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Purposeful poetry.

Article Excerpt
"I need a poem to go with a unit on diseases." "I need a poem about respecting other people's property." "I need a poem for a lesson I'm doing on invertebrates." "Where are your poetry books about personal hygiene?"

Upon hearing such requests posed by education students and teachers, a librarian's first thought might be, Do these poems even exist? Of course, the next thought might be, Why in the world would someone think poetry books about personal hygiene should exist? Are hand-washing and nail-clipping the stuff of which poetry is made? And what does it teach students about poetry to give them a poem about, say, the flu?

Wonderful poetry can, of course, be written on almost any subject. This haiku from Jack Prelutsky's If Not for the Cat (Greenwillow) would fit with a unit on invertebrates and is a genuinely evocative poem that in seventeen syllables captures the essence of jellyfish:

Boneless, translucent, We undulate, undulate, Gelatinoush.

The problem comes in when poets begin writing poetry to fit a particular subject in order to satisfy curriculum needs. Then it becomes purposeful poetry, where the poet's intention isn't self-expression or revelation or even merely observation. Instead, the poet intends to teach children something finite and factual.

In some ways, poetry for children has always been a strange beast. Poetry, more than other forms of writing, tends to be an intensely personal expression. No characters spark a story to life, and generally no plot dictates the form of the work (putting aside the narrative poem or free-verse novel). Instead, poems spring from experience and the desire to put feelings or thoughts into words, using meter and rhythm to further...

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