Rationale
It is sometimes difficult for students to discern the written word as an organic, living text. The printed word presents language as merely dead ink on a page. As educators, we have the responsibility to allow students access and agency to exhibit their value as readers and writers. The several times I have heard Bernie Phelan, Table Lead for the AP English Language and Composition exam, speak, he reminds teachers that literature does not exist until it is actually read.3 In essence, the air passing through your lips breathes life into what was once thought of as merely ink on paper. Our nuances, reading inadequacies and command of language therefore create meaning.
More particularly, the genre of poetry lends itself to voice. Sound is material in its vibration, pitch, and volume. The most ancient of literary genres, poetry uniquely lends itself to the primacy of sound through conveying a sense of thoughts, feelings, and meaning. Poetry foregrounds sound as an organizational principle. Students often struggle with detangling form from function, which is surprising in that patterns of sound are primary in our acquisition of language. In the most basic sense, we respond to sound often when we say casual phrases like, "you're a poet and you didn't know it" or, "that's poetic."
One reason we respond to poetry that way is because poetic conventions are familiar: rhyme, rhythm, etc. This familiarization is ironic in that many students find poetry disenfranchising. As educators, it is necessary for us to make the unfamiliar, familiar, and then to allow students to travel back again - unpacking poems as they see fit. In doing so, we can help guide a student's understanding that sound is a process in motion through both speaking and listening.
In Fred Sedgwick's book Teaching Literacy, he defends teaching poetry "because it helps us to look at, to study the world. It enables us (if we take it and the world seriously) to see." More importantly, he goes on to claim that there is a need to teach poetry in the classroom because it teaches students to write prose better. His reasoning is that "writers of good prose and poetry have rigorous alertness to the possibility of cliché, a phrase, or word, or comparison that has been over-used to the point where it is tedious."4 Most importantly, he points out that good prose does not lack strict organizational structure, much like its ancestor, poetry.
For the most part AP English Literature and Composition Free-Response Questions on poetry have remained similar in the past few years. For instance, the 2008 test, which used Keats' "When I Have Fears" and Longfellow's "Mezzo Cammin," asked students to compare and contrast while analyzing poetic techniques.5 In 2007, the test asked students compare and contrast while analyzing literary devices in the texts "A Barred Owl" by Richard Wilbur and "The History Teacher" by Billy Collins.6 Getting students to analyze poems and understand literary techniques, while having them understanding the value of a work, is difficult.
Students need to have a stake in their work in order to have bought in. For many of our students that is a connection to self. In the questions listed above, there isn't a real entryway for students to connect their own feelings with poetry. The rules are very hard and fast. For students to puncture the thick skin of poetry, it is necessary for them to take something that is unfamiliar and make it familiar in some context that is accessible to them. I propose that the necessary means in doing that is through sound.
Students already have a fundamental relationship to poetry in the form of music. This has only been furthered by the advent of the iPod and the variety of MP3 players available allowing students to readily access, store, share, and collect music. Because of this emergent technology, students seem to be even more enamored with sound than ever. Although, an iPod is relatively expensive, it has paved the way for other companies to make inexpensive MP3 players, granting access to their collection of data. Additionally, with corporate backing, like The Gates Foundation, many schools have computer labs that offer database storage or proxies for students to run their MP3's on; even those students without access to a computer can store and play music just as readily as a student that does have access to a computer at home. Cheap mp3 players allow students to listen and collect just as much free/stolen music as they please allowing them even more access to an audible society.
In an effort to make the unfamiliar, familiar, it is necessary in the twenty-first century for teachers to utilize technology to its utmost capabilities. It was only roughly fifteen years ago that I remember sitting quietly in a classroom reading Beowulf to myself. It was not until I ordered a copy of Seamus Heaney's audio-book version of his new translation of Beowulf; however, that I seriously understood the power and command of Anglo-Saxon poetry - it is no wonder that Heaney's book was a New York Times Bestseller for several weeks. To this day, I am sure many of us know teachers that teach poetry (as well as prose) in the isolation of student's minds. But ,we must not forget that sounds awaken us. The natural poetics of rhythm and meter helps us connect with poetry in the very organic sense of sound. Students cannot see poetry without hearing poetry.
I have hesitated using rap music in the classroom because I want students to sincerely think about what they are reading. It is easy to be caught up with wanting to teach what you think they need to know. It would be ignorant not to reference rap in a unit of poetry simply because rap has a distinct and profound history through jazz, blues, and Caribbean roots. Sometimes we forget that rap and the culture of hip-hop are not just important to our students, but are important to world history. More importantly, rap has not only had a profound impact on the history of popular culture, but has been applied to studies in sociology, psychology, economics, etc. By using rap to teach students poetry, they are allowed to make connections with texts by accessing prior knowledge.
Using rap in this unit is not meant to be a decoy. Rap is culturally relevant and it has a unique relationship to poetry through rhythm, meter, and rhyme. Most would argue that rap as merely the glorification of drugs, sex, and violence, but it is necessary to address with students that "[r]ap music is two-fold. Like most forms of music, it is about entertainment. It is also about creating spaces where particular communities of African American and Latino youth from urban areas in the U.S. can engage in dialogues about education, power, politics, sex, violence, language, and economic segregation."7 Rap should be taken seriously in and out of the classroom because it is both real and relevant to urban culture. Using that as a background, students will discover their own argumentative stances on the issue of intellectual property in popular culture and be able base their arguments in examples from the canon of authentic poetic literature.
Background for Final Project
In Adam Bradley's intro to Book of Rhyme he explains that "skilled MCs underscore the rhythm of the track in the rhythm of their flows and patterns in their rhymes. As a consequence, the lyric rappers write are more easily separated from their specific musical contexts and presented in written form as poetry. The rhythm comes alive on the page because so much if of it is embedded in the language itself."8
The culture of hip-hop and its representation in music has changed in the last twenty years. It evolved from The Sugarhill Gang's simple, yet complicated tracks in the 80's to the calls to social justice from Public Enemy in the 80's and even NWA's hood lyrics by the early 90's. Sampling emerged as a mainstream art form by the late 90's. In more recent years, rap has sampled melody, and beats to match their rhyme schemes. While some critics have labeled this as a lame attempt to recycle tracks, I would argue that it is an homage to great lyrical content that has been passed down through time.
More recently, with the advent of the mash-up, this has become even more apparent. Albums like Dangermouse's, The Grey Album, which combines the melodies of The Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album remind us that there are familiar contexts and that it does not just rely on the melody. The Beatles and Jay-Z are only but four or five decades apart. They both successfully use the components of their ancient cousins: meter, rhythm, and form. Magically, these items are mixed together into a new form of music: the mash-up.
Another prime example of the mash-up artist would be, Greg Gillis, a.k.a. GirlTalk, who compiled over 150 different tracks from some of the most popular songs of the last 50 years to create the album Night Ripper. Most recently, his album Feed the Animals, has received critical acclaim; however, the government has scrutinized it. Many have referred to it as stealing intellectual property, but GirlTalk has defended his works by claiming that they are new creations and not mere samples of songs.
Unit Question
Using what you have learned in class about poetry and sound has GirlTalk created a new sound that has new meaning through rhythm, meter, and rhyme or is his work just merely the copying of popular music?
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