Naked Poetry
on letting everyone love what they love in poetry
After my Grandma Hall died, after her funeral, but before her burial, we went down to her little house next door to my uncle’s house, to divvy up her things. My grandma had been a secretary and mother of four boys in Salt Lake City, an excellent seamstress, a heavy smoker, and a reader. She was sharp, in all meanings of the word. I didn’t know her well. I came home with an eclectic, sentimental little pile of grandma loot: her dress form, a half-opened pack of drinking straws, lots of vintage rick rack and other sewing notions, a potato masher, and Naked Poetry.
This scandalous title was an anthology of free verse poetry from 1969, full of poems by my grandma’s contemporaries — James Wright, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Denise Levertov, W.S. Merwin — while they were still young, and (except for Plath) still living. They stare out of their black and white author photos, scruffy, unsmiling, sporting cigarettes, deep in their literary bohemian glory.
I love this book, not just because it’s full of great poetry and sexy poet photos, but because it is a peek into something in my grandma I didn’t really get to know. I knew she read Shakespeare, but there in her loud desert house full of boys she was also reading her own generation of poets. I love this small piece of evidence that she was giving herself an intellectual and cultural life that went beyond her immediate world. And I love this peek into something in my grandma that was curious and intellectually hungry, more open than judging. (Did I mention her sharpness?)
Which brings us somehow to the Frog Hollow Poetry Prize
Speaking of judging, as devoted readers will remember, I hosted a kids’ poetry contest this spring through my writing program, Frog Hollow School. As particularly strong-memoried readers will remember, I said I would write a bit about my thoughts on the process and results of the prize.
The key thing about the prize was that it was judged by children. My students could choose to enter a poem, or be a judge (or neither). Other children could also submit poems. I helped with logistics but didn’t get a vote.
What surprised me about the contest was how different my taste and my student judges’ tastes were. This isn’t a value judgment (more on that in a second), but an observation of difference. I’ve steeped my students in lots of free verse, lots of contemporary poetry and poems from my grandma’s generation. But less than half of the poems that won any kind of mention were unrhymed. Several of my personal favorites didn’t make it past the first round, which was interesting because as the judges’ teacher, I was sure my poetic aesthetics would have rubbed off on them, and I’m not sure they did. Yet another example of why the words “good” and “bad” are not universal standards, but opinions, and evidence of how all literary judging is extremely subjective and capricious, which is one reason losing a poetry contest means nothing about your poetry, and winning is awesome but doesn’t make you some kind of Poetry God. Anyhow.
The judges, in general, loved poems that were rhymed, rhythmic, and funny. Some of the popular poems were a little gross. Others were fantastical. Lots had animals in them. The winning poem had the winning combo of being about a cat, rhyming, being both funny and warm-hearted, having a satisfying repeating form, and mentioning feces. It’s a tightly written poem and was a crowd-pleaser when read out loud too. Its poet knew his audience.
The judges wanted poems that pleased them, that were satisfying, enjoyable, and playful, as well as meaningful. For most of human history, pretty much up until my grandmas naked poets, poetry has been oral, and the sounds in it are central to its power. The judges read with their ears, and they read for enjoyment, and while I will continue to share the more subtle sounds of free verse poems with them, I respect their gravitation towards playful sounds. Rhythm and rhyme do something great in our brains!
Am I proud of the kids and poems that won? Yes 1000%.1And was some part of me also a little consternated that the judges weren’t my little aesthetic clones? Yes. Making space for everyone to be themselves and love what they love is a process, folks.
Finding what pleases you: a little reading exercise
But here’s a way to practice: as you read poetry with kids, open up space for everyone to articulate their opinions.
What pleases you?
What feelings does the poem give you?
Where are you bored?
What are you reminded of?
Is there anything in the poem you’d like to emulate?
These kinds of open questions don’t have right or wrong answers. Instead, they begin to articulate the relationship between the poem and the reader. It’s a personal relationship, built on personal taste. Frame your own opinions as opinions rather than as fact, making space for other people to have other opinions. “I love the third line,” instead of “The third line is good.” Be specific when you can (“I love the rhyme of the goats eating oats on line three”), and happily vague when you need to be (“I just feel happy when I read this poem”). Agree to disagree.
This is, I think, not just a literary exercise, but a civic one. A family one too.
Writing teachers don’t need to be bound by mathematical constraints.