I Never Cared Much for Poetry...Then I Started Teaching It

I have few memories of poetry from my formative years. There were silly poems, like Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" that I was exposed to and that I found kind of fun. Then, there were the "serious" poems. We read these aloud in class and then were asked questions about them. Whatever, I thought about the poem was usually the "wrong" interpretation. I eventually realized poetry wasn't really my forte. I just didn't get it. Fast forward nearly 2 decades to when I found out that Charlotte Mason considered poetry the highest form of literature. I knew that poetry was not really considered "optional" in a CM education, but I seriously contemplated minimizing it to only once a week at the most. After all, by that point, poetry struck me as a subjective and confusing waste of time. My close friend, however, had a different viewpoint.

She talked about how much she loved poetry and how excited she was to share it with her kids during her own homeschool lessons. I had a difficult time fathoming this, but I watched her doing poetry times with her children for a couple weeks. (Ok, I actually had her do this with my children too, so that I got out of having to do it myself.) Here's what I discovered: She DID actually like poetry. You could hear it in her voice as she read it to the kids. She also didn't ask the kids to analyze it to pieces. After she read a poem, she simply asked what they thought about it. She asked them things like "Did you like it?" "What did you like about it?" "How did it make you feel?" There were no wrong answers. The kids could answer anyway they pleased. She might share her own thoughts or feelings at the end in a similar vein of sharing her own connection to the piece, and then poetry time was over. It was short and sweet.

Now, unfortunately, she couldn't do poetry with my kids every single day of homeschooling! I eventually had to tackle this subject on my own, but it seemed less intimidating to me now. I still wasn't looking forward to it, but it seemed doable. We try to focus on one poet per term in order to get a sense of that poet's voice and style in addition to enjoying the poetry. Last year, we read poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, A.A. Milne, and Lewis Carroll.

Here are the books we used. We also read from A.A. Milne's Now We Are Six, but that book seems to have walked off somewhere...

Our poetry times last year and this year have been pretty simple. If I have a short, child-appropriate biography of the poet, I'll read that at the beginning of the term to the children. After that, we just read a poem per day from that poet and then talk a little about it. It doesn't take long. Often, the kids still just offer "Good. I liked it." as their response, and for now, I'm fine with that. In fact, I'd be thrilled for the children to grow up "just" enjoying poetry, and I prioritize that over parsing and analyzing a poem to death.

I'm going to be honest and admit that I still don't love poetry. I really enjoyed A.A. Milne's poems, but I have mostly just tolerated the rest. However, this means that I have connected to one in 4 poets so far, and that I know who that poet is too. In fact, I can tell you a bit about why I enjoyed A.A. Milne over Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, or Walter de la Mare (our current poet).  I found A.A. Milne's poems to express childhood experience with a sweet simpleness that was neither condescending nor overly sentimental.  It reminded me of what it was like to be a child and seemed affirming to my own children's childhoods. Connecting with a poet in this way is definite growth for me, and I suspect my children are growing in their own unique ways via our poetry times too.

I don't educate in order to fill my children with head knowledge. I want my children to grow into Godly young women who connect to and recognize that which is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. Even though I may have been rather malnourished and eventually aversive to poetry myself, I now recognize poetry as a part of a beautiful feast of ideas I can lay out for my children. I suspect they will far surpass me in this area.

In fact, in addition to our scheduled poetry times each school day, I have made an effort to acquire some beautiful children's books of poetry that they can enjoy anytime. One of these is Eric Carle's Animals Animals, and I was surprised to discover when we reached "How Doth the Little Crocodile" in our Lewis Carroll book, that not only did my oldest excitedly exclaim that she recognized that poem from Animals Animals, but she also then recited the whole thing from memory. Later, that day, she composed a melody at the piano to turn the poem into a song too. I, personally, found Lewis Carroll poems to be a bit too goofy and satirical for my taste, and by the end of the term, I was kind of regretting that choice. The kids, however, loved the Lewis Carroll poems! 

This year, I purchased the kindle version of Ambleside Online's poems for Year 2 rather than trying to find appropriate books by each poet. Today, we read a poem by Walter de la Mare that I can only begin to guess its meaning. I'm more comfortable with that now though. I may not love each poet. I may not fully understand each poem, but I'm starting to recognize the value of poetry. I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to grow alongside my children in this.

I may not do much with poetry on school days. In fact, some may think I really do nothing at all with it, but I'll keep doing my little nothing every day now.