feelings of anger, rage, and despair. An interpretive exploration of relevant poems illustrates how this kind of analysis can contribute to a broader understanding of workplace-anger issues, one that fully and deeply incorporates the inner lives of workers.

Introducing Poetry in the Language Classroom to Help Develop Learner's Speaking

This paper aims at discussing the pros and cons of using poetical works or poetry in the language classroom. There is an attempt made to justify the use of poetry in language teaching by throwing some light on the existing debate surrounding the issue. It will also try to demonstrate how poetry may be effectively used in the class to help develop a learner's speaking ability through discussion activities.

Analyzing narratives through poetic forms and structures in gerontology: Applying new tools in qualitative research

This article presents an autoethnographic narrative of a woman's written reflections on her relationship with her grandmother, and research poems based upon this narrative. Research poems serve as a method of data analysis and re-representation of the narrative and highlights key themes induced from thematic analysis. Implication for the use of poetry in gerontological practice and research are explored.

A Smattering of Verse – Reading Poetic Value in the <I>Historia Augusta</I>

Late Roman education followed a long Roman tradition as it grounded its elites’ first steps into literary culture on Vergil and established a set of cultural and aesthetic values for them to carry throughout adult life (Kaster, Guardians of Language [1988]). Prose texts’ use of poetry economically activated these standards in readers’ minds (e.g., MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry [1998]). In its evaluation of the succession of Roman emperors against the background of Roman cultural heritage, projected across a miscellaneous canvas of fact, truth, accuracy, and significance (congeries, Syme, Emperors and Biography [1971]; Barnes, The Sources of the Historia Augusta [1978]; synthesis, e.g., Long, Syll.Cl. 2002), the Historia Augusta too capitalizes on the resources of Roman verse. Its proceedings have been little studied (e.g., Baldwin, BICS 1978); this paper will address the deficit by examining how the biographies appropriate poetic value.Vergil of course lays the foundation. Emperors’ tastes betoken their intellectual character (e.g., V.Hadr. 16.6, V.Ael. 5.9). Lines of the Aeneid take on oracular significance, whether consulted by the sortes Vergilianae (e.g., V.Hadr. 2.8) or attributed to a prophetic divinity (V.Alex.Sev. 4.6). Quotation confers an unanswerable authority, especially when the quoters call on ideals of Roman destiny (e.g., V.Macrin. 12.7, V.Diad. 8.7; cf. Den Hengst in Romane memento, ed. Rees [2004]). The classic breathes majesty.Several of the biographies’ emperors compose poetry, but fluency is not automatically admired (e.g., V.Ael. 5.2, cf. Quadr.Tyr. 7.4). Analysis must sound the judgments the text invokes. Scholarly attention has been paid to Hadrian’s animula vagula blandula (V.Hadr. 25.9; Cameron, HSCP 1980; Birley, Laverna 1994). An echo of Ennius recommends an emendation in the verse; Peter emended the Historia Augusta’s comment, rendering it snarkily dismissive (Teubner edition 1865; 1884), but the transmitted text better matches the biography’s ambivalence about Hadrian’s literary acumen. The transfer of diminutive formations from the soul to its destination, and the slowing of the syllables as the lines progress, intelligently sharpen the short poem’s poignancy. Hadrian was clever.Hadrian’s riposte to Florus neatly exemplifies the emperor’s competitiveness (V.Hadr. 16.3-4, cf. 15.10). Comparably, Macrinus replies in couplets to a critical poem; he is deemed to have disgraced himself, presumably by a false quantity (V.Macrin. 11.3-7; cf. Holmes, CQ 2007). The biographies utilize technical standards of Latinity, assuming readers can recognize them. In other examples, alleged translations take verbal form out of consideration, leaving content alone to suffer disparagement (e.g., V.Pesc. 12.6). The showiness of poeticized speech, however, underscores the biographies’ criticism.

"To Avoid Embarrassment, Poetry Should Keep Itself to Itself": An Autoethnographic Exploration of the Place of Poetry in Adult Literacy Teacher Education

This paper explores the reasons for the author’s reluctance to bring examples of her own poetry into her practice as teacher educator on a program for adult literacy tutors. The paper begins with the author’s poem, "The Place of Poetry," which is used as a tool for reflection on the author’s assumptions about her identities as poet and as educator. The paper ends with poems written by the author’s students, which demonstrate that the use of poetry in education has the potential to facilitate transformative learning.

