Sheree
Shown
Book
Review #3
Wendt, Ingrid, Starting
with Little Things: A Guide to Writing Poetry in the Classroom.
Oregon
Arts Foundation 1983
This is a small companion to the "Poetry Gallery" tour of Oregon poets that came around the state’s schools in the early 80’s. It gives teachers a superb sequence of writing skills that help introduce poetry writing to students of all ages. The chapters each begin with a poem from the Poetry Gallery tour and a simple explanation of what the author was saying and lead-ins to classroom discussions on how the author achieved his goal.
There is very little formal analysis in this text, however. The poems offer points of departure for students, then guide them through exercises that help to release the poems within them, while also offering examples from children of various ages. This makes the text approachable to both elementary and middle/high school students with little modification.
Through the exercises, Wendt emphasizes "sloppy copy" word play. She takes away a student’s worry over correctness and form. Rather, she wants students to "gain confidence in the rightness of the creative impulse." She has them draw upon their free associations to build stream of consciousness poems that are non-threatening, then using these small pieces she works into simile, metaphor and synaesthesia as tools. Before long students are redefining experiences and cliches. In the later chapters point of view can be seen in the self-image exercises while purpose and meter are taught through chants.Ý Theme is taught in the cause and effect exercises. Finally, structure is taught in the last exercises (a good idea, since it is the structure of poetry, I have found, that often puts off the adolescent writer, who gets this mixed up with "correctness").
My favorite chapter would be the one on abstract to concrete imagery. Wendt starts with a Jonathan Monroe poem, "Wasting Time." She notes the difficulty of abstract ideas like time, jealousy, patience, etc. and begins by asking leading questions: What is time? What would be the color of a minute? What is the texture of boredom? By describing these abstract ideas in concrete, sensory detail, the students’ descriptions become vivid, creative, and organic rather than pedantic and analytical.
In this and other chapters, students are guided through the complexities of poetry without the usual burden of analysis. They write, learn, and then discover the complexity of their own language through their own writing. The exercises are simple enough to pose no threat, and there is an emphasis on sharing initial "sloppy copy" work immediately, while saving the "neat sheet" (final draft) for later. This gives student writing a freshness and sincerity that can sometimes be buried within typical assigned poems, and gives them an experiential awareness of the poet’s tools.