On Year 3: September’s Poems
Not to mention two in August!
Back to school, and back to a poem a day to my classes. How many times does one have to do something before it becomes a habit? This will be the third year for me–the third year since I took this one simple idea away from the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. I am fortunate this year in that my new schedule provides for a first period class of AP juniors, people who are supposed to spend the year focussing on language and how it’s used as a tool for so many purposes. At the same time, I have a group of seniors in third period who begin class by asking what’s the poem for today?–in the period just before they take off for the vocational school. I’m developing a culture. I like it.
By the way: Dawn Potter’s poem “Boy Land,” which I saved for the last class day in September, has become a perennial favorite. They loved it this year, too.
August 30, Thursday: “Years from Now When You Are Weary” by Julia Kasdorf
August 31, Friday: “Ode to Barbecue” by Barbara Hamby (I so look forward to reading this every year)
September 4, Tuesday: “The Beautiful Changes” by Richard Wilbur
September 5, Wednesday: “Horses and Men in Rain” by Carl Sandburg (because there are the remains of Hurricane Isaac out there!)
September 6, Thursday: “Hope is the Thing With Feathers” by Emily Dickinson
September 7, Friday: “The School Bus” by Christian Barter
September 10, Monday: “New Religion” by Bill Holm
September 11, Tuesday: “For the Night” by Jane Kenyon
September 12, Wednesday: “English Flavors” by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
September 13, Thursday: “Beginning” by James Wright
September 14, Friday: “Autumn” by T. E. Hulme
September 17, Monday: “Porch Swing in September” by Ted Kooser
September 18, Tuesday: “Autumn Song” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
September 19, Wednesday: “Passing Through a Small Town” by David Shumate
September 20, Thursday: “The Things” by Donald Hall (because it’s his birthday!)
September 21, Friday: “These are the days when the birds come back” by Emily Dickinson
September 24, Monday: “A Walk” by Rainer Maria Rilke (for my friends at the Kington Walking Festival this past weekend)
September 25, Tuesday: “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
September 26, Wednesday: “In Trackless Woods” by Richard Wilbur
September 27, Thursday: “Boy Land” by Dawn Potter
September 28, Friday: Homecoming–no class!
And there we are: another round of a habit. Any suggestions for next month? Always looking!
- Posted in: Poetry ♦ Reading ♦ Uncategorized
- Tagged: Barbara Hamby, Bill Holm, Carl Sandburg, Christian Barter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, David Shumate, Donald Hall, Emily Dickinson, James Wright, Jane Kenyon, Julia Kasdorf, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Matthew Arnold, Rainer Maria Rilke, Richard Wilbur, T. E. Hulme, Ted Kooser
Anne's Awesome Adventures 
How about Patrick Kavanagh’s “October” (on http://www.u2literary.com/LitLyricBoy.htm) and Ted Hughes’ “October Dawn” (on http://potatopeelpie.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/october-dawn-ted-hughes/)? And how could you miss Keats “Ode to Autumn”? Glad to see you did “Dover Beach”, one of my all-time favourites.
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I loved that Julia Kasdorf poem–I heard it on Writer’s Almanac and teared up, and thought about how I would like to teach it, it I could. I’m glad you did 🙂
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By the way–Have I told you how I love your monthly poems, and your sharing them here?
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Blame Baron Wormser and Dawn Potter. They gave me the idea when I attended the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. And quite frankly, the search for poems has enriched my life beyond measure.
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