When I was a child and went to Sunday School my father had a picture hanging on the wall called “Laughing Jesus”. It is a head shot. Jesus is in the rain, and I’m not sure why he’s laughing, but he’s laughing his head off with pure joy. Although my father probably explained the inspiration for the picture, I always assumed it was a joy of nature and God’s magnificence.

No longer a church goer, and not even sure if I’m still a Christian, that image–and the larger idea of Jesus = Love–keeps me open to the comfort and guidance the Christian church offers even as too many of its followers preach hatred and spend their energies dividing us.

“Goodtime Jesus” reminds me of that picture. It may seem sacrilegious to some (it was declared as much when it was published in my U Mass alumni magazine alongside an article on Tate, who is a professor there), but what also struck me in Sunday School was that Jesus had a mortal side. He is the son of God, but also the son of Mary. Anyone who enjoys a good cup of coffee has to be worth listening to. I find this Jesus very inspiring.

Of course, a public school teacher might be hesitant to present this to his or her students. I have not, but I do present more classical religious works. Much of literature has religious underpinnings if not outright praise or criticism. But, it being All Saint’s Day, I wanted to offer it up.

Notice how it does not follow several poetry conventions. It is a story and in paragraph form. Is it a poem? What defines it as such? Heck, it doesn’t even rhyme!

Is this praise? A celebration? How is Jesus portrayed, and what is Tate trying to say? Does this presentation differ from that normally presented? How does Tate fit in with literary presentations of Jesus?

Enjoy!

Goodtime Jesus
James Tate

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?  A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

I enjoy William Carlos Williams because he exposes those who do not, cannot or will not go beyond the “plot” of the poem.

“What is this poem about?” I ask.

“A guy who ate someone’s plums.” I hear.

“That’s it?” I ask. “Why did he write it?”

Silence.

“Why is this one of the most famous poems of American literature?”

Silence.

And so on. We talk about guilt and remorse, but most students also feel that the speaker would easily do it again (so, s/he’s not really sorry). It’s a poem to go deep with. There is no hiding. Because nothing happens its sounds stupid to say “It’s just about some plums” because it is clear that SOMETHING more has to be happening.

Ironically, as an Imagist, the plums and the poets uncertainty about having remorse might be it. As someone who loves symbolism, I still don’t believe some of the Garden of Eden interpretations I’ve read.

This is a also a nice poem for discussing voice on two levels.

First, some of your students will notice that the speaker does not really seem remorseful. As I’ve said, most of the class believes he would do it again. How does Williams convey that while the WORDS say something else? Now, that’s good writing.

Second, is the speaker a man or a woman? Offer the poem without the poet’s name and ask. Then, give them Williams’ name and ask. Then point out that the speaker and the poet are often different people (don’t assume). Can a boy write a poem from a girl’s perspective (try it!). Does that mean he’s a girl (answer: No.). Finally, speak about the universal nature of great literature, as opposed to the navel gazing private language most middle schoolers write in. The poet and voice are different.

This is Just to Say
William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

 

There are several ways to read or introduce a poem to students, but I have found that popcorn style is one that gets many students involved.

The rules are simple.  Each student in the class has access to the poem: It’s in a book they all have, on the board, or projected.  You announce that you want it read “popcorn style” and simply say “Begin.”  Students just start reading it out loud.  When one is done reading what he or she wants to read, someone picks up from the next word.  Or not.  At times you will find a long gap (don’t fill it!).  Then, two or three voices will jump in at once and someone will yield.

Does “organic” sound too twee?

Of coure, the first time you do it you need to tell them the rules of the game.  You also might need to refine it.  Some teachers limit the number of lines, while, with some classes, I need to ask students to read AT LEAST a line (I have some jokers who read a word, and stop).  A discussion of limiting is a good one for classroom culture.  How often can someone participate, and what is keeping others from jumping in?

I have found that many students who do not like to read, do not like poetry, struggle with everyday reading… they like to jump in and try a line.  I get a diverse readership; not just the usual suspects.

When the students are done, I will often repeat the entire poem again for the dramatic effect.  Sometimes I will refrain from this, and instead talk about the poem with the kids.  In these cases, I save my repeat for when they are stuck and out of ideas.

Try it.  It will be weird at first, but then you’ll be using it for passages and other readings that need a bit of life blown into them.

This poem is not art, but it makes an important point. It will also be easy for students to understand

I was inspired to add this poem in response to a parent group’s approach to the local school board. Concerned about low test scores (a very legitimate concern) they are focused on AP courses and students not only getting into college (the high school has over 80% of graduates going to college), but the college of their choice. If the elephant is the supervisory union’s K-12 school system–and the experience of students over that time–this group is focused on the tail. If a student is not already working at a high level junior year, and possessing skills such as reading and writing, it makes more sense to look at the K-8 education than point fingers at their last years in school. The group’s leader is a consultant in getting teens into college, so she has an obvious blind spot.

There are three natural lessons that I will explain.

First, have students imagine what each of the six blind men sees. They can draw a picture. You can then find several websites that have illustrations to go with Saxe’s poem. An easy poem, it teaches a skill that can be carried over to other poems.

Second, this poem can be used for self reflection. Has there been a time where you saw things one way, and someone else could not see your point of view? Think about what you want, and what your parents will let you do. Fights with friends? Teacher gives good advice but you do what you do and fail? Point out that disagreement does not necessarily mean that both sides don’t see the whole picture. Parents may see their child’s point, but still not give them their way. Because of that, this reflection has a certain amount of subtlety. But adolescent ideas that other people have different perspectives is changing as their brains change: we call it maturity.

