Poesia Espanola

When I think of music as change, I often juxtapose the concept of poetry as constancy. Certain poems have been a backdrop for all eras of my life: "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now...", "Ozymandias", "Tintern Abbey", "Remember me when I am gone", ... "a host of golden daffodils", and above all, "Margaret are you grieving." Sometimes, late at night, I'll read these poems to myself to find comfort, insight or just a piece of eternity. They are crystallized emotions, so neatly expressed. They are reminders to notice the beauty and love and connections around us.


However, poetry isn't just constancy. It is also a meterstick for change. When I was 10, the expression of mortality in the cherry tree poem was just a mathematical challenge; I did not feel the need to worry about having a limited number of flowering seasons ahead of me. Now, at 33, I am aware that we grasp onto life with just a gossamer thread, and when I read the poem I want my older friends to savor the spring planting season. Someday, I suppose, I will look at the poem and know I only have a dozen more springs, if I'm lucky. Luckily, right now, it is just an urgent reminder for me to appreciate each day.


My poetry writing, too, has changed over the years. As a little girl, it was a way for venting my anger. With all due apologies to my big sister, one of the poems I was most proud of as a kid was "I hate Tizatoot; that's for sure/ She asks for everything and then takes more." I was outraged when she and my mother LAUGHED at the poem...but now, I see it is more cute than quality. Later, I worked hard on eliciting clever images in my poetry, and then, more recently, in mixing sounds, rhythm and imagery into intense poems. Just in the past year or so, though, I've switched to trying to hide myself less in my poetry. I'm trying to let my humanness come through on paper, and not be cloaked in intellectualism. I wonder where this will lead me.


One thing is certain: I have always valued poetry. And I fear that it is a dying art, because it isn't taught in the schools as much as in the past. I believe there is a value in learning to recite poems, as well as in learning to express yourself through poetry. I want both of these skills to be ones that my students have, and that they enjoy.


Over the summer, I prepared a poetry enrichment unit, but due to politics and time constraints, I wasn't able to pursue it outside of my regular Spanish teaching schedule. At first I was devastated, and then decided to use elements of the unit and fit them into my Spanish curriculum. My third grade students learned part of a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca, and then wrote their own versions of it. We tied it into a bilingual dictionary unit, and into our review of colors. Then they learned a poem by Gloria Fuertes (advocating a donkey) and wrote their own bilingual poems about animals, aiming to use interesting sound combinations, especially since they had the advantage of two languages. Finally, we spoke about beautiful imagery in poetry, and each class wrote a bilingual poem with interesting images about instruments. They also sang "De Colores", "Vengan a ver mi granja" (a farm song) and "En la pulga de San Jose" (a song about a fleamarket for instruments). Last night was the big performance. I was very proud of my students, and happy for them that they could get recognition for their creativity.





The most exciting part of this bilingual poetry project, for me, was when students began to bring in poems they had written at home, "just because". I am so excited that my energy and my presenting the kids an opportunity and format for self-expression inspired for them to be creative because they CHOSE to, and not because they were required to. Creativity by choice becomes lifetime creativity. Then, although poetry will celebrate change and be read differently over the years, poetry can be constancy, again, as I once envisioned it.