PoetryUnit

//Poetry Unit//
Poetry is as vital today as ever. The emergence of rap in today’s popular music is but one example of the ongoing use and popularity of poetry and verse. How many students, however, who enjoy rap, are aware of the debt to previous generations of poets that this musical form owes? Poets like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks and Maya Angelou have done much to advance and promote rhythms, meters and cultural subject content upon which current musical and verse forms depend. I begin my comments with this example because I believe it best illustrates society’s continual dependence upon poetry, past and present, to reflect societal needs, issues, temperaments and changes. The art form of poetry has changed and grown in its attempt to mirror and observe the growth and complexity of issues and change in society over the past one hundred years. Poetry continues to provide the voice and forum for personal exploration and commentary of the generation that produces it and champions poetry as its vehicle of expression. While many agree that reading is becoming an endangered skill and dying practice, the proliferation of poetry presses, publications and contests for adolescents and adults alike is testimony to poetry’s continued survival and appreciation. Perhaps this is due in part to the brevity of the form. Certainly, the emotional nature of poetic content and treatment appeals to all age groups. It is this quality of emotional expression that, I believe, makes contemporary poetry so popular with high schools students today. The genre offers the adolescent an opportunity to explore various emotional states and stages of development. Poetry is safe, even noble, arena in which to examine social issues of concern and contemporary values. The historical origins, associations and development of societal conditions depicted in poetry often lend insight into student’s own exploration for understanding of the life process. I hope, more than anything else, to offer students of this lesson an opportunity to meet new voices, and some old, who will help them explore issues which are as important and timely to them as they were to the poets’ themselves.
 * Contemporary Poetry as a Reflection of Modern Society**