How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson

It doesn’t have to be deep or introspective they just have to get the point across. Ask which details are most important, how they can combine some, what words can they use to make the biggest impact in the smallest form. (I wouldn’t worry about the iamb, just the 10 syllables per line.) Make sure you guide them through it.

Now have them try to condense that memory into sonnet form like Nelson did.

Get the students to write down their favorite memory in as much detail as possible. You can’t see what the mirror doesn’t show: If someone didn’t pound the bathroom door.

Headlines would read if I was news-worthy.īut that’s just the top-of-the-iceberg me. In this way, the printed page will always be better than an ebook. Nelson wrote each poem as unrhymed sonnets, but because of my reading device, I didn’t know that until the Author’s Note at the end of the book. I would suggest reading it on something other than the Kindle app on your phone though because you lose the form of the poems that way. Once I picked it up, I didn’t put it down. Some may find it a little boring because Nelson tells things as they were without getting opinionated about them, but I found it to be an interesting read.

Things only truly get heated in “Safe path through quicksand” (and deservedly so). Just like all good poetry, you feel as if you are experiencing these situations and react towards them as you would and not the poet. Nothing is spelled out for the reader which leaves you to feel how you want about the poems without feeling influenced by the poet which is something hard to do with memoirs. Each poem had the maturity level of “the Speaker” which brought this book to a new level. Even though it was a retrospective look at her life, Nelson still writes with an innocence that you would expect from a child. I thought the book would focus more on poetry and not her life (and I wouldn’t have thought that had I actually read what the book was about). That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I should encourage reading the synopsis on the back cover or online. This book was not what I expected it to be that’s what you get for buying a book solely based on the title though. Marilyn Nelson looks back on the years of her life from 1950 to 1960 using sonnets.

How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson