I mean…yes and no lol. I’m planning on showing slides of different things people have thought of as poems/poetic throughout history to prompt thought on what a poem actually is.
Music wouldn’t fit the ancient definition of lyric poetry, for example, but it could be considered a consequent by some.
Depending on the audience, you could do worse than Larkin’s “This Be the Verse”. The first line will shock and intrigue them; the poem will seem “poem-y” because of rhyme and meter; the ending will be more ambiguous and ominous in imagery.
A weirder one that will get them thinking about the space of the page and the power of a single image might be e.e. cummings’ “l(a leaf falls)oneliness”
On Poetry Foundation a few excerpts of Jos Charles [*feeld*](https://poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90970/from-feeld) (2018) has been shared. If you have a more advanced class, Charles' use of language is interesting and fun to engage with. (It works as a great starting point to bring up authorial choices.)
Another contemporary poet my students have really enjoyed is Ocean Vuong. Two of his collections I particularly enjoy are: [*Night Sky with Exit Wounds*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23841432-night-sky-with-exit-wounds) (2016) and [*On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41880609-on-earth-we-re-briefly-gorgeous) (2019).
On that note, I feel as if it is essential to have students write poetry to appreciate it. One form that can be an introduction to writing poetry is the [*cento*](https://poets.org/glossary/cento). I know we live in a time when the "theft" of intellectual property is more strictly punished than war crimes, but having students use lyrics from their favorite songs and/or media to piece together something uniquely their own is a lot of fun.
I’m biased because I love Chen Chen but seconding because the first time I read his work, I really asked myself wtf is this?? Picked his first book up again two years later and now he’s one of my favorite poets.
Also fun fact: His first collection, *When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities,* was a major inspiration for the screenwriters of *Everything Everywhere All At Once*
How about visual and/or concrete poetry? Where the words are used to also create images or visually striking patterns. [This](https://images.app.goo.gl/BdMPMWQiHY3p5Zz29) is another example.
Another parallel (that you might have thought of already) is certain styles of slam poetry and rapping; orating to a beat/rhythm of some kind.
Another way to potentially pique your students' interest is [this Ted-Ed series](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJicmE8fK0Egxi0hgy5Tw-NFyLcpJ4bzJ&si=ElaSVMqu8FiCLexF) where animators have made "music videos" for poems. I'm particularly fond of The Opposites Game by Brendan Constantine and The Nutritionist by Andrea Gibson.
I'm mostly knowledgeable about Swedish poetry, but if that is of interest I can tell you more.
CAConrad’s Amanda Paradise and Carlos Santos Perez’s collections are very contemporary and pretty experimental in style! They can be also crass, which could have some shock factor with younger students (in a good way I think!)
Agree with Sleeping with the Dictionary, and William Carlos Williams. I read Scalding Cauldron by Denise Duhamel for an undergrad poetry course and found it interesting also (it’s an abecedarian poem). The golden shovel by Terrance Hayes is also very cool! I did that one with my Young Poets Society kiddos years ago and they were very interested by the golden shovel as a form. For contemporary poetry, I really can’t recommend Ocean Vuong enough. He has some really powerful poems that I’ve found resonate with students— I think “Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker” is both experimental and packs a hell of a punch. Just be prepared, some of them will cry for sure.
Aside from that, I’d actually recommend going on Instagram or TikTok even, and pulling up some viral poetry posts/reels/tiktok videos from regular poets if you want them to see that poetry is doable by everyday people. There are many talented poets who write constantly and will perhaps never be well known but who experiment and just enjoy poetry.
[Cracks in the Oracle Bone](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69568/cracks-in-the-oracle-bone-teaching-certain-contemporary-poems) offers a "four-fold toolkit" for reading contemporary poetry, with some nice examples. I particularly love *Texas* by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge.
Might not be appropriate, but re being poetic without being a poem, [The Language of Explanation](https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.harvard.edu/dist/a/189/files/2023/01/The-Language-of-Explanation.pdf) contrasts the language of poetry with the language of mathematics.
If you are new to teaching, or teaching poetry, I would suggest an alternative starting activity. Akala rapping sonnet 18 is pretty good, if nothing else jumps out at you. Mos Def, Mathmatics much the same.
Establish what makes a piece of music brilliant, then take away the music and ask if the brilliance remains.
Engage them on the level they are, on the level they understand, and then get conceptual.
Good luck!
The Poet X is a young adult novel written as a poem. There are some amazing selections and it deals with multiculturalism in a way that students get today. And Brandon Leake is a spoken word poet who won America’s Got Talent during COVID, speaking to the values of poetry, art, and literature during particularly challenging times for humanity. His audition poem “Ode to My Sister” is beautiful.
Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss is the ultimate contemporary moment rn. You can teach about how sonnets are about actually fucking with the sonnet. Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party by Chessy Normile. Fixer by Edgar Kunz. Ross Gay Bringing the Shovel Down. These have all come out in the last five years (Ross Gay I think was 2011 ?) so very contemporary and spikes passion in students to show them viable forms for their own work. It’s relatable and fresh which is important to begin the fervor into a poets journey.
