1. The English
Literature Journal
Volume 1, Issue 1 - 2014 ISSN: 2348-3288
Access articles online at: http://english.aizeonpublishers.net

2. 6http://english.aizeonpublishers.net/content/2014/1/eng6-10.pdf
The English Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1 (2014): 6-10
Research Article
Open Access
Poetic Pedagogy up to Performance Poetry
Mahdi Shafieyan*
Assistant Professor of English Literature, Department of Foreign Languages, Imam Sadiq University
*Corresponding author: Mahdi Shafieyan
ABSTRACT
Understanding poetry has always been a burdensome task for students; they always think that even the simplest
poems have so many hidden meanings that are out of reach, so they look for as much information as possible about
the poem, its poet, the historical background, and so on. The task of a poetry teacher is very much different from
those of fiction, drama, or generally other scopes of literature. He/she ought to stir students’ emotions by his/her
reading, as poetry is the only main genre that should be read completely in the class. Furthermore, the teacher has
to sensitize his/her pupils to sound and sense in a motivating way so that they enjoy the selected pieces. Then,
he/she should make his/her students understand the diction and figures that usually keep a long distance from the
ordinary language. This study features teaching poetry in the current era in which so many new forms have
appeared due to the electronic sources along with performance arts. This is to indicate that today the syllabus
should oscillate between classic forms and postmodern types. Hence, this research takes different sorts of poems to
show the applicability of its lesson plan. In the introductory notes, it tries to elucidate the distinction between poetic
methodology and teaching of other genres. Then, it provides the reader with plans from before- to after-class
activities, and finally comes to testing. The researcher aims to suggest the last trends in poetic pedagogy the main
role of which is to give learners incentive to better comprehension of this genre. The findings confirm that teaching
poetry is no more only text-based or teacher-oriented, but due to contemporary poetic variations it demands other
means’ and students’ involvement.
Keywords: pedagogy, performance, poetry, poetics
INTRODUCTION
Literature as an academic major carries some unique
features, which make it approach everyday life or what
people grapple with frequently: it is the representation
of social living and man’s complexities, on the one hand,
as well as the delicacies and minutiae of intellectual or
sensational relations, on the other, with all their huge
scopes. In other words, it is not a mere reverberation of
facts, as many fields of study are, but accompanies the
reality with mellifluous narrations. In this constellation
consisting of a diversity of stars--genres, and forms--as
well as other galaxies--other disciplines that are within
this inherently interdisciplinary area--poetry is the sun.
The main question that needs to be answered is about
differences between teaching poetry and other genres.
If there are some restrictions for other genres such as
fiction and drama to depict sonic emotions whether
due to their large lengths or what may appear as
artificiality of language, poetry does not confront such
limitations. As one of the most eminent scholars in
contemporary poetry, Marjorie Perloff (2001)
illuminates this matter more deliberately:
I believe a poem differs from routine or normal
discourse (like this statement, for instance) by being
the art form that foregrounds language, in its
complexity, intensity, and, especially, relatedness … In
the poetic text, everything is related to everything else -
or should be - the whole being a construct of sameness
and difference in pleasing proportions. (Perloff and van
Hallberg, 2001, p. 87)
The next gap between teaching of poetry and other
areas is the trepidation on the part of not only students
(Wrigg, 1991, p. 1) but also teachers (Haugh et al.,
2002, p. 25). Unlike fiction and drama, poetry classes in
undergraduate courses demand technical and
theoretical aspects, such as metrics, poetics, as well as
prosody; probably, fiction and drama classes at this
level do not necessitate dealing with narrative theories,
for instance. Showalter and Middlebrook (2003), poets
themselves, see students’ resistance to learning poetics
as the main disadvantage of teaching poetry (p. 65).
