Smith said it’s one her favorite lessons because “it’s such an unfolding of understanding that happens” as the students walk. “What this does is it allows the students to get a physical understanding of the pacing and the movement of the poem … that they did not get upon their initial reading, just sitting in their desk reading the poem out loud.”
“New Day’s Lyric” by Amanda Gorman
Smith teaches this poem right after winter break. “Since Gorman wrote it as a poem to ring in the new year, it’s perfect for kicking off the new semester and resetting ourselves with purpose and hope while interrogating the mistakes of our past,” she said.
The poem deals with themes of reckoning with the past, coming together, hope and healing, and it features a range of literary devices. “This poem provides students the opportunity to witness a master of word play and language,” Smith said. “By asking students to notice the nuances of Gorman’s craft, they witness how a poem ‘works.’”
Smith asks her students to highlight specific literary devices in designated colors and then create a work of art based on the poem. Gorman herself has praised the lesson on X.
“Hair” by Elizabeth Acevedo
“Acevedo manages to teach history and ancestral wisdom with this poem about her own hair and the hair (and experiences with it) that is part of the inheritance belonging to every woman of African descent,” said Julia Torres, a librarian in the Denver Metro Area. “Her poem is both intimate and universal, a reclamation of self in a world that constantly tries to get Black women to betray themselves in the pursuit of ‘beauty.’”
Torres said the poem is valuable for teaching metaphor and symbolism, “abstract language that can be difficult for students to grasp.” Acevedo also uses juxtaposition in the poem. Torres shared two examples of her students’ reactions to the poem:
- “Personally I am not a person of color, but I know how important hair is to this culture. With this being such a big part of her, she takes a lot of pride in her hair. It’s curly and has so much volume and texture to it. Making it, in my mind, beautiful. I feel as though she shouldn’t have to hide it.” – K.A.
- “When people have self-confidence, they will always be proud of their state of life.” – D.N.
“This Is Not a Small Voice” by Sonia Sanchez
Adrian Neibauer’s fifth grade students in Colorado have loved this “short and powerful” poem. As not-quite-tweens, Neibauer said his students “are often seen as young children without opinions of their own.” The poem’s themes of voice and activism inspire them to find their own voices. “Students are able to easily relate to themes of humanity, the power of one’s voice and activism,” Neibauer said.
The poem also provides examples for teaching anaphora. “I love how Sanchez uses repetition, which helps students with their poetic fluency,” Neibauer said.
“Wild Horses” by Paisley Rekdal
Another one with an activism theme, Neibauer said “Wild Horses” is “a great introduction to more challenging themes of suffrage and protest.” It is written from the point of view of Seraph Young Ford, the first woman to vote in Utah and the modern nation, and requires some pre-teaching about her, as well as suffrage and Indigenous history.
“This is a more challenging poem, but students respond well to the historical significance embedded in the poem,” said Neibauer, who pairs it with the Rolling Stones’ song of the same name and enjoys discussing the imagery in both. The poem is also rich with vocabulary words, like “acculturation,” for young readers.
“A Bird Made of Birds” by Sarah Kay
“The heart, care and precision of this poem’s images has always stayed with me,” said R.A. Villanueva, a Sarah Lawrence College professor and middle school teacher. “There’s a genuine devotion to the strangeness and sublime beauty of the world — and a trust in bewilderment as a spark for creativity.
Villanueva, who is also a poet himself, shares with students a TED Talk in which Kay describes her inspiration and performing the poem. “Listening to her storytelling flow into her performance has inspired amazing conversations about the catalytic specifics that power poems,” Villanueva said. “And since ‘A Bird Made of Birds’ is also an array of personal responses to diverse kinds of knowledge and visuals, I’m able to introduce [students] to ekphrasis / ekphrastic poetry.”
Two of the visuals in Kay’s talk and poem are the anatomical heart of a blue whale and starling murmurations. Villanueva’s students view diagrams showing the scale of whale hearts and watch a video of starling murmurations. “After they see all those varied layers together, wonderful things happen: They’re able to free write through the connections they discover, practice annotation and note-taking skills, and apply some essential craft vocabulary,” he said.
“For Estefani Lora, Third Grade, Who Made Me A Card” by Aracelis Girmay
This poem “pulses with mystery and playfulness,” said Villanueva. In it, the writer tries to decipher an unrecognizable word in a hand drawn card given to her by a young child. “It’s not just description or mere reporting on a memory; she’s able to convey the tumbling of her imagination and her genuine, child-like joy at connecting with her former student’s affirmations. It’s a hopeful, tender poem,” Villanueva said.