POETRY IN HANDŽIĆ’S INTERPRETATION OF THE QUR’AN

Mehmed ef. Handžić, (1906-1944) was a prominent Bosnian scholar with an imposing opus in different fields. The uniqueness of his works lies in the fact that he was the only one, in modern history of Bosnian Muslims, to interpret the Holy Qur’an in Arabic, and to treat the ayats with sharia background (ajatul-ahkam). His important interpretations are: the interpretation of the El-Bekare and En-Nisa' suras. Interpreting these suras he relied on some classic works of certain eminent mufessirs like: Taberij, Džessaa, Ibnul-'Areby, Kurtuby, Alusy, Zamahshery, Razy, Bejdavy, Ibn Kesir, Dželalejn, Nesefy, etc. among the mentioned mufessirs there are representatives of traditional, rational and linguistic method of interpreting the Qur’an and that shows that Handžić ingeniously managed to make a synthesis of the three Taffsir methods. He also often relied on other sources such as Hadith, Fikh, and some linguistic works. Analyzing Handžić’s interpretation of the Qur’an, it is obvious that he, like other representatives of traditionally-rational method of interpreting the Qur’an, also used poetry as additional arguments in finding a proper solution to some sharia-legal issues. He only twice names the two poets: El-E'aša and El-Kusejjir. Researching his use of poetry, we found out that he borrowed some stanzas from Ebu Temam bin Evs Et-Tai-y and Hassan bin Sabit. For some of the borrowed lines sources are unknown. This paper presents some of the examples that back up our statements. Key words: (Handžić, Taffsir, interpretation, poetry, poets, Qur’an, Hadith, El-Bekare, En-Nisa’)

Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider (review)

Reviewed by: Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider Menachem Kellner Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider, by James A. Diamond. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. 360 pp. $35.00. When University of Notre Dame Press asked me for a blurb for this remarkable book, I responded that it consisted of “a series of extraordinarily close readings of core texts of Maimonides’, readings which illuminate the delicate interplay between philosophical and religious ideas in Maimonides. In his previous work, Diamond convincingly illustrated the way in which Maimonides carefully chooses, subtly interprets, and circumspectly weaves together rabbinic materials to address philosophers and talmudists alike, each in their own idiom. This book is a further expression of Diamond’s mastery of this intricate methodology and is a work to be studied and re-studied.” Asked now to write a full-fledged review of the book, I find myself in a quandary: Diamond’s book is indeed a major contribution to Maimonides [End Page 150] studies, but its value lies primarily in its detailed reading of discrete texts, readings which can hardly be summarized here. Indeed, Maimonides himself faced a similar quandary. Desiring to write a commentary explicating the inner, esoteric (philosophical) meaning of rabbinic aggadot, he realized that if he explained their meaning, he would be going against the will of the Sages, who, after all, wrote esoterically for a reason; if, on the other hand, he replaced one philosophical allegory with another, of what use would be his book? Wanting to be faithful to Diamond and useful to the reader of this review, I shall therefore restrict myself to summarizing some of his main conclusions, while urging all readers of Shofar to study this fine book itself—is that not after all the point of a rave review? In separate chapters Diamond focuses on Maimonides’ treatment of “outsiders”: proselytes, lepers, heretics, kings, philosophers, and, the ultimate “outsider,” God. Proselytes come from the outside and seek to enter the inner precincts of Judaism and the Jewish people; lepers are forced outside the camp, while heretics force themselves outside of it; kings (who ought to be philosophers) are set over and against the rest of the House of Israel, while philosophers (who ought to be invited to be kings) set themselves apart from the rest of the House of Israel while assiduously pretending not to. Maimonides’ sharply transcendent God is, of course, the ultimate other, an other, however, which is said to be always present (which necessitates a distinct but connected chapter on the notion of Shekhinah). A final chapter on the Sabbath, as “temporal outsider,” rounds out this noteworthy book. Through his insistence on dogmatic orthodoxy, Maimonides turns Judaism into a church of true believers (my language, not Diamond’s); it is thus no surprise that through a subtle reading of Maimonides’ letter to R. Obadiah the Proselyte, Diamond shows us how Maimonides “construct[s] a model of the convert as the only authentic Jew” (p. 31). In Diamond’s talented hands, Maimonides is shown to transform the rabbinic reading of the Biblical leper as someone punished (not by Hansen’s disease, but by a divine malady) for humanly damaging misuse of language (lashon ha-ra) into a metaphor, a metaphor for the consequence of the misuse, not of language, but of what makes language possible, the intellect (ha-ko’ ah ha-meddabber in medieval philosophic Hebrew). There is no way that I can describe in this short review the subtlety of Diamond’s analysis of Maimonides’ use of verses and rabbinic proof-texts in these and the other chapters of this book. Diamond takes a linguistic pebble and throws it into the sea of Maimonides’ thought, following the ripples where they lead: verses connect to verses and to rabbinic glosses upon them, which in turn lead to further exegetical and philosophical ripples. There is always [End Page 151] the danger of “over-reading,” of seeing more in the text than Maimonides’ intended. This reader, for one, is convinced that Diamond avoids that danger, although, to be honest, it may be because he and I read the same Rambam, as it were. A reader whose...