Deeming it necessary to concern theoretical aspects of
Received: 21 October 2013 Accepted: 28 October 2013 Online: 20 January 2014Received: 21 October 2013 Accepted: 20 January 2014

3. 7http://english.aizeonpublishers.net/content/2014/1/eng6-10.pdf
poetry, Arac (1994), however, believes that “without
attention to prosody, poetry may seem like arbitrary
magic rather than a codified technology of verbal
power” (p. 174). This obstacle could be cleared by a
suggestion for instructors: the teacher should work on
the poems he/she fears in the class, Lockward (1994)
would say; when he/she provokes a heated discussion
in the class, the problematic chasms could be bridged
by reader-response approach. The fear on the side of
students also could be cleared by the same strategy
since they are plausibly uncomfortable with
understanding of the poetic language (pp. 65-68). The
element of comprehension is so significant that
whenever blocked, enjoyment would be obstructed. Of
course, attentions should be drawn to the fact that
these “problems” do not belong to poetry but poetry-
teaching. In the present article, in order to solve such
difficulties, the researcher attempts to focus on the
methods and techniques from pre-session assignments
to post-class activities and to present a meticulous
lesson plan in order to overcome the arguable
trepidation.
Step-by-Step Lesson Plan
Coming to the poetry class requires prior preparation;
this is the first step that helps walking toward reading
and activities in the classroom. Teachers should ask
students to read the poem before the session for
looking up new, literary words. For second/foreign
language learners, it is obligatory to focus very much on
words’ pronunciations, as they are tightly linked with
metrics. In the event that the course contains long
poems, they ought to inform students to read the
syllabus before the term.
Reading in the class needs some tactics in order to
enthuse students; for instance, teachers had better
begin each class with a poem by a different poet.
However, the main part is reading itself, which must be
aloud, although all poems are not read in the same
tone; some need to be shouted and some have to be
undertoned in order to convey the emotion correctly
(Fisher, 1985, p. 3; Kenner, 1988, p. 3). Almost all
theorists and pedagogical practitioners consent to
different readings, which are divided into four steps by
Evans (2003): The first reading should be without any
stoppage and explanation. In poetry, we read
everything including the punctuation; that is, no only
should common punctuation marks have their
meanings indicating pause, run-on, etc., but also they
would rely on smooth transference of the ambience of
the poem. In the following example, a good reading
ought to home in Prufrock’s hesitation when it reaches
at the dashes, ellipses, and question marks:
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .. (Eliot, 1917, p. 5)
As the last two questions can clearly show, he is a man
of incertitude; the dubiety casts a heavy shadow of
distrust on the previous sentences including his claims:
“And I have known the arms already, known them all”.
In this way, the reader should reflect the vacillation
represented by the two dashes in advance.
The second reading is with technical aspects; so to
speak, the form, meter, rhyme scheme, and so forth.
The third can be specific to the explication of the poem;
in this midway, the form helps one interpret the poem
better; he/she sees the length; if lines’ lengths are
unequal, the voice can be frustrated or anxious. Then,
one pays attention to the punctuation; if sentences are
not full, probably the speaker is angry. He/she
ultimately analyzes dialogs, if any, and asks students
“who speaks more? or “who is dominant?” (Fisher,
1985, p. 3). Here, the teacher leads a discussion that
encourages a personal relationship with the poem and
goes on to interrogate what emotions the poem
conveys, questions such as “what do you remember
from the poem?”, “where did your mind go while
reading?”, or “what do you like to ask the poet?”
(Lockward, 1994, p. 67).
For the last time we reread the piece for a better
appreciation. Since in practice there is not enough time
for this ideal program, the researcher advises on
merging the second and the third readings. Evans
(2003) adds that long poems should be read at least
twice (pp. 374, 379). Although these readings are
assumed to be performed on the part of the teacher,
and despite Howard’s (1980) belief that having
students attempt to read is “embarrassing to the reader
and boring to all” (p. 62), the researcher’s suggestion
would be to involve students in the last reading, for
then they would have a reading pattern in mind and a
good understanding to exhibit the intonation precisely.
Mention should be made that this principle is flexible
enough in respect to students’ levels; graduate students
or even seniors could participate in readings from the
very first stage.
All said apart, teaching is not restricted to the class, but
it may necessitate some activities for home, which are
expounded as follows: First, to assign writing a
personal poem recommends to students that poets
might write of personal or highly ordinary things
(Tarzia, 2001, p. 3), such as a spider in A noiseless
patient spider by Walt Whitman (1891) or After the
movie by Marie Howe (2008). This will be fruitful to
allay pupils’ fear because ordinary things and themes
need everyday language, which is much easier to come
to grips with and seems to express its topic on the
surface. In this way, they analyze poems like writers
not readers. It is better to make students an offer to
start from words, then to add poetic adjectives. Rhyme
does not matter, but imagery is important (Haugh et al.,
2002, pp. 25-26).
