Poetry Discussion Groups in the Secondary English Classroom
“The first time I attempted to teach poetry, I imagined it would be exactly as it was in the college classes I took for my major in English. We would sit in a close circle, huddled up together, while we discussed the significance of the newspaper in Wallace Steven’s “The Emperor of Ice Cream” or the “sticky pearls” in Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”. We would hold our books close to our chests, as if they were an extension of ourselves, and, through breaths of brevity and sips of stale coffee, attempt to say something brilliant that made everyone pause for a moment and lean in.