His students – those in sixth grade and those in graduate school – first encounter the poem in an animated video recitation. “Listening to Aracelis Girmay’s own voice, her own crescendos and pauses, helps enliven their experience with the poem. They’re free to join in the suspense and then celebrate the epiphany along with the speaker,” Villanueva said.
After that, students read a printed copy in small groups, analyzing Girmay’s unusual arrangement of lines and stanzas, her stretching of punctuation conventions, and the changing rhythms. “We talk about how enjambment works like musical notation, how onomatopoeia helps the poet tussle with sounds and meanings of the words she loves,” Villanueva said. “The admixture of laughter and close reading analysis is incredible to hear.”
“One Vote” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
This poem makes an allusion to the letter that Harry T. Burn received from his mother just before his vote tipped the Tennessee General Assembly in favor of ratifying the 19th Amendment. Susan Barber, a high school English teacher in Atlanta, Georgia, teaches the poem during election season. Her students are all seniors, many of whom have the opportunity to vote for the first time. For them, the poem “reinforces the idea that each vote – their vote – makes a difference,” Barber said.
Barber encourages students to notice the poet’s use of enjambment and stanza breaks, and to unpack the metaphor of an eagle and an eaglet learning to fly. “I love the way that Nezhukumatathil turns to nature imagery as a means to understanding ideas and daily occurrences,” she said.
“Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo
With its descriptions of the many life experiences that occur around a kitchen table, Barber said this poem is full of juxtapositions and contrasts for students to unpack.
“I love the way Harjo sizes up life through a common object,” Barber said of the former United State Poet Laureate who was the first Native American to hold that title. “Everyone can relate to the table and experiences around the table, so students always enjoy this poem.”
Barber said the poem connects to the idea of “breaking bread” and can lead to discussions of the intimacy of eating together. She loves to teach it close to Thanksgiving break, when students are anticipating family gatherings at kitchen tables.
“A New National Anthem” by Ada Limón
Zach Czaia, an English teacher in Minneapolis, Minnesota, said he loves that this poem “talks back to a ‘classic’ text” – the national anthem. “It empowers students in a college prep course to exercise their own voices, and feel like they, too, belong. Their voice, too, matters,” he said.
Czaia focuses on diction with this poem, using an exercise from the Teach Living Poets website that asks students to make concentric circles on butcher paper and choose the most important word from the poem to place in the center. In the middle circle they list images and personal connections to the central word, and in the outer circle they write about the overall meaning and theme of the poem.
“Students have definitely responded positively to this poem, and appreciated its connection to history that they have studied in the past,” Czaia said.
“America Is Loving Me To Death” by Michael Kleber-Diggs
In this poem, Kleber-Diggs lays bare the pains of being Black in America. And he does amid what Czaia called “two very accessible but also formally interesting strategies.” The first letters are an acrostic, spelling out the poem’s title. The last word in each line comes from another text – the pledge of allegiance. This latter form is called a “golden shovel poem” and was created by poet Terrance Hayes and inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks.
“This attentiveness to structure and pattern allows students ways to consider Kleber-Diggs’ deep critique of systemic American racism,” Czaia said of the combination of an acrostic and golden shovel.
Czaia uses “America Is Loving Me To Death” as a mentor text for students to write their own golden shovel poems. He said his students love the poem and some have written letters to Kleber-Diggs, who lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, “just across the river” from Czaia’s school. Czaia said Kleber-Diggs has responded to those letters his students also visited his class – something only living poets can do.
“Camaro” by Phil Kaye
Brett Vogelsinger, an English teacher in Pennsylvania and author of Poetry Pauses: Teaching With Poems to Elevate Student Writing in All Genres, said his classroom goes quiet after watching Kaye perform this spoken word poem. “Kaye’s delivery adds extra dimension to the words that are already wonderful,” Vogelsinger said.
The poem weaves through memories from a childhood crush, a long ago road trip, and a later encounter after a breakup. “It speaks to how moments stick with us for a long time, and reminds us of how sadness and fondness can interact in our memories,” Vogelsinger said. “Students love talking about the way the past elementary school memory and the more recent Camaro memory interact to impact the present moment, and how and why two people can remember (or forget) the same moment differently.”
Students also can dissect the poet’s use of repetition, flashback, imagery, and figurative language. And, Vogelsinger said, “There will always be at least one student in class who will recognize the sly allusion to E. T. as well!”
“Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye
As the name might suggest, this is another good poem to teach after winter break. “The imagery is crisp and beautiful and the idea of what we hold onto and let go of is important,” said Vogelsinger.
“Metaphors shine in this poem,” Vogelsinger said. After reading the poem, his students discuss the meaning of the two metaphors in the lines “So much of a year is flammable” and “so little is stone.” Then he asks them to respond in their notebooks to two questions:
- What do you hope is flammable from last year?
- What do you hope is stone?
