Please help me start Poetry!

[Sarah CB]

Hi,
We've used Aesop and are part-way through Homer. I have a system for planning lessons and we're doing Ok.

However, I am feeling completely out of my depth with poetry. I don't know where to start or how to plan for the first lesson. I'm not even sure if the poems I'm looking at have the same meter. It seems when I read them that the stress is not always on the second syllable.

My plan is to spend 12 weeks working on Poetry this summer, but I need help to get me started.

Thanks,
Sarah

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Sarah,

I can identify with you on poetry. It wasn't too many years ago, with my firstborn and poetry that I didn't know an iamb from a trochee. It is "alien" to us as our culture has largely lost the grand art of prosody.

There are two options, now that you ask me to "jump start" you in poetry.

My first recommendation is that you read through the introduction to the book yourself first. Take one week and each day read the introduction for ONE DAY in poetry

1. reading and understanding
2. figures
3. meter
4 stanzas

This will give you a good background and overview.

THEN use the schedule in the back of the book, which tells you which skill evels and lessons and which poems to do when.

If this is still a daunting task, then you need our student work book for poetry, which is everything totally laid out, just flip the page and do. They are done and written, but we're still working with the proofing of the copies in print.-- I could sell you the pdf files for those.

You can email me at [e-mail] if you need the pdf files.

Lene