It's National Poetry Month!

I love poetry month. Poetry, I tell children, is a spritzer for your ears: it wakes them up and startles them, alerting us to the joy of savoring language. It's meant to be read aloud. All month, children have been reciting poetry to me, happy to share their favorites. I do units on Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe for the upper elementary children, with some Ogden Nash thrown in for good measure. For the lower and middle elementary children, I do lots of book talks to show them the incredible diversity of poetry, including novels in verse. It's not just Shel Silverstein anymore!

Reading research shows that young children who can recognize and generate rhymes are on the path to becoming good readers. Poems are a great way to fit in some read-aloud time on even the most rushed evenings. I taught the children one of the world's shortest poems:

Fleas

Adam
Had 'em.

It is attributed to Strickland Gillem, who also wrote one of my favorite inspiring verses:

The Reading Mother

You may have tangible wealth untold
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be.
I had a Mother who read to me.

A little boy remembers his favorite from last year, which he shared with us:




My Puppy

My puppy loves the garden
He loves to smell the flowers
To help them grow my puppy always
Sprinkles them with showers.








And because I have handed tissues out to oblivious nose-pickers for the duration of my career, I shared an utterly disgusting booger poem with the five and six year olds, from the collection Giant Children by Brod Bagert. I can't even bear to post it here. Their revulsion was palpable. Maybe they'll remember it and use a tissue next week.



(I cringe as I remember the exquisite training I had in graduate school when I studied John Donne, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Frost. I'm going for something more highbrow next week.)

Now, for your video: Here's Jonny Cash reading The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service. We had an 8 year old recite the whole thing at the Paideia talent show a few years ago.