Magic in the Ancient Greek World (review)

Reviewed by: Magic in the Ancient Greek World Stephen Morris Derek Collins . Magic in the Ancient Greek World. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Pp. xiv + 207. A welcome addition to the Blackwell Ancient Religion series, Collins's study of ancient Greek magical practices both elucidates the practices while examining the mental constructs that support them and suggests avenues for further study. It is a well-written and incisive investigation that opens a world to both specialists and nonspecialists alike. Collins points out that "magic fascinates because we don't understand how others can believe it" (p. 166). He goes a long way in explaining how those beliefs operated. The study is divided into five chapters that focus on a review of attitudes toward magic, providing a framework for Greek magic in particular, the use of figurines in erotic magic and curses, the use of verses from Homer as powerfully evocative incantations, and the legal attitudes toward magic and how those survive into Roman and medieval Western practices. In his examination of figurines used in magic, Collins admits that they often "in no way resemble the human beings who serve as their targets. . . . [the] clay or waxen images at times are lumpy and unshapely, at best rude examples of the persons they are supposed to represent" (p. 18). It is the name of the figurine that identifies the figure with the victim, much as in later practice it is the name inscribed on the (Greek) icons that identify the image with the particular saint. When he turns to questions of health and healing magic (in the context of binding curses), Collins argues that ancient authorities on these matters misunderstood their own subject and that modern interpretations have been too willing to accept ancient authors at their own word. Collins situates the ancient text "On the Sacred Disease" in terms of other ancient discussions of health and illness and concludes that epilepsy, the "sacred disease," is a broader category than one particular ailment; health is equated with "not epileptic," and epilepsy is therefore whatever is "not healthy" (p. 82). He then shows that the curse tablets that enumerate which victim's various body parts are to be afflicted become longer and more specific over time. These extended lists of targeted organs and limbs are indicative of a variety of approaches to the self and may also reflect certain practices related to juridical [End Page 224] torture as well as the conceptual disintegration of the person as an integrated whole instead of simply the sum of his or her parts (pp. 83 ff). When discussing the deposition of erotic figurines (meant to arouse sexual attraction and desire) in the sea, Collins provides interpretations that associate sweat, and hence water, with procreation (p. 118), but it seems that the sea as birthplace of Aphrodite might also be a reasonable explanation for the practice. Regarding the use of Homer's verses (rather than poetry in general) as incantations, this is rooted, Collins argues, in the Neoplatonic opinion that "Homeric poetry preeminently embodied the divinity which also inspired its expression" and that Homer's poetry "still contained divine power" and "retained a sympathy between the cosmic and material world order" (p. 131) as an early form of the later magical principle, "as above, so below." In discussing legal attitudes toward magic, Collins reveals that professionals whose spells go awry or cause illness and death are punished more severely than are amateurs, perhaps because of the reasonable expectation that "professionals should know better" (p. 140). It is also in his examination of legal attitudes toward magic that Collins turns to "one of the most important capital sentences issued with respect to the legislative history of magic," that of burning alive (pp. 161–64). This is perhaps the best known and most long-lived of the punishments for magical practitioners. But its origins are obscure and while Collins suggests possible sources for this practice, its ultimate source is lost in the mists of time. Correctly pointing out that magic is not a static set of immutable practices (p. 169), Collins suggests several avenues for further study and examination of Greek practices. These include the Roman preference to name internal organs...

