Poetry II

POEMS ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

	Sylvia M. Vardell’s 300+-page The Poetry Teacher’s Book of Lists (CreateSpace, 2012) is a terrific resource, crammed with annotated lists of prize-winning poetry books, Common-Core-related poetry books, thematic poetry books (about everything from animals, baseball, and birds to war, weather, and world history), poetry for holidays, and approaches to teaching poetry.
	Barbara Chatton’s Using Poetry Across the Curriculum (Libraries Unlimited, 2010) covers writing poetry, learning about poets, creating poetry anthologies, reading and retelling classic poems, poetic forms and conventions, and poetry across the curriculum in science, math, history, geography, fine arts, and physical education. Many book and resource lists. For elementary- and middle-school-level kids.
	By J. Patrick Lewis and Laura Robb, Poems for Teaching in the Content Areas (Scholastic, 2007) is a collection of 75 poems plus teaching ideas to mesh with history, geography, science, and math lessons. For ages 9 and up.

POETRY AND LITERATURE

	Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Good Books, Good Times (HarperCollins, 2000) is a delightful illustrated collection of poems about books and reading by such poets as Myra Cohn Livingston, Jack Prelutsky, and X.J. Kennedy. For ages 4-8.
	By Laura Purdie Salas, BookSpeak! Poems about Books (Clarion Books, 2011) is a collection of creatively illustrated poems about reading and books, among them “If a Tree Falls” (“If a book remains unopened…”), “A Character Pleads for His Life,” and “On the Shelf and Under the Bed.” For ages 4-9.
	Poetry Through the Ages is a terrific exploration of the history of poetry from ancient times to the present. Also included are definitions and examples of many poetic forms (with helpful instructions for writing poems of your own) and an overview on reading and speaking poetry. Click on “About” for a detailed teacher’s guide to accompany the site, with a challenging list of lesson plans and projects. For middle-school-level students and up.
	From the Academy of American Poets, Ars Poetica: Poems about Poetry has a long list of just that, among them Archibald MacLeish’s famous “Ars Poetica” (“A poem should not mean, but be”). Also see Poems on Poems.
	12 Beautiful Poems for Booklovers is an excellent selection, each poem illustrated with a picture of the author. #1: Emily Dickinson’s “There Is No Frigate Like a Book.”

POETRY AND HISTORY

	By Langston Hughes, I, Too, Am America (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2012) is a picture-book version of the poem “I, Too:” “I am the darker brother/They send me to eat in the kitchen/When company comes/But I laugh/And eat well/And grow strong.” For ages 4-9.
	Read Langston Hughes’s I, Too online at the Poetry Foundation website.
	Susan Katz’s The President’s Stuck in the Bathtub (Clarion Books, 2012) has a poem for every president from George Washington (“Where Didn’t George Washington Sleep?”) to Barack Obama (“Yo Mama”), each with an appealing cartoon-style illustration. The poems are crammed with the sort of human interest that sticks in readers’ memories: John Quincy Adams was fond of skinny-dipping; 350-pound William Howard Taft got stuck in the bathtub; Rutherford B. Hayes had the first White House telephone; Jimmy Carter was attacked by a rabbit. For ages 6-10.
	Also see Mac Barnett’s President Taft is Stuck in the Bath (Candlewick, 2016). “Blast,” said Taft. “This could be bad.” For ages 4-8.
	Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Hand in Hand: An American History Through Poetry (Simon & Schuster, 1994) is an impressive 144-page illustrated collection, covering American history from the arrival of the first settlers through modern times. The poems, grouped into eight different historical categories, are by such poets as Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman. A great resource for ages 7 and up.
	Lives: Poems About Famous Americans (HarperCollins, 1999), selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, is a collection of poems about sixteen famous persons – among them Paul Revere, Sagacawea, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison, Eleanor Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, Rosa Parks, and Neil Armstrong – by many different poets. Each poem is paired with full-page folk-art-style portrait by Leslie Straub. For ages 8-13.
	J. Patrick Lewis’s Heroes and She-roes (Dial, 2005) is a collection of illustrated poems celebrating “everyday” heroes, among them Helen Keller, an elementary schoolteacher, firefighters, Rosa Parks, Rosie the Riveter, Gandhi, and Cesar Chavez. For ages 8-13.
	Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, America at War (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2008) is an illustrated collection of 50 poems, variously categorized under American Revolution, Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, and Iraq War. A prologue, “Wish for Peace” by Joan Bransfield Graham, begins “Would/that war/could only/rage upon the/battlefield of page.” For ages 9 and up.
	All right – how could Rosemary and Stephen Benet’s A Book of Americans go out of print? Luckily it’s still available, inexpensively, from used-book suppliers, and it’s more than worth the minimal price. Poems, each featuring a prominent American, cover American history from Christopher Columbus to Woodrow Wilson. (In between: Virginia Dare, Pocahontas, Peter Stuyvesant, Captain Kidd, George Washington, Abigail Adams…) And, unlike most writers in the 1930s, the Benets appreciated the plight of the native Americans (“But just remember this about/Our ancestors so dear/They didn’t find an empty land/The Indians were here.”). For ages 9 and up.
	Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown’s Body (Ivan R. Dee, 1990) is an epic, wonderful, poetic, and heartbreaking story of the Civil War from the viewpoints of disparate characters. Read it, guys. For ages 13 and up.
	From the New Yorker, Poetry for Presidents is a history of inaugural poems.
	Historical Poems is a list of poems by Rudyard Kipling that trace the course of English history from prehistory to the early 20th century. Each poem (click on the red arrow) is accompanied by a page of interesting historical background information.
	From the Academy of American Poets, 19th– and 20th-century war poems.
	From the Library of Congress, Finding the Heart in History: Making Connections Through Poetry is introduced with a quote from Plato: “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” The site describes a project to make an American-history-based “found poetry” chapter book using primary source documents and images. Documents and images are available at the site from the Library of Congress collection, categorized by historical period. Adaptable for a range of ages.