Mahdi Shafieyan / The Eng Lit J. 2014, 1(1): 6-10

4. 8http://english.aizeonpublishers.net/content/2014/1/eng6-10.pdf
Other activities helping to writing and so reading
poetry are as follows: Writing one’s own version of
poetry by replacing the persona with one’s parents or
oneself, “mad ads” or writing a couplet for a product’s
advertisement, “group poem” that occurs when each
student brings a line by a poet to the class and one is
determined by the teacher to write his/hers as the first
line and then giving the paper to the person to the right
to go on and complete the poem are three samples.
Next, “acrostic” is actually very exciting in that here the
initials of the poetic lines are versified to make the
student’s name. Goshko (2010) hints that “poem-
drawing”, as another, can engrave the imagery of a
poem on students’ brains; for instance, Coleridge’s
Kubla Khan (1816) is very good for this task as the
meanings of some lines are connected with the
imagery. A further work could be “rote learning”;
although memorization is not suggested in other fields,
poetry is an exception (Bloom, 2001, p. 73). Billy Collins
(2001) rationalizes memorization as he is of the
opinion that poetry began as a memory system.
Mnemosyne, hence mnemonics, was the mother of all
the Muses in Greek mythology (p. B5).
In a “readingathon” (reading marathon), students
choose poems to read and then write prose responses
to them. A response will be 75-100 words and students
can reply to one of the following elements of the poem:
images, sounds, subject(s), emotional effect(s),
meanings, and questions about the poem. Assigning
writing “portfolio”, John Webster asked his students to
record their readings on poems throughout the term;
by course end, students will have accumulated thirty to
forty pages of writing about Elizabethan poetry, all of
which have been produced by their own hands. “[T]he
sense of a student’s work growing has a more abstract
force, for as students review their work to write the
self-reflexive essay, they can see for themselves how
much more sophisticated their thinking has become”
(as cited in Showalter, 2003, p. 73). “Contrast” means to
have pupils collate a poem with a prose statement of
the same theme, and “comparison” implies likening two
or more poems on similar themes. Putting a short poem
alongside a suggestive prose text from the same period,
one can observe how the two texts elucidate each other,
and then comparing the same poem with a roughly
similar one from a contemporaneous American or
continental society would result in students’
recognition of literary schools and movements around
the globe (Cheney and Prescott, 2000, p. 261).
Moreover, there are some class participations which
not only incite students to learn more effectively, but
also give them the pleasure and fun of creating poetry;
after all, there is a chasm between the apprehension of
one who just reads poems and the perception of a
person who writes poetry as well. A pertinent activity
to “poem-drawing”, explained above, is “poem-acting”,
which once more highlights imagery; the example
might be Robert Frost’s The subverted flower (1942). If
there are different voices, each student could read and
act one. Next is “clustering”, which means grouping
verbs, objects, colors, emotion describers, and so on in
order to come to an interpretation; for example, if
transitive verbs are a lot, the action is significant
(Fisher, 1985, pp. 3-5). “Paper bag poetry” is a Dadaist
way according to which the teacher calls each student
to jot down a word on a slip of paper, puts it in a paper
bag, then collects all of the class’ pieces, and finally asks
students to write a poem with the given words (Jump,
2003, p. 12).
Activities go beyond writing; some scholars suggest
inquiring students to record their own readings. Among
other inventive ways is requiring each member of the
class to create his or her own anthology of favorite
poems (Showalter, 2003, pp. 70-71). Activities,
furthermore, are not restrained merely to students but
teachers; in fact, there are some tips that would help
the latter very much in managing the course. Professors
are suggested to invite local poets to their university
for readings, workshops, or discussions. If they have
any means for publication, they can kindly motivate
students by putting their poems on a magazine,
newspaper, weblog, or website. Do not kill, but instill
the love of poetry in students, says Lockward (1994);
indeed, speaking of the course’s difficulties terrifies
them. Teaching from contemporary to past is a great
assistance to learners because of the colloquial
language and up-to-date subjects; in this way, their fear
will disappear. The instructor may also expose students
to beautiful and powerful language with musical
intensity (pp. 65-66, 68). The researcher’s suggestion is
that as culturally Iranian students are used to listening
to poems in rhyme, little by little, the teacher in this
context should go toward English blank or free verses.
