Laura Shovan: In Defense of Great Writers

I am so very excited to introduce our first TLD contributor:

LAURA SHOVAN

Laura is poetry editor for Little Patuxent Review and editor of two poetry anthologies. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the inaugural Harriss Poetry Prize. Laura was a finalist for the 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award and was a 2013 Gettysburg Review Conference scholarship recipient. Laura works with young poets as a Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence. Her blog, Author Amok, covers poetry and arts education.

Those are all good reasons to admire Laura, though I'd like to add a couple more.  For one, her writing is fantastic. (Make sure to congratulate her on recently being offered representation by Stephen Barbara of Foundry Literary + Media!) She also comes up with the most amazing ideas for poetry series, like last month's Source Poems or February's Pantone Project. But it's because of Laura's work with students that I asked her to be a regular contributor to my blog.  Thankfully, she said yes.  

I look forward to learning much from Laura's experience as a Poet in the Schools, and hope that one day I might be able to do something similar in Florida.  In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Laura Shovan to Today's Little Ditty!

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Last week, the poetry teacher in me was infuriated when this circulated around the Internet:

Photo: Jason Gardner

It wasn’t the poem itself that upset me. The poem is great. The poem shows how even the youngest writers are capable of creating powerful images.

What upset me was this caption:

First grader (probably) accidentally writes greatest poem ever.

I have been working as a Maryland State Arts Council poet-in-residence for nearly fifteen years. Every time I walk into an elementary school classroom, I am amazed by both the command of language and the empathy that young writers are capable of in their poetry.

To suggest that this poem was written accidentally is to deny something significant.

Children are great writers. And no wonder! They use language every day in their speaking. They make similes when they are playing outside, and point out a cloud that looks just like a giant tortoise. They have classmates whose first and last names are alliterative. They know songs by heart, which means that even very young children are familiar with rhythm and rhyme.

Instead of assuming that this poem was an accident, let’s take a different approach. Let’s parse the poem and give the poet—who is naturally using the poetic techniques of every day speech—literary terms for what she has created.

We did the soft wind.    

• The poet is using a metaphor. He or she is also creating suspense in the first line. The reader has to wait to find out what the people in the poem are doing.

We danst slowly. We swrld aroned. 

• The poet picks up the s from “soft” in line one and carries it into the alliteration of this line. (BTW: The s sound appears in every line of the poem.) Notice the internal “l” sounds in “slowly” and “swirled.”

We danst soft.        

• Repetition of “soft” from line one and “dance” from line two.

We lisin to the mozik.

• So far the poem has been tactile. This image appeals to the reader’s sense of hearing.

We danst to the mozik.   

• This line ties the senses together—the feeling of dancing combined with the sound of music.

We made personal space.  

• I guide young writers to leave the reader with a powerful idea in the last line. The poet has done that here. By ending with an image of the two people in the poem, the poet tells us that what’s important here is the closeness between the two dancers.

Okay. I know I could be accused of pulling apart this poor kid’s poem, tying it to a chair the way Billy Collins suggests we should NOT do. But I think it’s important to understand what makes this poem so wonderful.

If this first grader were in one of my workshops, I would keep my comments to her simple. “Great job using alliteration!” and “I like how I didn’t know what the people were doing until the second line,” or “You added a sound image!”

The poet is already using these literary techniques, naturally. As a teacher, I am giving him names for the skills he is already developing. In class, we call these literary terms “fancy poetry words.”

Why is it important to know the fancy poetry words if children naturally use simile, metaphor, and repetition in their writing?

It is exciting, as an emerging writer, when an adult says, “Hey, you’re already good at this! It’s not an accident. You’ve got skills.” Those skills aren’t accidental. They come from listening, speaking, and the very human practice of making metaphor. Kudos to photographer Jason Gardner for noticing this excellent poem. He took the picture during a visit to a New York City elementary school.

I’d also like to recognize the unnamed after-school program leader who encouraged this first grader to write a poem. When we make time for poetry in the classroom, we are creating “personal space” for children to test out their emerging control of language. We are inviting them to dance with words.

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Thank you, Laura!  You are, indeed, a class act, and I eagerly anticipate your next visit to Today's Little Ditty.

And now, dear friends, I invite you to waltz over to Laura's own blog, Author Amok, to see what's on offer, and then fox trot over to Elizabeth Steinglass, Poet where Liz is rounding up the rest of today's Poetry Friday offerings.

But before you go...

We're already midway through May, so don't forget to send me your water-themed cinquain for Laura Purdie Salas' Ditty Challenge this month.  Won't you join in the fun?  Who knows, you might even win a copy of Laura's book, WATER CAN BE...!  Use the contact form in the sidebar to the right to send me your splashtastic poem.