Another Look at Poetry Breaks

    It's Tuesday, time for a slice of life!  Come visit all the links at the Two Writing Teachers blog!

          It's also Poetry Month, and on Tuesdays, I am choosing to share a poetry lesson.  This is lesson two, another about line breaks, but this time, I use poems to teach about enjambment, defined as the continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break.  
          As a poetry group, before this lesson, we've already shared lots of poems we love by others, and read and responded to each others' original poems. We have talked about poets taking special care when they want the reader to pause, i.e., create a line break.  I usually meet with the group only as a facilitator, and share tips and knowledge as it seems appropriate to what is being written or shared.  There always is a good time for this lesson, one of revision.  


           I cannot share the actual poems, but will give the links.  What I've done in the past is to write out a poem in lines with spaces, just as I am writing now.  I make the font rather large, like sixteen point, then talk about enjambment and how I would like the students to examine the idea by working with someone else's words.  I've used the following poems.
       This Moment, by Eaven Boland 
        First Grade, by William Stafford
        How To Paint a Donkey  by Naomi Shihab Nye

         I like First Grade because of the dialogue.  It can trip one up, but the key is to work in 
the kind of communication one believes is needed.
         This Moment takes just what the title says, one moment and describes the small actions happening right then.  It's a challenge to think through where this poet is going to break up the lines.  How To Paint A Donkey does almost the same thing, tells a small story, but here again, the writer chooses just how the lines are to be arranged.  
            Questions to be asked about making changes in lines are the choice of when the reader should pause in order to vary the rhythm and to heighten the tension.  Sometimes, we discuss moving lines around in the white space.  Not only do the lines break, but they move, perhaps to heighten awareness of pauses, or for emphasis.

A poem might look like this:
                    ------------------

      ----------------------
----------------                     ---------------------
-----------------------      -------------------------

or this:
  --------

-------------
-------------------

---------------
---------------

-----------   
-----------

-----------------------------
-------

            
      I found students liked having the choice of where to place the lines, and it was always a good discussion when we looked at the published poems to compare those poets' choices with theirs.  And, they liked the idea of having the power to choose in their own writing, but for good reasons.

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Extra note:
          I am having a snow day today.  The temperature dropped from 67 degrees to 22 last night and we're supposed to have 6-12 inches by afternoon.  

             Mother nature's tricks
             Give us snowy, blowy night.
             Spring 'round the corner,
             Again!
                                                     ==========================

Poetry Links you might enjoy:

       I discovered this post shared on Facebook this week, and the blog itself is one to check out.  It's Teach With Picture Books, by Keith Schoch.  This particular post is Ten Ways To Use Poetry.  He writes two other blogs also, How To Teach A Novel and Teaching That Sticks.  You can find the links on his website.

       Mary Lee Hahn, at A Year of Reading, has been writing some gorgeous poetry this past week, using media from the Creative Commons site and teaching about proper attribution at the same time.  It's been a week of beautiful words written by her and a few of her commenters, along with learning and inspiration.  Please visit!

       To the right are the writers for Irene Latham's progressive poem during the month at Live Your Poem. So far, counting today, nine poets have added their lines; it's a path that meanders, with surprises each day!

        If you’d like to see more of the spectacular happenings occurring in April, check out Jama Rattigan’s blog, Jama’s Alphabet Soup.  I think she’ll be adding to the list as she finds out more, so keep checking in.

       And here are a few more wonderful poetry links at Tabatha Yeatts' blog,  The Opposite of Indifference.