Poking Around Poetically: Research, Poetry, and Trustworthiness

In this article, the authors examined the current use of poetry in qualitative research. The literature yielded the following purposes of poetry: poetic allusions, cultural poetry research, participants’ poetry as data, data poems, research experience poems or poems from the field, and autoethnographic poetry.The authors drew on the experiences from a research poetry group, a reflexive circular e-mail, and research poems they authored. The authors deconstructed the reflexive circular e-mail for future possibilities as a data collection method and explored the following tensions: representation of research, research poets’ training and experience, explanation or interpretation, and trustworthiness. The authors composed Poetic Interludes throughout the article as a way of poking around at, with, and through poetry.

Modelling with poetry in an introductory college algebra course and beyond

The main focus of this article is the pedagogical use of poetry in a college course, Introductory College Algebra and Mathematical Modelling, which was designed to prepare students with weak mathematics background for science courses. We use poetry projects to ease the difficulties students have with the transition between word-problems representing natural phenomena, and the corresponding mathematical models–the equations representing the phenomena. We also use poetry projects to stimulate classroom participation, develop mathematical intuition, enhance number sense and introduce new concepts in an engaging setting. We present two examples of group-projects that we employed in our course, as well as a number of other poems which may be used to construct additional group or individual projects in courses of similar mathematical level. We conclude by providing a brief survey of the pedagogical uses of poetry in the K-14 mathematics classroom, and examples of poetry that may be used to enhance learning experience in calculus classes.

Evaluating the use of poetry to improve well-being and emotional resilience in cancer patients

The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the use of a group poetry therapy intervention with cancer patients utilizing a support center. It was hypothesized that the intervention would increase their emotional resilience and psychological well-being by encouraging the expression of emotions. Design and method. Twelve female patients have participated in the study. In a crossover design, half experienced a series of six weekly poetry groups while the rest acted as controls in a “waiting” period before experiencing the same intervention. Outcome measures. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire pre and posttest, which contained four short scales: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS); the Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer Scale (Mini-Mac); the Courtauld Emotional Control Scale (CECS); and the Post-traumatic Growth Inventory. Results. The hypothesis received partial support. There was a significant decrease in suppression of emotions as measured by the CECS and in anxiety as measured by HADS in those who experienced the poetry intervention. There were no changes on these measures in the control group. Conclusions. It was concluded in this pilot study that a poetry therapy intervention may improve emotional resilience and anxiety levels in cancer patients; however, larger randomized control group trials are needed.

Thinking Is as American as Apple Pie

Thinking Is as American as Apple Pie David A. Hollinger (bio) Daniel Wickberg's basic point that intellectual history has been largely integrated into mainstream U.S. history is eminently sound, and can serve as a caution against making too much of the issue of whether the field is neglected. Intellectual history, social history, and cultural history have all been put forward in successive historiographical moments, the proponents of each often claiming to have new insights to which old-fashioned political history was blind. Each of these forgivable conceits has left a valuable residue in the range and depth of the profession's engagement with specific sets of issues, including theways in which political history itself is carried out. Wickberg's essay, while alluding to developments in the profession beyond the field of U.S. history, is largely focused on the study of U.S. history, as my own comments will be. With regard to the issue of "neglect," the percentage of departments offering courses labeled "intellectual history" has declined from about 80% in 1975 to about 60% in 2005, but in the meantime the percentage of departments offering courses labeled "cultural history" has increased from about 40% to about 60%. This juxtaposition, based on a study commissioned by the American Historical Association (reported in the New York Times, June 10, 2009) is worth noting given the fuzzy borders between intellectual and cultural history. Studies of the collective mentalities of publics were once loosely characterized as intellectual history, so that works such as Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land (1950) and William R. Taylor's Cavalier and Yankee (1961) were counted as intellectual history alongside histories of argumentation, such as Perry Miller's New England Mind (1939 and 1953) and Henry F. May's The Enlightenment in America (1976). But the emergence of cultural history as a separate, yet allied field, has led to a sharpened division of labor according to which intellectual history has come to refer to a somewhat narrower range of topics than it once did, focusing more on the history of actual argumentation by people who were equipped by education and training and temperament to take the lead in making arguments—the so-called "elites." A book like Susan Nance's How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790-1935 (2009) might have been routinely classified as intellectual history if published in the 1960s, but today it is more likely to be classified as cultural history. Click for larger view View full resolution James Madison, from Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Vol. I, 1769-1793 (Philadelphia, 1865). During this historiographical transformation some historians, often in the name of social history, did devalue the study of philosophy, theology, and social theory on the grounds that the ideas of elites were of little significance. But as the history of intellectuals has come to be recognized as simply one of the discipline's many subfields, rather than a proxy for the study of all Americans, this resistance is diminishing. Attention is again being paid to the history of the use of evidence and reasoning in public discourse. Thinking, rather than some esoteric activity limited to European worthies, is indeed as American as apple pie.1 The study of popular attitudes and general political ideas held by large population groups is of course a vital part of U.S. history, but so, too, are the refinements of [End Page 17] theorists like James Madison, the Transcendentalists, the Pragmatists, the modernization theorists, etc. To the list of works recognized as intellectual history in this somewhat narrow sense published since 2001 that Wickberg cites for having won prizes and comparable recognition in the profession at large, Iwould add Charles Capper's Margaret Fuller: The Public Years (2007), Joan Shelly Rubin's Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America (2007), and Nils Gilman's Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (2003). Gilman, along with Sarah Igo, whom Wickberg rightly mentions, is part of a younger generation of scholars willing to try to launch careers by studying the ideas of elite intellectuals. Other recent books by this generation include Daniel Geary's Radical Ambition: C...

