by Brett Vogelsinger

When it comes to concrete poetry, students are often impressed with its combination of simplicity and cleverness.  And that's the thing about concrete poems: like masterful acrobats or skateboarders or dancers, they make artful maneuvers look easy.  As some people work on movement to play with gravity, the concrete poet plays with negative space, the blank page, and the shape of words in original and sometimes humorous ways. 

One of my favorite concrete poets is Bob Raczka and his book Wet Cement contains a poem that will ring true to students and teachers everywhere.  It is called "Clock" and the picture below comes from the Kindle preview on Amazon:  




Why not challenge your students to create a smiple clock poem that sets the hour and minute hands at a different time: wake-up time,  lunch, bedtime, game time.  Or you might challenge them to change the form and still write about time: a sundial, an hourglass, a digital clock, an iPhone.  This quick introduction to a sub-genre of poetry in a shape that students of all ages and artistic abilities can handle may do more than just inspire them to create a concrete poem.  Poetry is about moments, and this exercise moves them to think of a poemworthy moment.  Maybe the following day in class, that same moment can be crafted into a poem with line breaks and stanzas.  

The writer's notebook awaits!

Further Reading:


Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA. He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past six years and is the creator of the Go Poems blog to share poetry reading and writing ideas with teachers around the world. Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.

One of my favorite poems to write with students is the pantoum. The basic structure is as follows: ABCD, BEDF, EGFH, ACHJ. We read Carolyn Kizer's poem Parent's Pantoun.

Here is one that I wrote in front of my students:
















What I like about pantoums is that they appear accessible to students. I share that you really are writing 9 lines and then repeating those lines. But repeating those lines is also what is complex, where the author must think about getting the lines in an order that makes sense. I do always begin by having students number (or letter) the lines on a lined sheet of paper. It helps the writer organize their thoughts and lines, especially when it comes to repeating them later.

I ask writers to think about a few things as they write and revise:


What line is the most important to begin on and end on?

As you brainstorm and draft, which lines are worthy of being repeated and which are not?

How can you leverage punctuation in a way that will introduce an idea in one line but have the same line conclude an idea later on?

by Lauren Heimlich Foley

During a summer graduate class, I found myself re-inspired while participating in a poetry lesson modeled after Nancie Atwell’s writing-reading workshop. That afternoon, I dusted off Naming the World, making a promise to include more poetry the following school year.

Weeks later, I started a September class period with a poem by Ronald Wallace. To engage my students, I projected “You Can’t Write a Poem about McDonald’s” on the board and asked them what they thought.

Some groups, wanting to disprove the statement, created their own poems. Other tables believed McDonald’s was not an appropriate topic for a poem or would not make a strong writing piece. Still, others wondered if the clause was in fact a poem since quotation marks flanked both sides of it.

Once table groups shared their theories, I revealed that “You Can’t Write a Poem about McDonald’s” was indeed a poem. Students exclaimed phrases such as, “No way!” or “I told you so!” or “Really?” Intrigued by their enthusiasm, I wondered what their responses would be to the actual text.

After reading the poem and inviting students to share their highlighted lines, our room erupted with meaningful conversations. My nervous-unsure-second-week-of-school seventh graders transformed into investigators and analyzers. As I moved between groups, listening in on their discussions and asking questions to push their thoughts further, their commentary on diction, personification, imagery, similes, and symbolism led to dialogues on larger issues of consumerism, waste, world hunger, food accessibility, and the fast-food industry.

Additionally, we revisited “You Can’t Write a Poem about McDonald’s” during a later class period to discuss effective titles since my students’ initial reactions were so intense.

This poem’s ability to challenge my students’ beliefs of acceptable poetry topics while inviting them to take a platform through their own writing has made it one of my favorites.

Further Reading:

by Jason Stephenson

I read Cynthia Rylant’s picture book When I Was Young in the Mountains to my creative writing students during our memoir unit. I smile at the fact that the book was published in 1982, the same year I was born. As I teach high school, I am fairly unfamiliar with children’s book authors, so I was surprised to find another Rylant book on vacation in Houston one recent summer. The slim poetry collection, published in 2003, was titled God Went to Beauty School. In 23 poems over 56 pages, Rylant portrays God as a regular human with titles such as “God Got a Dog,” “God Made Spaghetti,” and “God Went to India.”

The titular poem, “God Went to Beauty School” opens the book. It is one long stanza with short line breaks, a dash of humor, and one simile. I read the poem aloud to my students and give them time to discuss it with an elbow partner. My Creative Writing 2 students rarely need prompting, but possible questions include:

• What is so powerful about a human hand? 
• How do you respond to God being described as a human? 
• Was this poem blasphemous?

As a class, we discuss how the poem begins with short sentences but ends with one long, complicated sentence. The discussion of hands might lead us to the Michelangelo painting of the Creation of Adam, with God’s and Adam’s hands stretched out to one another. Even in the Bible Belt, most of my students are entertained and not offended by this poem.

My students write their own God-as-human poems in response: “God Got a Speeding Ticket,” “God Plays Golf,” and “God Bought a Gun,” just to name a few. We focus on emulating Rylant’s straightforward style, crisp line breaks, and deep insight.

Further Reading:

by Rose Birkhead




Rose Birkhead is a Reading Specialist at Holland Middle School. She teaches 7th and 8th grade Literacy classes and  strives to create a positive learning environment where her students feel successful on a daily basis.