“I don’t want to because boys don’t write poetry. Girls do.”

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech is a short, wonderful book about one boys struggle with poetry. To read a little summary about it, click here.

While going through school, most students have a bad experience with poetry, thus developing a dislike for the genre. Personally, I never really liked it growing up. A teacher would give my class a poem, tell us to read it, analyze it, and then share our thoughts about what it meant. Often, what I thought was the meaning of the poem was not the teacher’s same meaning, so I was always told my ideas were wrong. But really, poetry is supposed to convey a message to the reader, and that message may be different for everyone. I wish my teachers would have understood that…

Anyway, when reading this book, I realized how much of an impact poetry can have on a person, as long as it is taught correctly and in a FUN manner. In this book, Miss Stretchberry helps Jack realize that he can write poetry. She does this by sharing poems with Jack from which he can be inspired, thus helping him along in his process and gathering his thoughts. She also allows Jack to share his poetry with the class (at first anonymously), and then eventually he lets everyone know who is coming up with these great poems. Miss Stretchberry also allows Jack to decide how he wants his work displayed, which helps boost his self-esteem about his work.

I believe that by writing this book, Sharon Creech wanted students who read it to understand that they too can write poetry, and have fun while doing so. As a future teacher, I think that this book conveys the message that sometimes we need to let students have freedom while writing, and let them use their imagination while writing. Doing this often results in wonderful pieces of work, as shown by Jack in Love That Dog.

Writing poetry can really be a fun activity for students, as long as it is done right. Having students just memorize and analyze poems while not supplementing them in some way is probably going to result in a students absolute hate for poetry. Here is a link of tips to help teach poetry (:

One of the poems in Love That Dog is The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams.

The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Here is a poem I wrote, inspired by William Carlos Williams work.

 The Broken Glasses
Inspired by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

the child’s broken
glasses

taped together in the
middle

allowing him to
see.