![]() But I can’t tell you how many times a student has connected with a particular poem, asked me afterward for more information about a poet, or made sure to remind me if I forgot to read one to begin our day. When I first introduced this practice to my students, I was worried they would find it hokey, childish, or simply a waste of time. Even the lineation of verse draws the reader back into the poem, pausing after each phrase and returning again to the moment in question. Poetry, I tell my classes, is really a pause from the unceasing rhythm of life to grab at a moment, at a brief glimpse of life, and relish it. As a class, we don’t study the poem, examine it for meaning or metaphor, or even look at the text together. I have maintained this practice in my classroom to this day, and it has become a great way to come together as a group before we begin our learning for the day. Three years ago, I decided to start each of my Honors English classes with the reading of a poem. What a perfect time to rediscover the wonder of poetry! In the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, we need all three of these in our lives. ![]() I want to suggest that we as educators begin to present poetry as a pause, a pleasure, and a practice in creativity. But if we lead them to believe that this is all poetry has to offer, then we withhold from them a world of enjoyment. Our students’ recognition that poetry offers a depth that most of our world passes over is certainly right. In my experience, students might approach poetry with scorn or reluctance or great intrigue whatever their interest level though, at some point most will don their investigator caps and begin to question the poem for its “deeper meaning.” I can almost see the dangling yellow bulb and bare steel table of their mind’s interrogation room. I find that little has changed in our classrooms with regard to poetry since these words were penned. The students, however, take a different approach: Collins’ speaker wants readers to “hold it up to the light,” “walk inside,” “feel the walls for a light switch,” and-most recreationally-“waterski across the surface of a poem.” These breezy, informal acts invite the reader to unwind with a poem. The poem, written in 1988, begins by sharing what most writers would prefer their readers to do with their poems. The final couplet gives Edna's own position: she essentially comes clean before the reader, admitting that she would never give up a "memory" of love (that might sustain her soul) for any morsel of food that would merely sustain her body.In Billy Collins’ poem “Introduction to Poetry,” the poem’s speaker depicts what often occurs with poetry in American high schools. The second sestet then deviates from this course and prompts the reader to rethink love and consider how it may not be physical food but it can be a kind of spiritual food that can cause people to starve if they do not have it. The first sestet (six lines) give the impression that love is not all that important. The sonnet holds true to the sonnet structure as iterated by Shakespeare with 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter setting the course for the subject to announce itself, turn, and surprise in the end. ![]() The syntax is modern classical/conventional. ![]() The use of capitalization is standard and conforming to traditional writing norms. This does not however disrupt the flow of the meter. ![]() And like a Shakespearean sonnet, it begins similarly - by defining love in negative terms first, just as Shakespeare does in Sonnet 116 when he states, "Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds." Here, Millay gives voice to what Love is not, launching off from where Shakespeare leaves us, but holding true to the form which he sets down, from the first line, "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink" to the last, "It well may be. The lines are written in iambic pentameter - that is, they are marked by stressed/unstressed syllables of five feet per line, just like a traditional Shakespearean sonnet. And yet the poet concludes that in spite of all these practical reasons, love is still, in fact, everything - that is, it is worth more than all other practical concerns. In this case, the first part of the sonnet is set to giving negative reasons for what love is not and why it is not so important in practical terms. It also contains a "turn," in that the argument that the poet appears to be making throughout the first half of the poem is suddenly turned in a different and unexpected manner so that the last lines of the poem surprise the reader and lead him to a contradictory or opposite conclusion. Vincent Millay utilizes a traditional sonnet form in "Love is Not All" that is reminiscent of a Shakespearean sonnet, with an ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG rhyme scheme. Vincent Millay's "Love is Not All"Įdna St. ![]()
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