In addition, there exist some “Don’ts”: Do not explain
the poem like a possessor; this means that the poem
has one meaning. Do not pretend that metrics are
prescriptive but descriptive. Do not speak overtly about
theory. Do not impose critics on your students. Do not
fit a poem to a historical period; they are universal. This
is not to say that historical events should be omitted
but posed after students’ discussions. Levy (1986)
takes the stance that students lack “virtually all the
extensive, historical, literary, mythological, and
theological information necessary to even a partial
understanding of the poem.” He tries to give them some
historical and biographical background, in part because
“they honestly do not understand why anyone would
want to write [such] a poem” (pp. 56-57).
Among other paths that can stimulate young students
of the digital era is the explication of the relationship
between poetry and technology. Evans (2003) says that
“poetry demands to be heard, not merely seen [that is
read], and it is only in the classroom that we can be
positive it will be heard” (p. 372). In this way, listening
to records of poetry readings by famous actors or
contemporary poets can be for clarification, sheer
pleasure of hearing, as well as the cadence and meter
(Wrigg, 1991, pp. 1-2). However, in the present digital
age, watching poems could be more interesting than
hearing. The following modes are the connection
Mahdi Shafieyan / The Eng Lit J. 2014, 1(1): 6-10

5. 9http://english.aizeonpublishers.net/content/2014/1/eng6-10.pdf
© 2014; AIZEON Publishers; All Rights Reserved
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
between poetry and visual media, which come under
the rubric “poetry performance”: anipoems, typoems,
concretism, and interactive poems,i to name a few.
Mention should be made that a teacher ought not to go
to extremes; that is, he/she should not overweigh the
scale of these postmodern versions over the traditional
ones’.
Some of the benefits that accrue from such sorts could
be enumerated as follows: first of all, students are
enthused by cyberpoetry and innovations in the given
area. This young movement has raised a conflict as art
versus entertainment and has caused some to have the
conviction that it has reduced the former to the latter
notwithstanding (Konyves, 2011, p. 3), its novelty of
presentation succors to better understanding and adds
to the previous attractions of poetry. Second, concrete
poetry, anipoems, and generally all species that do not
have a fixed form make our students understand that
there might be some readings for a single poem. This
may relieve their stress of inability to comprehend the
material, although it should not culminate in the
misconception that all personal readings are admitted.
Further, it will be very useful to teach them poetic
elements, like rhythm, by simple anipoems and remind
them of the fact that rhythm is not limited to poetry,
but human life. Finally, in other characters of
performance poetry that are written and read by the
poet him/herself intonation brings along the author’s
intention, which again helps students apprehend the
authentic meaning of the text; nonetheless, this eye
view is not supported by the postmodern reading,
which does not receive relying on an authentic
interpretation, and its followers try to nourish the
forms that invite the reader to the non-meaning genera,
such as sound or found poems (Piombino, 1998, pp. 65-
66).
Testing
The final step in the course is testing, which has raised
many controversies in recent years. Ghaderi (1991)
asserts that a professor never has to test on poetry by
multiple-choice items; this means that only one reading
is possible. He/she can ask students to bring one
untaught poem to the test session to write about. They
could be asked to write on a taught poem by following
another critical approach, regarding their degree.
Lockward (1994) adds that never ask pupils to apply a
historical approach to a poem (pp. 65-66), for the
above-mentioned reason. If one of the goals of a teacher
is to encourage students to acquire a life-long habit of
reading, he/she should provide class time for this
important section. In the event that students are
learning strategies that enable them to interpret
literature and they have confidence in their responses,
one will no longer need to rely on quizzes that require
only recall of information. We assume that if we do not
give quizzes on the readings we assign, students will
not read. To dispel this doubt, we may give students a
writing assignment on a work demanding new
interpretations in the class (Johannessen, 1995, pp. 1-3)
REFERENCES
1. Arac, J. (1994). An introductory texts and theory course. In D.
Sadoff and W. E. Cain (Eds.), Teaching contemporary theory
to undergraduates (pp. 169-178). NY: MLA.
2. Bloom, H. (2001). How to read and why. London: Fourth
Estate.
