PROCEDURES FOR STIMULATING TIm WRITING OF ORIGINAL ~ POETRY BY JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL PUPILS By Georgia A. Brewster -:;:;- Contributions of the Graduate School Indiana State Teachers College Number 105 Submitted.in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Ec;lucation ",. ,,', l)3 ., l ') .. I" l:t ( l) .. ;>.):) j l;) t> .. n l' , ~; ~~';:)l: ,.I,~~ "~./J) 1933 .' ACKNOWLEDGMENT, The writer wishes to express her sincere thanks to Dr. Cox, Mr. Ramsey, and Mr. Abell for kindly help and inspi ration. '. Thanks are also due Mr. Lawrence Jones; of the Sarah Scott Junior High School. for his unfailing cooperation and , encouragement during the period of this experiment. ' Georgia A. Brewster ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACK1\IowLEDGJ~fIE]:\lTS. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ..... • • • • • •. • • • • • • • • • • ii I. INTRODUCTION••••••••••••••••••••••.•••••••••••• 1 A. The Problern.. . . • • . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . • • . • . • • . • • 1 B. Sources 0 f' Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 C. The Purposes of the Study.............. .... 2 1. General Statement of Techniques Used.. 2 2. Incentives to Write................... 7 II. RESEARCH IN THE FIELD•••••••••••••••••••••••••• 10 A. Similar Experiments Previously ~lade. . . . . . . . 10 1. General Statement..................... 10 2. Brief Review of Similar Experiments Conducted by Others................... 10 B. Questionnaire Given Classes by the Writer.. 21 III. DISCUSSION OF TECHNIQ.UES .AND DEVICES USED TO ILLUSTRATE AND TEST............................ 26 A. The Music of Poetry........................ 26 1. Rhyt.hm................................ 27 2. Repetition............................ 32 3. Rhyme................................. 35 4. Alliteration.......................... 43 5. onomatopoeia...................•. ~.... 45 6. Hard and Soft Conson~nts............... 47 Vowels................................ 48 ? B. The Sequence of Sound and Sense............ 50 C. Simple Verse Forms ...•..................... 53 ··iii 1. Rnymed . 54 ! 2. pnrhymed " ,~ . 55 IV. DISCUSSlON OF TECrn~IQUES US~D TO ILLUSTRATE AND DEVELOP IMAGERY OF POETRY... . •. . . . . . . . . . . • • 60 A. Figures of Speech.•.•........... ~..........·60 1. Sim~le................................ 60 2. l\~etaphor.,............................. 61 3. Personifi.cat ion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . • 64 4. Hyperbole............................. 66 B. Dependence Upon Verbs and Adjectives....... 68 C. The Use of Suggestion Rather Than Direct Stateluent .. ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 V. TEE CHOICE OF SUBJECT , . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • 75 A. Subjects to Be Discouraged................. 77 1. General or Blanket Subject............ 77 2. Unfamiliar Subjects................... 78 3. Outgrown Subjects..................... 79 4. Trite Subjects........................ ·79 . B. SUbjects to be Encouraged.................. 80 l~ Specific Themes........... 80 2. Familiar Subjects..................... 80 3. Current Eve.nts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4. Intensely Personal Experience.... 81 VI. TIlE ASSI G11T-/I:IB1TT ••••••••• 83 c' •••• " " •• " ••••• " • " " • " " • • A. The Definite Assignment.................... 83 B. The Indefinite Assignment................ . . 86 VII. CLASS DISCUSSION'. OF ORIGINAL POEMS. . • . . . . . . . . • 89 iv , ~. Purposes , , ,a.... 89 1. Needed Criticism and Approval... ~..... 89 2. Critical Jud@Ilent ,.... 90 3. An Audience of Peers...... 90 4. The Pupils' Po1nt of View fo~the Teacher ' -. . . 90 B~ Errors Disclosed By Class Discussion....... 91 C. Attitudes Developed........................ 92 D•. Conclusions of Class Discussions........... 93 VIII. SID®~RY AND CONCLUSIONS.. 94 IOC. APPENDI.X. '. • • • • • •• • • . . • . . • .'. • • . .' • • • . .' • . • • •• • •• •• 96 A. Bibl~9graphy.......•......................• 96 \' B. Poetry Suitable for Children............... 98 C. Pupils' Original Poetry.................... 105 D. Letter of Commendation from Professor Hughes ~..~earns... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 v I. INTRODUCTION; Until very recent years all the emphasis in the teaching of poetry to children has been on the side of appreciation gained by reading or studying the works of acclaimed poets. The value of such teaching cannot be over estimated, but such a one-sided attitude toward the benefits of the study of poetry has resulted in our pupils becoming more or less indifferent critics of others. The creat ive activity of writing original verse has long been regarded as a mystic, mysterious cUlt, and has been neglected or ignored entirely in most schools. But teachers here and there are coming to believe that for a child to write original verse is a primitively natural activity, and these teachers are groping to find ways to encourage this type of expression. A. The Problem The problem of this study was to st imulate pupils of junior high school age to write good original poetry. It is the aim' 'of the. writer to set forth in this paper the purposes, tech- niques and devices used, and conclusions reached in an effort to teach pupils to express' themselves in original verse. B. Sources of Data The work with which this thesis deals has grown out of a :J;) ;»);) ~, , ~ • ~ ,.,~;)' ;.J _.' ~';}) program of. teaching carr1ed on ,during thep~'4t:~~'rd~\ii~e:E"$ ;at~·. ~ ~, :: ~ _:J.~)';~;):J; ~. "_:~~>;') ~J,;',,' the Sarah Scott Junior Hfgb: School,:Terr~.:~~lf~~>,! ,rJ n~+a!;f, ai.;,;.3'P{.1¢)J'"J, ~ '. 