Teachers Network
Aim: How to write about poetry?

Introduction
A substantial part of the New York State ELA Standards for graduating high school students is about the response to literature. Standard 2 measures Language for Literary Response and Expression, and Standard 3 is interested in Language for Critical Analysis and Evaluation.  More than half of the tasks in the new English Regents exam consists of responses to literary stimuli: poetry, narrative, or drama. The standard makers considered that a comprehensive written response to literature shows adequate sophistication and maturity from the part of the student to be evaluated as ready to graduate from high school.
The answer is that many schools and classrooms do not prepare the students in the direction that the response to literature becomes a determining factor of their school performance (high school diplomas will not be granted to students who do not pass the ELA Regents exam). Literature in high school is usually seen as a byproduct remote from all daily interests. The response to literature is conventional, schematic, and lifeless. Students many times drill the "forms" in which the literary response needs to be cast. This is what many college prep schools do.
The failure of the conventional approach in teaching literature in high school usually comes from the inability of the educational establishment (teacher, curriculum, school philosophy) to see the modernity of literature and the arts. Literary and artistic creation are dynamic, interconnected, multicultural, open, and contributing to the formation of role models in the young reader's mind.
Students will be easier to motivate into reading, writing, critical thinking, and research by using themes of interest to them (adventure, love, danger, courage, music, arts).  The approach will first try to understand students' interests and cultural background, and then find the literary and artistic works that students can relate easier. The course readings will be flexible and student oriented. The readings will bring only first quality work into students' world. The curriculum will be:

From our experience, the study of literature done in an inspirational and interactive way attracts the students to the reading of classics and modern literary authors. There are very few teachers who insist that literature is really about life, actual, concrete and immediate existence, and that students should read, write, and think about literature as if it were about their own life.
After we introduced more and more literature-based assignments last semester, students read and wrote more and became more involved in classroom activities they viewed more meaningful.

We are presenting here a model of approach to literary response that is based on actual student responses.
The poem read in class is:

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 18
1     Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
2     Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
3     Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4     And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
5     Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6     And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
7     And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8     By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
9     But thy eternal summer shall not fade
10   Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
11   Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
12   When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
13   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
14   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Students usually have a great sense of humor. They will ask the teacher to "translate" the poem. The teacher will provide the knowledge for a literal understanding of the poem. Vocabulary, as well as Old English forms, is discussed after the poem is read in class.
The advantage of this sonnet is that a line-by-line interpretation of the poem is possible together with a global understanding of the meaning. In other words, decoding of each line is possible, and the accumulating effect will lead to the conclusion in the final two lines of the sonnet. We recommend that at no point in the interpretation section of the class will the teacher discard student responses that may seem "irrelevant" or "incomplete". At this point all responses are correct.
The teacher will wait and hunt for the incoming student output that can be helpful in building the next step of the instructional unit. Such as output may come from cooperative learning or from the independent work of students. Let me reproduce an interpretation that was the work of one of my students:

A Message for You
By Sudesh Sookdeo

1. You are more beautiful than a summer's day.
2. You are more lovely and temperate of all.
3. Rough winds can't shake you, because you are stronger
4. Than the darling buds of May,
5. And summer is too short to comfort you.
6. Sometimes your eyes is more beautiful than the heaven shines
7. But not often your attitude change
8. And every beautiful thing sometimes do fade.
9. But it's like the course of nature hardly change
10. And your eternal beauty will never fade
11. Neither shall Death drag you under its shade.
12. Your eternal beauty hasn't been owed:
13. But as long as you are on earth
14. So long I'll be with you
15. Together we may give life too.

Various assignments may spring from this literary response that has the purpose of either expecting more poetry from the students or requesting a moment of rationalization. Here's an example:

Aim: Sonnets never die
The purpose of this assignment is to write a comparison of both poems.
You may assign a student for each poem, or a student for each part of the poem.
These are the steps:

1. In your group, read the two poems several times.
2. Write the meaning of each line. Use your own words.
3. Write the general meaning (the message) for each poem. Both messages should not be longer than a paragraph (3-5 sentences).
4. Compare the two messages. Show what they have different and what they have in common.
5. Write a conclusion. It may contain your own reaction or interpretation to one or both poems.

The more literary products and analyses students write, the better they connect to literature. Their own responses will then be used to create further analyses. Students themselves were at the center of text selection and production, and were able to negotiate the meaning of literary products. The analysis was not a given structure to them and their products were not considered approximations of an ideal academic answer. The teacher willingly gave up her control over a portion of the process to make students more involved in a literary process that involves their own perceptions, experience, and beliefs.

Enjoy some of the thoughts my students shared after reading both poems.

Angelika Gonzalez
The two poems
There are several similarities between William Shakespeare's poem and Sudesh Sookdeo's poem. Both poems relate to a love that they consider one of the world's most beautiful thing. Also both poets say tht every beauty from beauty will fade. In other words, everything goes away specially beauty because that is nature.
Although there are similarities, there are also differences. Shakespeare says that he should compare her to a summer's day and Soodesh days that she is more beautiful than heaven. Another difference is that Shakespeare says that as long as this poem is written they will be alive; Soodesh says that if they'll live togethr they will give life to another human being and start a new generation.

Carlos Sanchez
Understanding the poem "A Message for You"
1. She is a pretty woman. He sees her as an attractive woman.
2. He sees her as a spontaneous woman not afraid of anything.
3. She keeps away from problems because it won't bother her.
4. Her actions and her feelings change once in a while.
5. She will always look beautiful as long as she lives.
6. Her shadow will never lead her to death.
7. As long as they live, they will never separate. They will stay together for eternity.

Massiel Taveras
The mesage in "A Message for You" is that the poet says that outside beauty may fade but the inside beauty never fades. The message is that if you take care of love, it will survive forever. I also say if you are going to be with your lover forever, you may want to give life together.
The message in William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is that if you have a love like the poet's, as long as the Earth has life in it that love will survive.

Juan Carlos Vargas
Love
My love is bigger than the ocean and brighter than a summer day.
My feelings are as strong as the steel.
You're the air that I breathe.
Our love is bigger than the world.
You're like an angel that always consoles my love.
My love for you is as beautiful as the red rose.
You're more beautiful than heaven.
When you got to the garden you will hear the flower talking about our beautiful and terrific love.
My lips are like a newborn baby that cries to give you a kiss.
If I don't marry you I will live depressed for the rest of my life.