Pytash: Jago Ch. 5

          Again this book amazes me!!! I am admittedly one of the many people to which Jago refers that openly hate poetry, until recently. I have only fund a love for it in discovering the many methods of how to read it and this chapter explains it all. Understanding the poem is everything. It is how we justify reading it and how we are able to take meaning from it. But if we don't try to understand it then it will simply be some group of meaningless words, in some set form that sits dryly on the page. The read aloud activity Jago mentions and demonstrates in this chapter is perhaps the most exciting and will probably be my most used technique when teaching literature. The way in which you think and demonstrate your thought triggers the thoughts and conversations you as a teacher want your students to have. And their use of the technique will make them more comfortable in a discussion on something, poetry, many people find difficult and  pointless. I also completely agree with Jago that difficult poems must be read. For example I put forth myself. I never liked poetry in school except for the work of Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare. We always read things that seemed to have little meaning or surface meaning, simply they meant what they said. Because of this I never understood what was so special about saying things in this manner, it's just more work to follow rules of a specific form and to try and rhyme. So obviously I think I was simply studying the wrong poetry. Jago suggests that high schoolers should be reading poems as deeply written as Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much With Us" and I would have loved poetry if my teachers would have felt the same way and pushed us to read poems with deeper meanings.
        Because of all the situations I have mentioned I'm sure you could gather that poetry is the one thing I fear teaching the most. But after having read Jago's advice on teaching it I am thinking much differently on how to approach the genre and even on how to have fun with it. I know crazy idea to have fun with literature, but I'm telling you this is a section I dread. My hope is that in these last few semesters before graduation poetry will become something that is way more comfortable for me and that while student teaching I will get to practice some of the activities Jago has presented in her book.
       Finally, I must say, I loved the discussion at the end of the chapter on Poe's "The Raven." This is by far my favorite poem and one that I have studied many times in classes, yet I have never heard of anything mentioned at the end of this chapter. I love that she brought up that Poe really didn't write on a whim without thought, again it takes work, and I think if students see that the work amounts to something they will be more willing to do it themselves. Many students, I think, believe that poetry comes naturally, I know I did. This example of a great author putting in work and time to make his poetry great would have really given me the idea that maybe I could do it too. Also by showing that even Poe had to go through some pretty funny ideas, example, the parrot, to find something really good and solid, a teacher could give students the confidence to make mistakes and think funny things. They don't always lead to nothing and often aren't even known thoughts after the finished work is published unless you tell people about your thought process. When writing often you have to get the weird and crazy out to get ideas for the good and solid, sometimes they are even one in the same. Way to go Jago, you have boosted my confidence in teaching and analyzing poetry with and without the students at my side!!!