Hi dear readers! Wow, I am overjoyed that you are still here. Tonight, I am running behind on my plan to discuss murder & theft & close-reading poetry, in part because I had a few hundred errands to run following my long road trip, in part because I was trying (without success, alas) to find the source for a particular resource I discuss in depth in the post I had planned for today, and well . . . mostly because I got carried away making the world’s most perfect mushroom toast. Did you know you can add whipping cream to mushrooms sautéed in garlic and no one will stop you?1
Anyway, this delay is making me realize it will probably be best if I send out my weekly posts on Sunday afternoons (evenings?) anyway since that will grant me more of the weekend to write. So, I’ll be back tomorrow with the promised post and then Sunday, I’ll see y’all with my lesson plan on José Olivarez’s “Mexican Heaven.” I am so excited. Jazz-hands excited. * jazz hands *
I figured that in lieu of my own content for tonight, I would share some resources for teaching and reading poetry that already exist out in the world and which I have personally found helpful.
Melissa Smith is an extraordinary educator, founder of #TeachLivingPoets, and creator of an excellent website of resources on doing just that here:
Poets.org, run by the Academy of American Poets, is rich with resources for teaching poetry, in particular in their “Materials for Teachers” section.
If you are looking for new poetry to read, I highly recommend following the accounts @ poetryisnotaluxury and (fellow teacher) Tom Snarsky @ tomsnarsky on Instagram. Both regularly post contemporary (and some classic) poems that are not only wonderful to read, but that I often otherwise would not encounter. It’s always a wonder and a delight following these two accounts.
One of my favorite books of poetry prompts exists here. Written by Chen Chen—a fantastic poet whose work I will also soon be discussing— and published by Sundress Publications (without which this substack would not exist2), You MUST Use the Word Smoothie: A Craft Essay in 50 Writing Prompts is an abundance of treats to share with your students if you are looking for out-of-the-box ways to kickstart their creative writing (or your creative writing!).
These are just a few resources and I hope to regularly highlight more. If you have any suggestions, I am eager to hear them, so please feel encouraged to type them in the comments, and I’ll check them out (& possibly feature).
À demain, poets, teachers, & tortoiseshell cats named Knives who jump into cardboard boxes when called.3
Possibly a cardiologist would, I guess.
I went to the Sundress Academy for the Arts’ residency in Knoxville, TN this summer with the goal of drafting an outline for a book on how to teach poetry in high school and from those dreams, this substack emerged. I was sitting at the wooden kitchen table at Firefly Farms, trying to come up with a title. I felt like “How to” would be helpful somewhere in there, but “How to Teach a Poem” felt too . . . . stuffy (and also taken, definitely someone else’s book already). Then, I started thinking about persimmons, as I often do, and permission, and fireflies, and then back to persimmons, and the name of my own poetry prompt chapbook (I’ll talk about that some other day) is Eat a Persimmon, which brought me to how do we eat poems? (because that’s really what I want students to do), and then to peeling persimmons. This eventually led to a friend messaging me about one of my posts, “Don’t tell me you’re actually peeling your persimmons?!” to which I said, “Oh no!! It’s an extended metaphor!” and I want to imagine they just shook their head in sad disbelief, and muttered, “Poets, jeez.”
Yes, I am thinking of a specific cat I met when I was at the Sundress residency.