Poetry and Drama --and Indians!

1. Poetry and Drama--and Indians! ELE 616 Readings and Research in Children’s LiteratureFall 2009

2. Young Adult Librarian Dewey on poetry

3. Dewey and poetry 2

4. More Dewey and poetry

5. What is Poetry?

6. Poetry • Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose. • from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

7. What is poetry? • What is poetry? • Poetry really has no one set definition. Shadow Poetry defines poetry as the art of writing thoughts, ideas, and dreams into imaginative language which can contain verse, pause, meter, repetition, and rhyme.

8. How poets have defined it • Here’s how some famous poets define poetry: • “The best words in the best order.” • Samuel Taylor Coleridge • “The record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds.” • Percy Bysshe Shelley • “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry.” • Emily Dickinson • “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” • William Wordsworth What is poetry? Poetry and Drama

9. A poetical answer • What is Poetry?: A Non-Lecture • What is poetry?Love lie with me, and I will tell.Poetry a lawless enterprise.Poetry the truth that reveals all lies.Poetry a camera-eye without a shutter.Poetry, unlike armchair philosophy, does not leave the world unchanged. • Selection: What is Poetry? Rough Draft of an ARS POETICADelivered, on the occasion of his receiving The Frost Medal,by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

10. 12-year old Katie’s thoughts on poetry from True to Form by Elizabeth Berg: • If you see a sunset and try and describe it to someone in normal words, all you can say is, “Boy, I saw a great sunset last night.” But if you are a poet, you can give it to someone to feel for themselves. Like you make a little seed of what you saw, they swallow it, and it blooms again inside their own heart. • “. . . then there is the scritchscritch of my pen, trying to say something so true. What if it works? Then when I read it again, the little voice inside will say, Yes. Yes. Yes. • From Poetry Thinks . . . by Kristine O'Connell George

11. The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. • Poetry Magazine. Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world.

12. Sponsored by Poetry Foundation

13. Welcome to poetry.org • Poetry.org is a resource site for poetry and poets. Here you can learn about the history, meaning, and types of poetry, as well as terms often used when reading and studying poetry. There is also the resource page: a series of links to various poetry sites for daily poetry, poetry organizations, poet biographies, and more. And there is our selection of poetry from various famous poets, including William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and e ecummings.

14. The Academy of American . . . administers a wide variety of programs, including National Poetry Month (April), the largest literary celebration in the world; online educational resources providing free poetry lesson plans for high school teachers; the Poetry Audio Archive, a collection of over 700 recordings dating back to the 1960s; and Poets.org, our award-winning website which provides a wealth of content on contemporary American poetry and receives a million unique users each month.

16. Other poetry websites

17. A poet who wrote a load of nonsense • Edward Lear, Limericks, and Nonsense: A Little Nonsense • Edward Lear, Limericks, and Nonsense: There Once Was…

18. Shel Silverstein The Shel Silverstein Archive

19. Jack Prelutsky, the nation’s first Children’s Poet Laureate • “Never Poke Your Uncle With a Fork” • For years Jack Prelutsky has been known informally as a poet laureate for kids. Now the Poetry Foundation has made it official, naming him the nation’s first Children’s Poet Laureate and putting a prestigious stamp of approval on the man and his work. Jack Prelutsky, poet and chocolate-chip cookie aficionado, features 17 poems all about school in his book What a Day It Was at School! (Greenwillow, 2006). Jack Prelutskyby Lee Bennett Hopkins from

20. Poetry lessons WritingFix Project: Poetry Lessons & Prompts resources inspired by the NNWP's annual Piñon Poetry Festival

21. What’s the use of poetry? • Can Poetry Really Change the World? • . . . there are those, including myself, who  believe in  poets as the antennae of the race, as the conscience of society, or at least as Jack Kerouac said, “the great rememberer redeeming life from darkness.” The greatest poets’ greatest lines have entered  mass consciousness, and they are great precisely because they have continued to resonate in our lives today. • Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poetry As News

22. What makes good children’s poetry? • Three elements of good children’s poetry: • an emphasis on form • a not too elaborate grammatical and narrative complexity • a reasonable familiarity and established place in the language. • It’s worth noticing, however, that this has the harsh consequence that children are unable to write good children’s verse—and we make a mistake when we demand they do so. • J. Bottum, What Children’s Poetry is ForAmerican Educator, Fall 1997.

23. Poetry and Drama A Native American Poet

24. Poetry and Drama Poetry by young Native Americans

25. More Dewey and Poetry

26. What is a poetry slam, anyway?

27. An organization for poetry slams • What is Poetry Slam, Inc.? • Poetry Slam, Inc. is the official 501(c)(3) non-profit organization charged with overseeing the international coalition of poetry slams. Though slams are maintained in a growing number of cities by local volunteer organizers, the vast majority of slam series follow the rules established by the governing body, and are certified by the governing body as slams that adhere to the vision slam's founders established for the art form over a decade ago.

28. What about Drama?

29. What is drama? • What is drama? • ‘Drama’ is an Ancient Greek word meaning ‘act’ or ‘deed’. The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle used this term in a very influential treatise called the Poetics. In this text, Aristotle classified different forms of poetry according to basic features he thought could be commonly recognised in their composition. He used the term ‘drama’ to describe poetic compositions that were ‘acted’ in front of audiences in a theatron.

30. What about theatre? • What is theatre? • Theatre is a living art. Theatre is storytelling at its most magical. Theatre is reality. Theatre is fantasy. Theatre is the expression of the human condition in its myriad forms throughout history. Theatre is experimentation. Theatre is problem-solving, and Theatre is fun. • BA in Theatre – Major/Minor

31. The Purpose of Drama • Why study drama? • Through drama you can become anyone, anywhere, at anytime. By understanding drama you can learn to understand anyone, anywhere anytime. Plays often capture the essence of a culture or a group within that culture. They reveal the attitudes and opinions of their day.

32. Drama in education • Why can drama lead to successful teaching and learning? • Drama . . . can offer a powerful stimulus in motivating children to learn as they are operating within a relationship that is human- to- human, rather than one that is human- to- abstract concept. It is this that acts as the lure to draw members of the class in and enables them to see the relevance of the learning • Holden, J. (2002, Summer).What’s this got to do with maths? Education Review, 15,2

33. Drama as a motivator

34. A special form of drama • Reader’s theatre • Readers Theatre is an oral reading activity that closely resembles radio drama. Two or more readers stand or sit side by side, usually in a semicircle, holding scripts and reading their parts to portray characters, narration or exposition. Physical movement is minimal. Instead, speech conveys the action. • Readers Theatre by Sam Sebesta

35. What Is RT? • And How Do You Really Spell It? • There are many styles of reader’s theater, but nearly all share these features: • Narration serves as the framework of dramatic presentation. • No full stage sets. If used at all, sets are simple and suggestive. • No full costumes. If used at all, costumes are partial and suggestive, or neutral and uniform. • No full memorization. Scripts are used openly in performance • Aaron Shepard For more reader’s theater, visit Aaron Shepard’s RT Page at www.aaronshep.com/rt

36. Native American plays • Pushing Up the Sky: And Other Native American Plays for Children (2000) A collection of stories by Joseph Bruchac • From acclaimed Native American storyteller Joseph Bruchac comes a collection of seven lively plays for children to perform, each one adapted from a different traditional Native tale.

37. Drama from YA Librarian Dewey

38. Graphics www.animationfactory.com