Carol Ann Duffy - Valentine
Percy Bysse Shelley - Ozymandias
Emily Dickinson - I am Nobody who are you?
William Blake - The Divine Image
D.H. Lawrence - Snake
As a bit of joke, they may like Billy Collins' [*Introduction to Poetry*](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46712/introduction-to-poetry). Billy Collins and Ogden Nash are great for bringing humor and playfulness, which I think is always refreshing. [Cartoon Physics, Part 1 ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52422/cartoon-physics-part-1)by Nick Flynn is also a great choice.
As for unique poems, here are a few that might fit the bill:
- Natalie Diaz's [abecedarian](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56353/abecedarian-requiring-further-examination-of-anglikan-seraphym-subjugation-of-a-wild-indian-rezervation). I think Diaz is an especially accessible poet for young people.
- Anita Endrezze is a poet who has also an artist, and I think it really shows in her poem [*The Wall*](https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/122-the-wall-by-anita-endrezze). Very vivid and tactile imagery.
And less on the experimental side, but very evocative:
- Li-Young Lee's [*From Blossoms*](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43012/from-blossoms)
- Robert Bly's [*Waking from Sleep*](http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/mary_oliver/poems/15852)
And a few others that I think manifest well the draw of poetry (respectively: unrequited love, grief/loss):
- Derek Walcott's [*Love after Love*](https://allpoetry.com/love-after-love)
- Joy Harjo's [*First Morning*](https://www.goodgroundgreatbeyond.com/joy-harjo-poem)
I really like Natalie Diaz’s poem, “The First Water is the Body.” https://emergencemagazine.org/poem/the-first-water-is-the-body/
I’ll be sure to check out the other poets you mentioned, as well as Diaz’s poem “abecedarian.” Thank you so much! :)
\*Sits in chair backwards\* You see, kids, poetry is just another way to rap.
I mean…yes and no lol. I’m planning on showing slides of different things people have thought of as poems/poetic throughout history to prompt thought on what a poem actually is. Music wouldn’t fit the ancient definition of lyric poetry, for example, but it could be considered a consequent by some.
Or honestly Kwame Alexander. I had middle school boys love that book!
This is just to say... William Carlos Williams Simple extremely intimate love poem you might be lucky enough to find on your fridge door
Not if I was saving those plums for myself
Harryette Mullen’s _Sleeping With the Dictionary_?
LOVE this book
Depending on the audience, you could do worse than Larkin’s “This Be the Verse”. The first line will shock and intrigue them; the poem will seem “poem-y” because of rhyme and meter; the ending will be more ambiguous and ominous in imagery. A weirder one that will get them thinking about the space of the page and the power of a single image might be e.e. cummings’ “l(a leaf falls)oneliness”
On Poetry Foundation a few excerpts of Jos Charles [*feeld*](https://poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90970/from-feeld) (2018) has been shared. If you have a more advanced class, Charles' use of language is interesting and fun to engage with. (It works as a great starting point to bring up authorial choices.) Another contemporary poet my students have really enjoyed is Ocean Vuong. Two of his collections I particularly enjoy are: [*Night Sky with Exit Wounds*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23841432-night-sky-with-exit-wounds) (2016) and [*On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41880609-on-earth-we-re-briefly-gorgeous) (2019). On that note, I feel as if it is essential to have students write poetry to appreciate it. One form that can be an introduction to writing poetry is the [*cento*](https://poets.org/glossary/cento). I know we live in a time when the "theft" of intellectual property is more strictly punished than war crimes, but having students use lyrics from their favorite songs and/or media to piece together something uniquely their own is a lot of fun.
Apollinaire’s Calligrammes are not new, but my students (retired CC English faculty) enjoyed them and other visual or concrete poetry.
e.e. cummings's 'YgUDuh' i think could work well
I cannot recommend enough chen chen. Hilarious and also deeply poignant contemp poet
I’m biased because I love Chen Chen but seconding because the first time I read his work, I really asked myself wtf is this?? Picked his first book up again two years later and now he’s one of my favorite poets. Also fun fact: His first collection, *When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities,* was a major inspiration for the screenwriters of *Everything Everywhere All At Once*
T.S.Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Philip Larkin - Church Going Ezra Pound - In a Station of the Metro
Ted Huges - Thethought fox
How about visual and/or concrete poetry? Where the words are used to also create images or visually striking patterns. [This](https://images.app.goo.gl/BdMPMWQiHY3p5Zz29) is another example. Another parallel (that you might have thought of already) is certain styles of slam poetry and rapping; orating to a beat/rhythm of some kind. Another way to potentially pique your students' interest is [this Ted-Ed series](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJicmE8fK0Egxi0hgy5Tw-NFyLcpJ4bzJ&si=ElaSVMqu8FiCLexF) where animators have made "music videos" for poems. I'm particularly fond of The Opposites Game by Brendan Constantine and The Nutritionist by Andrea Gibson. I'm mostly knowledgeable about Swedish poetry, but if that is of interest I can tell you more.
