A response to Rebecca Luce-Kapler’s article “Why is poetry still relevant in school?”

This article can be found in:

James, K., Dobson, T., Leggo, C., eds. English in Middle and Secondary Classrooms: Creative and Critical Advice from Canada’s Teacher Educators. Toronto: Pearson, 2012.

I decided to write a found poem from Kapler’s article.

Relevant Humanity

Students grapple with the mystery of biological living,

precise, ungraspable, creative, concrete.

Poetry sound bodies and rhythm syntax genesis

pocket heartbeats in oral beauty –

we witness comma-dash apprenticeship,

poetic tweets, line fires and thought breaks

that rewrite art, choice and imagination.

For if we teach lyric neuroscience,

or qualia wilderness turned loose,

students may become poets

through language, human meaning,

aesthetic hate and raw love.