Professing Poetry Anew

The three books under review, all of which focus on poetry and attend in some way to American poetries of the twentieth century, enact in common a challenge to critical approaches that fail to take into account poetry’s participation in its social world: poetry’s meanings are inseparable from the circumstances of its production and circulation, its readers and reception history, its biographical encodings, and its political engagements. Their announced assumptions of reading as social act and poetry as social text could easily resonate as old news; after all, cultural studies has had considerable impact even on the relatively conservative field of poetry studies, despite its being in some ways still caught in New Criticism’s wake. Yet in these skillful studies, which offer very different reading experiences and divergent perspectives on literary value, the social and cultural emphasis is news that stays news, taking fresh forms and yielding significant readings and reconceptualizations of literary history that challenge entrenched critical binaries. The three books share, too, a sense of urgency—a sense of poetry, poetry reading, and poetry criticism in crisis. To some extent each implicitly or explicitly blames traditional modernist studies or the high modernism on which it focused for the crisis; the history of modernism and modernism’s legacies, then, are part of the terrain these works provocatively remap. In Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America (2007), Joan Shelley Rubin, a cultural historian, presents a social history of reading, not literary interpretation, though in passing she quarrels with literary critics who have made what she considers inadequate or biased arguments. As her title’s allusion to Whitman suggests, one of Rubin’s principal aims is to provide a “more democratic portrayal of American culture than we have previously possessed” through a “more inclusive account of American

An Interview with Marilyn Nelson

An Interview with Marilyn Nelson David Anderson (bio) Marilyn Nelson has been a familiar figure on the American poetry scene since she published her first book, For the Body, with Louisiana State University Press in 1978. The author of numerous poetry books, children's books, and translations, she has received many prestigious awards and fellowships during her long career, including the Anisfield-Wolf Award, the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, the 1998 Poet's Award, the Boston Globe/Hornbook Award, the Lion and Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry, and the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize. She has been a National Book Award finalist three times, and her books have been selected three times as Coretta Scott King honor books, and once for John Newbery honors. She has received two NEA creative writing fellowships, as well as a Guggenheim fellowship. From 2001-2006, she was the poet laureate of Connecticut. Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1946, Nelson traveled widely in her youth as part of a military family. Both parents were racial pioneers: her father was a Tuskegee Airman, and had a distinguished career as an Air Force navigator and missile control officer, while her mother was often the first African American teacher in many of the school systems in which she taught. Nelson accordingly grew up with a strong sense of familial pride, and an awareness of the broader historical or spiritual significance of daily life, both of which inform much of her poetry. Dominant themes in Nelson's poetry are respect for family, the recovery of African American history, and the search for the sacred in everyday life. Mama's Promises (1985), for instance, uses maternity and motherhood to explore questions about love, responsibility, and the mysteries and ethics of divine creation. In The Homeplace (1991), Nelson uses genealogical research to redefine the meaning of family and reconnect to her ancestry, which includes her mother's family in antebellum and postbellum Kentucky and rural Oklahoma, as well as her father's fellow Tuskegee compatriots. Magnificat (1994) uses a friend's monastic vocation to explore the differences between human and divine love and the tensions between secular and sacred worlds. In Carver: A Life in Poems (2001), Nelson sketches out the remarkably complex and creative life of George Washington Carver—an ascetic humanitarian whose spirituality is directly related to his many artistic and scientific accomplishments. In A Wreath for Emmett Till (2005), Nelson writes a crown of sonnets that serves as a ritual of mourning, contemplation of evil, and healing. The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems (2005) contains a pilgrimage to Bahia, Brazil—a center of the Brazilian slave trade—to explore the home of the syncretistic religion of candomblé, and the spiritual legacy of the African Diaspora. In my interview with Nelson, we discussed her family's influence on her writing, her use of poetry to recover history, her development as a poet, and central themes in several of her volumes. David Anderson: My first question concerns your interest in narrative. You write books of poetry that often have extended narratives, whether about family history, George Washington Carver, or most recently, The Cachoeira Tales, which refashions The Canterbury Tales to reflect on the African diaspora. Why does narrative attract you so much? [End Page 383] Marilyn Nelson: I'm interested in stories. I'm interested in history, but I'm also just interested in stories. The epigraph of The Cachoeira Tales is "Life is nothing but stories." I was asked to read my poems at a national convention of storytellers once. The woman who had invited me was apologetic because storytellers don't like to listen to people read on the page. They think you should be memorizing it or just making it up or performing it. She warned me that the audience might not be receptive unless I recited from memory. I said, "That's not what I do. I read." So I read, and afterwards several of the storytellers came up to say that they hadn't realized that poets could be storytellers too. So, I was really honored by that. It's also, I think, what I want to do. I'd like to...

