Poetry out Loud Blog » Poetry in the News

The Romantics

Justine Chiappetta — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:41:21 +0000

Feeling a bit “romantic” with Valentine’s Day nearing? This week the UK newspapers, The Guardian and The Observer, are highlighting one Romantic poet a day. On The Guardian’s website, you can read an introduction to each poet, listen to audio of some of their seminal works and download podcasts of discussions. Here is a snippet from the intro to Coleridge by Richard Holmes:

So it’s easy to forget how strange, how captivating, how haunted Coleridge’s actual poems are. Why is it, for example, that so many of them are set at night? Why do their outer landscapes always dissolve into inner dream worlds? Why are they so full of guilt? And yet why are they also so often suffused with beautiful, healing, glimmering moonlight?

So far this week they have covered Byron, Keats, Burns, Wordsworth and Coleridge, with Shelley and Blake to come in the next two days.

A call for poetry teaching to be broadened

Justine Chiappetta — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:35:53 +0000

Former UK Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, calls for teaching a wider range of poetry in classrooms as well as putting the focus back on listening to and performing poems.

However, he added: “If we give our students only one kind of poetry to read, a kind they immediately recognise, it would be like taking someone to a palace, parking them at the door and telling them to go no further.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Poetry Out Loud on EducationNews.org

Justine Chiappetta — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:54:58 +0000

Writing in EducationNews.org, Robert Oliphant considers the growth possiblities of Poetry Out Loud. Here is a snippet:

Practically considered, what Poetry Out Loud offers its participants is an easy-to-copy access list of established ready-to-memorize targets to choose from, along with biographical information on each poet. To use a Chaucerian phrase, it’s as close to Goddes foyson (plenty) as any learner would want

Read the article here
http://www.educationnews.org/commentaries/21599.html

Keeping Poetry Alive

Justine Chiappetta — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:52:00 +0000

Check out these two recent articles in the Huffington Post about the state of poetry today and how Poetry Out Loud is helping to keep poetry alive.

Is poetry dead? In this article, Michael Koenigs describes ways he tries to make poetry relevant to high school students.

Launched in 2006 and following in the footsteps of the National Spelling Bee, Poetry Out Loud empowers students to learn and build confidence through academic competition…Such bold and well-funded initiatives restore my faith that the plug has not yet been pulled on poetry.

Are we afraid of poetry? Kim Rosen talks about the state of poetry in the US and the world and signs of a public poetry resurgence.

Finally, it seems, we are rising from the sick-bed of Metrophobia, and returning to poetry. Signs of health begin to accrue. Hundreds of thousands of teens throughout the U. S. choose to learn classical and modern poems by heart and practice together for Poetry Out Loud, a national recitation competition.

Keats on the Big Screen

Justine Chiappetta — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:31:30 +0000

In theaters today is Jane Campion’s new film, Bright Star, an account of John Keats’ young love affair with his neighbor and muse, Fanny Brawne. The title of the movie is taken from Keats’ poem, “Bright Star”, which was written for Fanny.

Here is one of the articles on this film, which received praise at the Cannes Film Festival. Below is a snippet from that article regarding the power of recitation:

At other stages of casting, Ms. Campion required every actor, including children, to deliver at least one poem, “Bright Star” or “Ode to a Nightingale,” by memory. What the director expected to be a dull series of recitations turned out to be the most revealing aspect of the auditions. As they got into the rhythms of the poem, “the person and the personality disappeared and the poem became present,” she says.

Whitman and the Civil War

Justine Chiappetta — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:00:34 +0000

The UK’s Telegraph has an excerpt from the new book, The American Civil War, by the military historian John Keegan. It speaks of the suffering of soldiers during the Civil War and Walt Whitman’s role in taking care of them. Here’s a passage:

“Whitman was to become America’s leading 19th-century poet. His poem Come Up from the Fields, Father, is one of the greatest works of literature the war was to inspire and it came from his experiences as an army hospital visitor. What makes it so heart-rending is that everything in it is entirely genuine.”

As well as nursing wounded soldiers, Whitman often wrote letters to their families, a fact that no doubt adds to the immediacy and power of “Come Up from the Fields Father.”