genrefication

I’m putting more emphasis on genre in my poetry teaching this year.

It seems silly to me that we don’t give students a historical context for what they want to do with poetry. I mean, they feel the permission given by the Romantic poets to express their feelings in rhyme, to give voice to that inconsolable longing they’ve apprehended.

So we’re starting with lyric.

I gave them the following assignment over the weekend:

Obtain a copy of a book of poetry by two different contempory Canadian lyric poets from the library. Your two poets must be different in some way- style, subject matter, authorial identity.

I did not define “Lyric” for them.

I’m very curious about what they will dig up. When I googled “Canadian Contemporary Lyric Poet,” I got scores of hits for Jay Macpherson and a few for Dorothy Livesy.

and pretty much nobody else.

wtf???

As for me, I took pictures of daffodils in Trinity Bellwoods Park and dug up this handout that I wrote up a few years ago. I think it still stands.

The problem is that I don’tknow how to help them write a good lyric poem.

So I’ve got some more work cut out for me tonight.