Poetry and Public Life

Introduction

Readers have instinct and purpose; we read for clarity, sometimes for adventure and romance, and sometimes we read to see ourselves within the lines of the text. Readers have beautiful opportunities to predict the next action of a flawed character or reconcile flaws within themselves. Without those developed connections, without instinct and purpose, the act of reading is worthless.

Throughout the seminar, “Poetry and Public Life” at this year’s Yale National Initiative, our seminar leader, Paul Fry, consistently posed the question whether or not poetry can make something happen. Many of my colleagues extended this essential question to whether or not poetry matters. We studied several poems by Robert Lowell, John Milton, Langston Hughes, and Adrienne Rich about the portrayal of public figures or cultural moments developed through the use of extended metaphors, parallelisms, and the aesthetics of imagery. Through our analysis, we pinpointed stark contradictions felt by the speaker, and this spurred dialogue amongst the fellows as we unpacked the central themes of the poems: race, gender, war, and sexuality. Fry expounded this complication during one of his lectures to all of the fellows in which several poets, including the esteemed Irish poet Seamus Heaney, contradict themselves about the worth and value of poetry: “In one sense the efficacy of poetry is nil—no lyric has ever stopped a tank. In another sense, it is unlimited.”¹  Heaney questions whether or not the effectiveness of poetry can be quantified in the way that physical effects can.

I argue that poetry does make something happen. I am not a poet, and after our seminars I did not chant verses on the corner of Chapel Street and York Street about the need for female equality or better contracts for teachers, but these poems strengthened my aptitude and desire to create an exceptional unit for my students. Poetry can make something happen intrinsically and the analytical depth required to extract meaning and purpose from a poem is tremendous. Forugh Farrokhzad, a Persian poet of the 20^th century, said “I believe in being a poet in all moments of life. Being a poet means being human.”²  Farrokhzad’s thought is the driving force for this unit for my students and myself, because there are many different ways to interpret and express conflict and emotion. My student population is changing, and more students who enroll in our neighborhood school are Muslim. Their families are from several different countries, and every student has a unique story and unique observances of their Islamic customs. Poems and prose by Muslim poets and political activists will foster conversation we never had before in my classroom. It is the intent of this unit to provide models for self-esteem poems and prose by Islamic authors and leaders from many different communities around the world about migration, assimilation, falling in love, and political unrest. To me, this is poetry making something happen.

This curriculum unit is designed for students in an eighth-grade English Language Arts class. This is an introductory unit on poetry with a focus on the use of figurative language, development of syntax, and author’s purpose. Students will analyze a selection of poems by Muslim poets through the use of close reading with very little emphasis on historical and biographical context. These poems will be compared to selected episodes of a podcast series entitled Good Muslim, Bad Muslim by Tanzila "Taz" Ahmed and Zahra Noorbakhsh. While listening to the podcasts, students will contextualize the biographical and historical significance of several segments of the episodes. The culminating assessment for the students is to write one or two poems for their writing portfolios while selecting a form of social media for recording and presenting their poems to create a digital record and history of this unit.