3. Cheney, P., & Prescott, A. L., eds. (2000). Approaches to
teaching shorter Elizabethan poetry. NY: MLA.
4. Collins, B. (2001, Nov. 13). The companionship of a poem. The
chronicle of higher education, 48(13).
5. Eliot, T. S. (1917). The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In
Collected poems (1909-1960) (pp. 2-7). NY: Harcourt, Brace
& World.
6. Evans, B. (2003). A note on the teaching of poetry. In R.
Deedari and M. Mansouri (Comps.), Understanding poetry
(pp. 372-381). Tehran: Rahnama.
7. Fisher, S. (1985, Sept.). Motivator of the month. Notes plus,
1(3), 1-5.
8. Ghaderi, Behzad. (1991, Oct. 27). On multiple-choice tests in
M. A. of English literature. Ittilaat, n.p.
9. Goshko, G. (2010). Voice. [Electronic version] Academy of
American poets.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/17107.
10. Haugh, E. K., et al. (2002, Jan.). What is your favorite activity
for teaching poetry? English journal, 91(3), 25-31.
11. Howard, D. R. (1980). The idea of a Chaucer course. In J.
Gibaldi (Ed.), Approaches to teaching Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales. NY: MLA.
12. Johannessen, L. R. (1995, Feb.). Quizzes and teaching
literature. Education digest, 6(60), 1-3.
13. Jump, J. D., ed. (2003). Dada & surrealism: The critical idiom.
London: Methuen.
14. Kenner, H. (1988). Reading poetry. In J. Engell and D. Perkins
(Eds.), Teaching literature: What is needed now. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
15. Konyves, T. (2011, Sept. 7). Videopoetry: A manifesto.
[Electronic version] http://issuu.com/
tomkonyves/docs/manifesto_pdf.
16. Levy, M. M. (1986). Paradise Lost in Northern Wisconsin. In G.
M. Crump (Ed.), Approaches to teaching Milton’s Paradise
Lost. NY: MLA.
17. Lockward, D. (1994, Sep.). Poets on teaching poetry. English
journal, 83(5), 65-70.
18. Perloff, M., & Hallberg, R. van (2001). A dialogue on evolution
in poetry. In D. E. Hall (Ed.), Professions. Chicago: University
of Illinois Press.
19. Phillips, J. (2007). Imagined. [Electronic version] Visual
poetry. http://phillipspoetry.com/ interactive_poem1.html>.
20. Phillips, J. (2012). Word power poetry & poetics: Visual
digital & concrete. Canberra: Author.
21. Piombino, N. (1998). The aural ellipsis and the nature of
listening in contemporary poetry. In C. Bernstein (Ed.), Close
listening: Poetry and the performed word (pp. 53-72). NY:
Oxford University Press.
22. Showalter, E. (2003). Teaching literature. Malden: Blackwell.
23. Tarzia, W. (2001, Jun. 22). How I used my stroke for teaching
poetry. The chronicle of higher education, 47(41), 5.
24. Uribe, A. M. (1969). It’s raining. [Electronic version]
http://vispo.com/uribe/drop.html.
25. Uribe, A. M. (1998). Gym. [Electronic version]
http://vispo.com/uribe/gym.html.
26. Wrigg, W. (1991, Mar./Apr.). A strategy for teaching poetry.
Clearinghouse, 64(4).
*****
Mahdi Shafieyan / The Eng Lit J. 2014, 1(1): 6-10

6. 10http://english.aizeonpublishers.net/content/2014/1/eng6-10.pdf
Notes
i. For anipoetry, see: A. M. Uribe, (1998), Gym, Web, 16 June 2012. <http://vispo.com/uribe/gym.html>.
For typoetry, see: A. M. Uribe, (1969), It’s raining, Web. 16 June 2012. <http://vispo.com/uribe/ drop.html>.
For interactive poetry, see: J. Phillips, (2007), Imagined, Visual poetry, Web. 11 Sept. 2011. <http://
phillipspoetry.com/interactive_poem1.html>.
For visual poetry, generally, and concrete poetry, specifically, see: J. Phillips, (2012), Word power poetry & poetics: Visual digital &
concrete (Canberra: Author).
Mahdi Shafieyan / The Eng Lit J. 2014, 1(1): 6-10