Poetry is a world many students enter reluctantly. Until Dylan and, later, hip-hop poets came upon the scene, schools and teachers struggled to find ways of making poetry accessible to students. Shakespeare, the towering edifice of poetic greatness, challenges students with “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” And despite his worth, the Bard is often too challenging for students to enjoy.
In poetry we find metaphor and imagery and rhythms that help develop the developing mind, enable cognitive growth, and mature the intellect. However, without skillful teachers and successful techniques, poetry can be a bridge too far.
Is it the exceptional teacher, or is it the approach to teaching poetry that can help students across that bridge? Or is it both?
We are fortunate to have a history of exceptional poetry teachers on Martha’s Vineyard — and exceptional students, some of whom became the next generation of Vineyard teachers. Poet Leroy Hazelton is one of those special teachers, influencing many students with his passion for poetry. He remembers the day when he was a high school student in Haverhill, and a short-order cook named Jimmy Alonzi gave him two books — “Candide” by Voltaire, and “A Coney Island of the Mind” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Hazelton says, “That is where poetry entered my life.” Alonzi was not a typical teacher, certainly, yet an effective one.
Hazelton passed that torch to many others in his time at the high school. One of Hazelton’s students was David Wilson, who taught English and poetry at the high school, and observed that “selecting the right poems/poets, and using selected strategies that combined writing, deconstructing, and memorizing could bring great results. One fun exercise I used involved having younger students write haiku, cut out the words, and place them in a fortune cookie to share with someone.” Note the word fun.
In 2010, David Wilson’s student Jordan Wallace won a Promising Young Poets prize in high school. Today, Wallace is a noted Oak Bluffs restaurateur who still makes time to write and hold readings of his poetry. He recalls Wilson as an important influence on his love of poetry and writing. Wilson famously required honors students to memorize the lengthy poem “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But he also brought students closer to the source of poets’ inspiration. For example, in 2015 Wilson took his students on an off-Island excursion to Walden Pond, Thoreau’s retreat in Concord, which his teacher Leroy Hazelton had done many years before.
Dan Sharkovitz, or “Shark,” as he was known familiarly, was an immense influence at the high school from 1979 to 2017. Shark developed a love for Shakespeare while completing his master’s at Breadloaf and studying abroad at Oxford. On his return to the high school, he arranged a student trip to London so his students could experience Shakespeare as he had.
In a retirement interview with Nicole Galland of The MV Times in 2017, Shark recalled the experience: “You sit in a theater with high school kids, you’re watching the kids connecting to this play in a way that you’ve never seen, ever, and you know you are experiencing the miraculous. It is a sacred energy that is to be honored, listened to, felt, and sustained for the next generation. There are kids who went on to college and majored in English because they fell in love with Shakespeare on that trip.”
Exceptional high school teachers matter a lot.
Of course, poetry is also alive and well in the elementary schools. As poet Ellie Bates recalls, Poets in the Schools, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), brought a new focus to poetry at the Edgartown School, including a full day of poetry that poet Don McLagan facilitated. Bates remembers it fondly: “One project was a ‘Poet Tree’ in the school foyer with branches holding original poems of all students who wanted to participate. Also, books of their poetry were published and celebrated with readings!”
Clearly, the original NEA funding for Poets in the Schools, and the Mass Cultural Council subsequently, helped create a wave of activity throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s. By 1975, the program was in its 10th year, and nearly 1,000 poets were working in schools across the country. The original Poets in the Schools movement has since evolved into other contemporary initiatives, one of which is Poetry Out Loud, a recitation competition that Christine Ferrone, head of the English department, has run at the high school.
Ferrone recalls, “We have participated in the national Poetry Out Loud contest for the past 10 years, whereby students are required to memorize and recite a poem. Their ability to convey meaning via choices around volume and pace and gesture is yet another way to bring these poems alive, and emphasizes how much the musicality of language contributes to meaning.”
Recognition for young poets is definitely part of the formula for success in teaching poetry. As Ferrone points out, “We also publish a literary magazine each year called Seabreezes, which features student poetry and has won many national awards.” Drew Dubno, assistant director at the Chilmark library, runs the annual Elisa Brickner Poetry Contest for high school students, expanded now to include students from the Chilmark School elementary grades. And, as though to tease destiny, former Martha’s Vineyard poet laureate Fan Ogilvie co-founded the Promising Young Poets contest in 2010, when the current M.V. poet laureate and librarian, Claudia Taylor, won that award as a student at the high school.
Island poetry workshop leader and poet Donald Nitchie reminds us that empathy with students is the key ingredient in opening them up to poetry. “As a teacher, I think you’ve got to make it easy for students,” he explained. “You don’t initially focus on writers like Shakespeare or Keats, whose diction is far removed from ours … you give them something they immediately understand, something that will make them feel something.” In the ‘60s and ‘70s, it might have been Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, or Richard Brautigan who captivated young imaginations. More recently, it has been the hip-hop poets like Tupac, Eminem, or Kendrick Lamar.
Poet Jeff Agnoli, who taught at the high school, found that “poetry in the classroom provided connection and inspiration that many students responded well to. Finding the right poems for the right class was one sure way to help get that response.” In the younger grades, teachers like Ellie Bates would introduce poetry with Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein. By middle school, teachers may expose their students to Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, or Wendell Berry. In high school it could be Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, or Emily Dickinson. Lynn Ditchfield’s Spanish students learned from immersion in poetry by Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Nicolás Guillén.
At the Charter School, Mathea Morais notes that the spoken word allows younger students, especially, to see poetry in an entirely different and more personal light. As though to illustrate that, MVRHS (and Bard College) graduate Ben Williams has performed his spoken-word poetry and freestyle in Vineyard poetry venues for years, even while still a student at the high school.
One thing Poets in the Schools introduced was respect for student writing, and also student writing as a gateway to understanding the poetry that you find in books. Ferrone cites the example of Jessica Russell, who teaches 10th grade English, using poems as models and then having students “write their own poetry using the same rhetorical devices or techniques as the poet.” Ferrone observes that “when poetry is used as a means of self-expression for students, it becomes highly relevant to them.”
Morais takes a similar approach: “My students have read everything from Kendrick Lamar to Claudia Rankine to Shakespeare, focusing on the authorial choices poets make and how those choices shape meaning. Assignments around these studies can range from a deep analytical dive into metaphor to creating their own poetry using similar choices.” Morais rightly concludes, “Entering poetry as a form of creative expression and then moving into a deeper analytical study can be more effective than the other way around.”
People often ask about teaching poetry in the schools, “Why? What good is it?” And that is a fair question. However, poetry is not like carpentry or car repair, which can get you a job when you graduate. The value and importance of poetry is in becoming a whole person who has access to inner feelings, intuitions, and centuries of passed-down wisdom.
As illustration, consider Rachel Schubert, a former student and a teacher at the high school, now a librarian in Edgartown: “Recently, I memorized and recited Mary Oliver’s poem ‘Life Story’ at my grandmother’s memorial service in Connecticut. Sharing the poem in the same church where she married my grandfather in 1952 was especially meaningful, since it gave voice to some of the deeper themes that people were speaking to throughout the day. I credit the teachers who introduced me to poetry and made it accessible, helping me develop an appreciation for the form — one that continues to enrich my life.”