1 2 • pupils were of the highest abilit y sections of the seventh , grade, as determined by intelligence tests given upon their entering the school. With these were pupils of the eighth and ninth grades who wished to continue the work, and these groups were supplemented by a Poetry Club, the membership of wh"ich was composed of those children who wished to join this club rather than any other of the school clubs. There were 453 pupils in the combined enrollment of classes during the three years, and 53 pupils. in the Poetry Club during the three semesters that it has been in operation. c. Purposes of the study In general, the purposes of this study were three-fold; r'irst, the school paper, The Orange Peel, had a poetry section devoted to the pupils' own efforts. The feeling of the English department was that this section was not so good as it might be, therefore an immediate, and very real reason (to the child) was found to improve, this work by means of this activity; sec ond, 1t was hoped that this work, being, as i twas, the result of a conscious, hard-driven effort, might reveal to the teacher some tangible aid in this phase of teaching, and also some of the pitfalls and errors to avoid; third, and of most importance, the purpose of. this st:Udy.was to lead the pupils to genuine and enjoyable self-expression through their writing of. original verse. 1. General Statement of tne Techniques Used. The most fun- ",,- damental method used i:p."conducting Fhis work was to avoid !Jon- sCieus technique. Whenever it was possible the teacher tried 3 to keep in the- b~ckgrou:hd all didactic instr'uction on the archi- , t'ectur,e of poetry, all formal treatment of the sUbject. All teaching of rhyme, rhythm, stanza, figures of speech, and such mechanical, scholarly measurements of poetry were taught inci dentally. If the names of th ese devices were given, their re membrance'was not enforced, nor were definitions reQuired. For pupils of the junior high school a "literary conventional treatment of poetry is neither necessary nor beneficial, and is not at all essential' either to the understanding or enjoyment . 1 class of poetry." lli..!Itriednot to dissect it. 'Probably of greater value than the "no technique" method used in this work was the reading of poetry to the children. This reading by the teach~~ was done with the hope of revealing to the pupils glimpses of the interest and beauty that poetry holds, and with the knOWledge that a1though how he does it, is often a mystery, nevertheless, the teacher can often "watch The Master work and catch Hints of the proper craft, Tricks of the tool's true play." --Browning, "Rabbi Ben Ezra" This reading of many poems to the pupils did not mean, however, that the pupil would consciously or unconsciously be imitative. The reading was done both 'openly and covertly, with and without pretext, and not always with due regard for the set lesson plan. Next in importance to the great amount of reading done was the matter of what to read. As far as possible the pupils were allowed to choose what was to be read, and recited to them. 'f lHoward Francis Seely, EnlQiing Poetry In the High School (New York: Johnson Publishing Company', 1931"); p. 192. '! 4 The "effort was. consciously made, to read poetry within the emo- tional !:ind intellectual ken 0 f .th~ 'pupils , although it was not thought 'necessary that the pupils should have experienced the same emotions as had the poet. Again consciously the list of poems read was made as flexible as possible, and was as broad as man's activities. Moreover, the poems read were chosen with no thought of their historical vralue or reputation, but the "chief oriterion in selecting poetry to read was the pupils' enjoyment and welfare, 2 not pedantic justice to the field of poetry as a whole." , A very inoomplete list of sources of material of po~ms read is inoluded in this paper in the appendix. The field of such poetry is so large that it would have been presumptuous for the writer to have attempted to compile an all-inclusive anthology. The ohoioe of poems to be read was governed by the intangible, unlooked-for, compelling urge that may be satisfied by suoh a reading. The list given by the writer contains a preponderance of poems by modern poets, because the writer has the belief that much of the dislike for poetry by the young has been engendered through the forcing upon them of arohaic classics that would be the more readily understood and loved if given at a later period of study. Moreover, the writer has notic~d the keener interest taken by a class when it is informed that the poet . under discussion is alive today; that he spoke here in Terre Haute; and even perhaps, ,read his own poems • Louis Unt~rmeyer c6mPlains of the emphasis placed upon the New England group of 2' '" Howard Francis Seely, ££. cit., p. 57. 5 cp,oe.t.sin the. a.ve~age school curriculum. He says that not one of, 'this' group except Walt Whitman,'possessed the "warm, intense, thrillirig impact of personality which makes the art of all great writers human and enduring. ,,3 He says that there was too much general, superior similarity and mellowness. even in their , earlier writings. He deplores the fact that so many of these "faded relics," inhuman, dogmatic, and unrelated to life are given to' children under fifteen years of age for enjoyment. He continues, "Poems of the insistently didactic type--where all things in and out of nature, from a chambered nautilus to a ~illage blacksmith are used to point a specious and irrelevant moral--obfuscate and twist the normal views of the young reader until his vision becomes narrow and myoPic.,,4 The poems of the traditional poets should be read, but as Seely writes, ''We should be less awed by the supreme achieve- mentsof the race than we are thoughtfully concerned withthe attitude toward poetry which we wish our children to develop. Where·we get to in attitude, responsiveness, and appreciation is va:stl:( more important than what we get in poetry. We teachers .£l must not let ourselves be used . poetry; instead, we and our ~ pupils must it. ,,5 And since it seemed sound sense to go from the known to the unknown in the matter of reading poetry, the writer followed this procedure in her experiment. The pupils who composed the poetry writing class found the poems of the great ones of today less interesting than the work 3Louis Untermeyer, A New Era in American Poetry (New York: Henry' Holt and Company,1919) ,j)73. itf 4Ibid., p. 7.. . Se~ly ~ ,1 5Howard Francis .2.£.. cit., p. 57