Introduction
My students are passionate listeners to verse; unfortunately, that kind of verse tends to be inappropriate for classroom use, and its quality is unpredictable. The live their lives by the tenets laid out in their music, though, and have little trust that other poetry has relevance, value or will be interest for them. I have not covered enough poetry over the last few years and look forward to this being unit they will be willing to engage in. One thing that should interest them is the high incidence of depression and mental illness among the poets. I don’t know how familiar they are with recent celebrity suicide victims, but I do know that mental health is a common struggle among my students and their families. The other draw for my students will be the role of art images in the poems they study. My students are very responsive to image, especially some of the struggling readers. Their lives and pastimes are evidence that “visual media have assumed an unprecedented dominance in the modern world.”1 Their views on politics and culture are shaped mainly by what filters through to them via social media. We see this as a disadvantage in the classroom, but because they embrace it, use of image can be invaluable. It fills in gaps in understanding and reinforces strategies for analysis. Some see form in image more clearly than in text. The learned skills can eventually translate to textual analysis and hopefully creation. My students are often more comfortable collaborating around an image, as well. The idea that art will be their bridge to the poems we study should intrigue and comfort them. I think they’ll not be able to help themselves from seeking references to the art in the poems, in the same way they’ll likely seek evidence of mental health issues.
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