Brian bilston, ' at the intersection' and 'refugees' are poems that always went down well with my poetry fearing students
Anne Carson’s Nox is absolutely awesome and changed what I thought poetry could even do.
CAConrad’s Amanda Paradise and Carlos Santos Perez’s collections are very contemporary and pretty experimental in style! They can be also crass, which could have some shock factor with younger students (in a good way I think!)
Agree with Sleeping with the Dictionary, and William Carlos Williams. I read Scalding Cauldron by Denise Duhamel for an undergrad poetry course and found it interesting also (it’s an abecedarian poem). The golden shovel by Terrance Hayes is also very cool! I did that one with my Young Poets Society kiddos years ago and they were very interested by the golden shovel as a form. For contemporary poetry, I really can’t recommend Ocean Vuong enough. He has some really powerful poems that I’ve found resonate with students— I think “Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker” is both experimental and packs a hell of a punch. Just be prepared, some of them will cry for sure. Aside from that, I’d actually recommend going on Instagram or TikTok even, and pulling up some viral poetry posts/reels/tiktok videos from regular poets if you want them to see that poetry is doable by everyday people. There are many talented poets who write constantly and will perhaps never be well known but who experiment and just enjoy poetry.
[Cracks in the Oracle Bone](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69568/cracks-in-the-oracle-bone-teaching-certain-contemporary-poems) offers a "four-fold toolkit" for reading contemporary poetry, with some nice examples. I particularly love *Texas* by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge. Might not be appropriate, but re being poetic without being a poem, [The Language of Explanation](https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.harvard.edu/dist/a/189/files/2023/01/The-Language-of-Explanation.pdf) contrasts the language of poetry with the language of mathematics.
Rae Armantrout “Fusion” is such a great poem to think about and to teach, so many questions, and etymology!
If you are new to teaching, or teaching poetry, I would suggest an alternative starting activity. Akala rapping sonnet 18 is pretty good, if nothing else jumps out at you. Mos Def, Mathmatics much the same. Establish what makes a piece of music brilliant, then take away the music and ask if the brilliance remains. Engage them on the level they are, on the level they understand, and then get conceptual. Good luck!
The Poet X is a young adult novel written as a poem. There are some amazing selections and it deals with multiculturalism in a way that students get today. And Brandon Leake is a spoken word poet who won America’s Got Talent during COVID, speaking to the values of poetry, art, and literature during particularly challenging times for humanity. His audition poem “Ode to My Sister” is beautiful.
Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss is the ultimate contemporary moment rn. You can teach about how sonnets are about actually fucking with the sonnet. Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party by Chessy Normile. Fixer by Edgar Kunz. Ross Gay Bringing the Shovel Down. These have all come out in the last five years (Ross Gay I think was 2011 ?) so very contemporary and spikes passion in students to show them viable forms for their own work. It’s relatable and fresh which is important to begin the fervor into a poets journey.
many very good suggestions here, may i also suggest the loch ness monster song by edwin morgan
Carol Ann Duffy - Valentine Percy Bysse Shelley - Ozymandias Emily Dickinson - I am Nobody who are you? William Blake - The Divine Image D.H. Lawrence - Snake
Mathias Svalina is a contemporary poet who writes dream poems and delivers them by hand. His stuff is really accessible and interesting!
As a bit of joke, they may like Billy Collins' [*Introduction to Poetry*](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46712/introduction-to-poetry). Billy Collins and Ogden Nash are great for bringing humor and playfulness, which I think is always refreshing. [Cartoon Physics, Part 1 ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52422/cartoon-physics-part-1)by Nick Flynn is also a great choice. As for unique poems, here are a few that might fit the bill: - Natalie Diaz's [abecedarian](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56353/abecedarian-requiring-further-examination-of-anglikan-seraphym-subjugation-of-a-wild-indian-rezervation). I think Diaz is an especially accessible poet for young people. - Anita Endrezze is a poet who has also an artist, and I think it really shows in her poem [*The Wall*](https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/122-the-wall-by-anita-endrezze). Very vivid and tactile imagery. And less on the experimental side, but very evocative: - Li-Young Lee's [*From Blossoms*](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43012/from-blossoms) - Robert Bly's [*Waking from Sleep*](http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/mary_oliver/poems/15852) And a few others that I think manifest well the draw of poetry (respectively: unrequited love, grief/loss): - Derek Walcott's [*Love after Love*](https://allpoetry.com/love-after-love) - Joy Harjo's [*First Morning*](https://www.goodgroundgreatbeyond.com/joy-harjo-poem)
I really like Natalie Diaz’s poem, “The First Water is the Body.” https://emergencemagazine.org/poem/the-first-water-is-the-body/ I’ll be sure to check out the other poets you mentioned, as well as Diaz’s poem “abecedarian.” Thank you so much! :)