Love Poems

I sort of fly by the seat of my pants when I teach. I have a running list of things I want to do with my students, and every day I decide how I’m going to inch them along it, through “verbs” and “drawing conclusions,” “theme,” and, of course, figurative language.

Last week I learned of the YouTube video of a three-year-old reciting Billy Collins’s “Litany”. There, too, was Billy Collins himself, talking about and reading the poem:

Both Good Fortune and Lady Luck had reared their beautiful heads. My students laughed at the poem, were impressed by the little kid, and groaned when I told them they had to write their own love poems with lots of metaphors. But they came back to life when I told them they could make their poems disparaging, if they’d like.

Some trophies (click each to enlarge):

The little metaphorical experience was too rich to end yesterday, though. Today I’m going to hit up Shakespeare’s “My mistress’ eyes.” (Don’t worry, I’ll going to replace “breasts are” with “breast is” and deceitfully explain beforehand that that’s just an old way of saying “chest.”

They’ll love it.