About Hands on Stanzas

Hands on Stanzas, the educational outreach program of the Poetry Center of Chicago places professional, teaching Poets in residence at Chicago Public Schools across the city. Poets teach the reading, discussion, and writing of poetry to 3 classes over the course of 20 classroom visits, typically from October through April. Students improve their reading, writing, and public speaking skills, and participating teachers report improved motivation and academic confidence. You can contact Cassie Sparkman, Director of the Hands on Stanzas program, by phone: 312.629.1665 or by email: csparkman(at)poetrycenter.org for more information.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The ABCs of Powerful Poetry

Poetry, like all arts, is directly related to power. When certain lines, or images, or ideas move us, they are powerful. Better yet, they are an exercise in power--they allow us to witness its effects without moving from our desks.

So what makes a poem powerful? The poet Ezra Pound thought great poetry came from a combination of three elements: sound, image & the "dance of the intellect among words." (Unfortunately, as the story so often goes, Pound sold his soul in pursuit of the "dance of intellect," which increasingly escaped him. Poetry can be dangerous.)

Pound's three general parts of the poem--sound, image, and thought--are very powerfully rendered in the following six poems. All of these poems are by 7th graders.

The first two take their energy primarily from sound. The authors made combinations of sound a priority. When they chose the words they use, they chose them because of their sounds. In "Let Me Be Free," subtle alliteration and delicate rhythms lead the poem's thoughts along the edge of reality, allowing the poem to test the limits of the freedom it demands. In "Give Me" the alliteration is right up in your face. The poem is all about what you can get away with and what you are supposed to say.

Blerina, Room 112

Let Me Be Free

Let me forever smile at the gaze of the sun.
Let me slowly shut my eyes, to feel the warmth of his rays.
Let me run free until my own two legs fall on the soft, fertile soil.
Let me sleep in a field of grass, where the baby-tigers frolic.
Let me have the right to believe whatever I feel.
Let me cross a bridge to the other side, where reality can’t follow me.
Let me have hope, and don’t snatch it away from me.
Let me sit on the fluffy clouds, with a pile of books, so I can venture through every story.
Let me tie together a web of wise words, to form the answers I’ve always wanted.
Let me run free until I fall off the edge of the earth; and fall endlessly into blackness, into a new
dream.


Caroline, Room 109

Give Me

give me some soup so I can eat
give me more pumpkin pie please
give me friendly friends forever
give me cookies, candy, chocolate, cake, chips & caramel
give me French fries on Friday
give me fresh flowers for a sweet smell
give me red ripe raspberries for me to eat
give me more pleasant peanuts please
give me day dreams daily
give me family friends forever

The next poems do not simply evoke images. They dramatize the imagination. They use words and word groups to point out new areas of potential experience, to show us where we might go. For the author of "Show Me a Miracle," it was a quest for new words, then a quest for new combinations that drove his writing. He began by adding interesting words, like "velvet" and "sandspit" and "cataract," but then moved on to unusual word combinations, using language to demand the impossible. "Away" does the same thing: it combines familiar words to generate eerie, seemingly fictive realms of meaning.

Ahmad, Room 112


Show Me a Miracle

Show me phoenixes throughout the sky.
Show me sayings written in gold.
Show me stars through the horizon.
Show me a bird that sings velvet songs.
Show me cloth made of deep silk.
Show me a cataract that never ends.
Show me a sandspit to sleep on.
Show me a rainbow beyond the blue sky.
Show me a desert where I can’t get thirsty.
Show me a life where I’m reborn.
Show me a mountain easy to climb.
Show me a glacier where it’s not cold
Show me a light without any dark.
Show me clouds that don’t rain.
Show me glass that can’t break.
Show me fragrant flowers without thorns.
Show me a delightful dandy dream.
Show me a breeze that flows through my clothes.


Jason, Room 109

Away

Sell me away to a planet far away
Sell me to the city in a day
Sell me to the forest
Sell me away to the great blue sea
Sell me to the great sun
Sell me to the great full moon
Sell me to the school and books
Sell me to a Hollywood with its crooks
Sell me away to the great animals from the forest
Sell me away to the great kingdom up above

The best poems are those which are structured by sound and live in the imagination, but are also democratic because they reside in the idiom. These poems do everything the other poems do, but they also sing in the voice of the people. Something Pound never learned how to do.

Mackfield, Room 112

Show Me the World

Show me the world everyone wants to see.
Show me the world everyone wants to make.
Show me the wonderful world I see in the TV
Show me the world everyone is working so hard to accomplish.
Show me the difference between the lines of Good & Bad.
Show me the real world we survive through everyday.
Show me the world I want to make, and what I dream.
Show me the world we all need to make, with peace.
Show me the truth of the world, and open my eyes.
Show me how to bend this world to make it mine.

Lois, Room 109

Lead Me the Life Unknown

Lead me the life unknown
Lead me a splendid summer’s sweet
Lead me a place like no other
Lead me an unviolent, unknown, uncruel world, which I should cherish
Lead me the plans blessed from above
Lead me a fall pumpkin which I should be scared of
Lead me a daydreaming job I should always work
Lead me leadership with solitude
Lead me sound which oceans and birds should show
Lead me a soul which hasn’t yet been crushed
Lead me poetry that should be loved
Lead me spontaneous money
Lead me a star filled with energy

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