How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is poetry and where does it come from? What is it meant to accomplish?

Teaching Suggestion: Students are more likely to closely attend to Foster’s work and actively attempt to understand his ideas if they understand the significance of poetry as a form. Students may have many misconceptions about what poetry is and is not, and are likely to know little about its origins and history. You might first use the prompt questions as a schema-activation device, asking students to answer based on prior knowledge, and then offer them the chance to revise their answers after they have been exposed to the resources listed below.

• This article from Poetry.org explores the characteristics, origins, and purposes of poetry.
• This 5-minute video from Digital Poets offers an overview of the history of poetry.

2. What place do you think poetry has in today’s world—do you think it still matters to people, or do you think poetry is a dying art?

Teaching Suggestion: These tips can prepare students for this question or help them to discuss it after they’ve answered.

• This article from CNN explores the rising popularity of poetry and its evolution in contemporary times.
• This article from UCLA discusses rap lyrics as contemporary poetry.
• This article from the Library of Congress’s blog discusses novels written in verse and gives examples of this increasingly popular form.

Short Activity

Read Jericho Brown’s poem “Crossing.” Then, write a paragraph explaining the poem’s meaning.

Teaching Suggestion: The purpose of this activity is to create a baseline for students to measure their progress after they have read Foster’s work. In order for this to be a meaningful measure, it is important that students not discuss the poem or read others’ interpretations online before they finish writing their own interpretation. If you are concerned that students will be tempted to consult online resources as they complete the activity, you might pass out paper copies of Brown’s poem and then ask for handwritten responses.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students who struggle with anxiety, perfectionism, or other conditions that impact their emotional response to difficult work may find this activity provokes uncomfortable feelings; you might reassure them ahead of time that the purpose of this activity is not to be “right” but to create a measurement device: Any answer is fine, no matter how much or how little they can accomplish at this stage. Literal thinkers may also find this activity particularly difficult and will likely benefit from the same reassurance. Students who struggle with written expression might be asked to simply list their observations about the poem at this stage, instead of completing a full paragraph of analysis.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

How much do you value poetry? Why? How do you think this compares to most other people’s feelings about poetry? On a scale of 1-4, with 1 being “Limited” and 4 being “Advanced,” how would you rate your own skills at interpreting poetry? What do you see as your strongest and weakest areas in understanding and appreciating poetry?

Teaching Suggestion: This prompt gives students the opportunity to consolidate what they have learned about the purposes of poetry and others’ responses to it as they consider how this information relates to their own feelings and experiences. It also encourages them to read Foster’s work with specific purposes in mind as they work toward expanding their own abilities in this area.