You Can't Write a Poem About...

Windshield wipers. You can’t write a poem about windshield wipers. But I did. Or, at least I tried to. And I encouraged my students to do something similar…

Every day, I start my class in a circle. This circle is part of our community building, and in the circle, I share a poem. Tuesday’s poem was called “Song to Onions” by Roy Blount, Jr. After the poem each day, I ask a question and we pass around a talking piece so everyone can add to the conversation. My question for Tuesday was: “What is something that you can’t imagine a poem being written about?”

My students came up with some pretty interesting answers. I heard everything from brownies to Red Bull to shoes, and everything in between. I used this opportunity to lead into our lesson of the day: looking at a poem through the eyes of a writer.

After our opening, I shared a poem titled “You Can’t Write a Poem About McDonald’s” by Ronald Wallace. Individually and as a class, we examined Wallace’s craft as a writer to see what he does in the piece.

We created a class list of the aspects included, and I encouraged my students to write their own poem titled “You Can’t Write a Poem About…” whatever the item was that they named at the beginning of class, or another item they came up with. I challenged them to fill their poem with personification, as Wallace does in his, just to see how that feels as a writer.

Some of my students opted to work on other assignments during workshop time, but the ones who accepted my challenge to write a poem borrowing Wallace’s style had quite a bit of fun. As I conferenced with my students, I was really impressed with the creative route they took with the assignment.

Some found it challenging, others found it to be silly and enjoyable.

I’m hoping that as the semester progresses, more of my students will feel adventurous enough to try this style, just to see how interesting it can be.