Teaching Without Lecturing: Situating Poetry in The Classroom

Apart from exploring relations that bind Poetry and Teaching in common pursuit, this essay stops by certain unexamined premises and uncontested bromides. One such is the notion that poetry is better understood when a teacher lectures on its peculiar strengths, on a poet’s meanings, and how they can be derived by detailed explication. This essay proposes that poetry is what poetry does in a classroom. Young readers prefer less prescriptive ways of reading poems. While the poet’s language is a challenge they must meet on their terms, they feel free to learn their lessons in Language directly from the poems. Teachers will do well therefore to avoid lecturing to young learners who would rather listen to the poems. This essay is structured rather loosely although a subheading for each note anchors the main idea that drives its thoughts. Repetition and overlap of themes in some passages are not accidental. They occur when some forethought leads an idea on to an afterthought, and sometimes mnemonically directs it backward.