“Poem is What?” Poetic Inquiry in Qualitative Social Science Research

This paper articulates the findings of a two-year Canadian federally-funded postdoctoral study — Poetic inquiry in qualitative research: A critical survey — on the use of poetry in social science qualitative research practices. Based on a 1000+ page annotated bibliography gathered into a critical anthology as the data for this project, the discoveries emerged that are expressed below. The bibliography consists solely of poems included in over 230 studies found for this multidisciplinary project, supported by abstracts and brief contextual notes. Selection criteria for included studies were peer-reviewed journal contributions only, bracketing out anything that had appeared in book form, in ‘Poet's Corners’, and also excluding poems appearing in theses or dissertations. Some of these excluded poems are cited in a separate Appendix. These criteria were made simply to limit the scope of the study to a manageable scale. Most of this poetically-informed scholarship has appeared in the past decade, although some entries date as far back as the 1970's and 80's. Conclusions are that poetic inquiry most often addresses topics with clear affective dimensions, and can be distinguished between participant-based and self-study foci, with occasional examples of theoretical studies. Participant-based studies generally draw on the literary tradition of found poetry to represent participant data. Self-studies may address more philosophical, phenomenological and/or poststucturalist opportunities that present themselves through the use of poetry in social science contexts.

Amiri & Odette: A Love Story (review)

Reviewed by: Amiri & Odette: A Love Story Deborah Stevenson Myers , Walter Dean. Amiri & Odette: A Love Story; illus. by Javaka Steptoe. Scholastic, 2009 [40p] ISBN 978-0-590-68041-7$17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7-12 "The Swan Lake Projects" are the setting for this romantic tale in verse, a retelling of the story of the ballet Swan Lake in a modern urban setting. Out playing ball with his friends one night, Amiri falls for a beautiful girl named Odette, who informs him that she's in thrall to the malign Big Red, to be freed only by a true and exclusive declaration of love. Amiri swears he loves Odette, but when he mistakes her double for her at a dance and publicly, if unintentionally, proclaims his love for a woman other than Odette, Big Red's claim on Odette is confirmed. It's an interesting project: certainly the hyper-romantic ballet story has considerable possibility for appealing adaptation, and the use of verse is a logical analog for the [End Page 211] formality of classical ballet, while Myers' knotty and alliterative language has some of its lush and studied elegance. The poetry is variable, however, with meter (mostly pentameter) uneven and inconsistent, and some of the language overworked to the point of opacity or bathos (it may in fact be difficult for those unfamiliar with the ballet to discern the plot). While altering the ending to a happy one offers romantic satisfaction, the fact that that success is achieved by Amiri basically beating Big Red up raises the question of why he didn't just do that first and bypass the intervening drama. Steptoe's illustrations are tense, moody, and nocturnal, with an intensity and pebbly underlying texture that suggests mural art. Between the darkness and some artistic choices, the art misses opportunities to illuminate the text (the Odette/ Odette's-double issue is particularly murky in both illustration and verse), but it's got a nice sense of nighttime life and atmospheric drama. Dramatic reading aloud may be the best way into this narrative, and it could certainly make for an intriguing introduction to the classical Swan Lake. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Used by permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Using Poetry As a Model for Creating English Poems

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