Daniel Alderson's Talking Back To Poems

While students certainly learn by reading, writing poetry is also useful because “when you pick up a pen, you stop holding poetry at arm's length” (Alderson 8). Students may fear writing poetry even more than reading, but making a creative space alleviates the pressures and forces students outside their comfort zones, and “if [teachers] do not provide opportunities to write poetry, [they] deny that any of [their] students are capable of becoming poets” (Lockward 69). Students can generate ideas not only for the poems to write but also about essays to write and ideas about previously read poems because “[w]hen students are allowed to write their own poems, they also learn to analyze as writers” of any genre (Lockward 69). Imitation poetry

Like Runyan’s book, the first half invites the reader to “notice things” like sound, imagery, structure, and meaning (9, Contents). This instruction varies slightly from Brannon’s imitation poetry because his prompts do not ask for an exact replica. For example, prompts state to use the same rhetorical device or write a poem with “two short stanzas” or follow a specific rhyme or meter (87, 84). As if he had too many poems, Alderson ends the book with prompts asking for a poem that “echoes the [prompt] in some noticeable way” and a glossary of poetic devices that gives concise definitions and examples perfect for the classroom

Whether students think they have backgrounds in poetry, they do, but they may not know specific forms like villanelle or sestina. For example, Bianca Lynne Spriggs’ “On Falling” is a triptych made of three poems “displayed side-by-side” to form a fourth poem that “is read horizontally” and “completes the theme” (Spriggs 27; Beekeeper71). Students may enjoy this form and could see the challenges of creating triptychs. If dialect is taught, a teacher could encourage students to use theirs in certain assignments like personal narratives and of course, poetry, especially in rural schools where students speak Appalachian English, urban schools with African American students who speak Ebonics, or schools with high populations of English Language Learners who code-switch. Sherry Cook Stanforth’s “App, Too” includes her dialect through words and phrases like “sooth-saying holler witch,” “twang,” “hilljack,” and “kin” (18). By imitating Stanforth, students can show their diversity and challenge