Poetry in School?

[emberwood]

I am definitely not a poetry person and I would like a solid list of poems to bring to middle school students. I have a couple from Edgar Allan Poe, but that's the only poet I really got into when I was growing up. I know that I can find a list of poems typically taught in middle school, but there are students like me who will not get into those. I need poems that are loved by younger students, but can be taken seriously academically. Ideas?

[LolaC]

Robert Frost is quite good although his topics run along the same vein as Edgar Allan Poe.

Roald Dahl is a very good author for children and he has done some poetry as well.

If you want something more contemporary and addresses human rights issues Mary Angelou is really good for that.

[castielfalling]

There are some poems we did in seventh grade that I still love and remember. I would recommend those because I remember almost everyone liking them.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
The Lady of Shallot
Childhood
Macavity the Mystery Cat
Follower

[foreverreading162]

In middle school there was a poem that helped. It's called still i stand by Maya Angelou

[CaseyFry]

Some of the poets I was introduced to in school that I highly recommend are:

William Wordsworth
Emily Dickenson
Sylvia Plath
Robert Frost
Langston Hughes
William Shakespeare (though his plays are better than his poetry)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (especially "The Lady of Shalott")
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (especially "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner")
John Keats
T.S. Elliot

[Lovewebbs]

The Lady of Shalott one of my favorites as well. I wrote a comment on it once and I became unpopular as I believed the shallot was an onion under the water. And as Lancelot drank from the water he imagined a whole world revolving around this weed that tethered itself to the ground, trying to escape its hold. And the window was the water from which it looked up through. Dramatic men with wild minds wrote poems of anything from weeds to damsels in distress.

[Liveforchrist51]

In all honesty, doing poetry in school was such a dull thing for me. I hated it. Most of the poems teachers use are very old school and not easy to relate to. I don’t have a list of poems in mind, but I do know that the same oldies are not enjoyable. Find something much more modern and relatable. I think it would be good for kids these days, especially to be able to display their emotions and not even realize it.

[EternalD]

Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘From a Railway Carriage’.

Taken from Stevenson’s 1884 volume A Child’s Garden of Verses, this Victorian classic describes a train journey and the fast-moving panoramic view witnessed from the train window:

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by …

[EternalD]

The Mountain And The Squirrel
Ralph Waldo EmersonBy Ralph Waldo Emerson More Ralph Waldo Emerson

The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel,
And the former called the latter
"Little prig."
Bun replied,
"You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry:
I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track.
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut."



Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/ ... do-emerson