Third, this story has a long history before Saxe wrote this poem. A lesson on India would be enhanced by comparing the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, etc. tellings of this story. The Wikipedia version is here.

The Blind Man and the Elephant
John Godfrey Saxe

It was six men of Hindustan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind)
That each by observation
Might satisfy the mind.

The first approached the Elephant
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side
At once began to bawl:
“Bless me, it seems the Elephant
Is very like a wall”.

The second, feeling of his tusk,
Cried, “Ho! What have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear”.

The third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Then boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake.”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Hindustan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
And all were in the wrong.

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

I just saw this on a Levi’s advert, which means the time to strike is now if you want to use this poem (and seem hip). Of course, it’s still valid tomorrow, as it was one hundred or so years ago. Ah, Walt….

The ad uses Walt Whitman’s own reading, preserved on an old wax cylinder. You can hear/use the same recording here He sounds like the woolly toothed madman described in “The Dead Poets Society”. Play it. Your kids will get a kick out of it.

The most obvious use of this poem is with a cross-curriculum Social Studies exploration of what America is all about. Are THEY in the poem? Is anyone NOT in it? What is Whitman’s vision of America? If you want to go into biographical criticism, would Whitman be considered part of America today (for example, he’s gay, but also a nurse in the war).

There are other Whitman poetry samples, such as “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, and “America” is longer and quite good. I simply snatched the bit he recorded. I like Ginesburg’s “America”, too, but that’s a bit mature for middle school (you be the judge, but I suggest permission slips and a talk with your administration). Ginesburg’s “In a Supermarket in California” is to Whitman, just as “America” is a sort-of homage. Heck the whole book HOWL is dedicated to him.

Have them write their own poems. Or, use other Whitman poems to paint a collage of Whitman’s America. Have them read it like Whitman does. Can they pull of his gravity? He can be a bit long, but in choppy bits he is America’s greatest.

America
Walt Whitman

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

Another of the three poems recommended in this month’s “NEA Today” as the three books/poems that every graduate should read (the other two by the suggester are “If” and “The Road Not Taken”).

This is a great poem to use with students about what they want, why they are in school, and to generally get them to buy into the whole “school” idea. Once they define “success”, have them work out exactly what it looks like, and what they need to do to achieve it. For classroom management, I always ask them if they are “happy”, and then work towards solutions to making it so. This does this, writ large.

What is Success
Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and love much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the approval of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give of one’s self;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived…
This is to have succeeded.

I only know “If” as the title of a British teen counter-culture movie where the students wind up killing everyone. It is also a poem. It was listed in this month’s “NEA Today” magazine as one of three books/poems that every graduate should read.

Having not taught it myself, I think any middle school student will get it. Inspired by it? No. Still, I think it might offer a nice discussion about their ideals and who they are as people. That makes for a pretty strong poem.

This can also be used to teach British culture, along with other Kipling classics. It could make a nice “Poetry Out Loud” poem, or something to read at graduation. Hokey, I know, but it makes for a nice bookmark as part of a student recognition piece.

If
Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

This is one of my favorite poems.

In short, Williams is an Imagist. What you see is what you get. By taking a snapshot, Williams slows the reader down and makes them picture the scene. He adds no meaning, no symbolism, no metaphor. To paraphrase Popeye, it is what it is.

My students have tried to put more into it. A favorite interpretation is that it shows how farms are the backbone of America: Red wheelbarrow; white chickens; blue water (yes, rainwater being blue is a stretch, but not out of line on how far teachers sometimes push symbolism).

I also throw at them the story of Williams, a doctor, writing it out as he sits looking out the window while waiting for the fever to break on a young patient. This is my introduction to biographical criticism: Does it help to know that information? Can you now hear this poem without seeing that little girl, asleep and feverish in her little bed? More important, does knowing it really matter? Does it date the poem, or make it irrelevant? Discuss.

The excellent-yet-dated “Voices and Vision” series has a bit on Williams; the first ten minutes sets an interesting mood. See it here. It is so odd to see 1970s New York City and some of the crazy-haired critics (you’ll see); the kids love it. Williams’ use of the typewriter is linked with the dawn of the industrial age, which you can parley into a social science unit (don’t forget Whitman; he’s great for industrialization in America). In short, he typed the words over and over again, changing the lines and breaks only.

Have fun. Rewrite the poem. Find a typewriter, or magnet poetry, or cut the poem into words and move it around.

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Okay, it’s not exactly a poem on the Constitution for Constitution Day, but it captures the patriotic spirit of the day. It was this or “Old Ironside”.

Concord Hymn
Ralph Waldo Emerson

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We place with joy a votive stone,
That memory may their deeds redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

O Thou who made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free, —
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raised to them and Thee.

Eric G. Wilson wrote a piece in The New York Times today about Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight.” Specifically, he looks at it as a thing of solace and a source of happiness in his life. Although a bit too lofty for middle school students, I like the idea that the same piece of literature means different things to us at different times. In fact, it means more to us as we add more experience to our lives.

I am not a Coleridge fan, but I am also ignorant of much of his work. Break the students into stanzas and have them figure it out from there. Think about change, seasons and life cycles. Look at all of the cool and powerful words Coleridge uses.

Oh, the nature of the romantics, and the nature in the romantics!

But mainly look at this as a personal poem. What would your students write about? How would they define their low moments, and how did those moments define who they are now? Could they share them so publicly, as Coleridge does? What words would they use to capture their power? And, have their parents ever shared that they, their children, are a source of hope and solace?

Frost at Midnight
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
‘Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersèd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.