Can’t bring the poet to your classroom? Here is the next best thing: video clips of poets reading their own poems.

The Poetry Everywhere Special Collection is a web-based teaching tool consisting of videos, background essays and lesson plans that help teachers and students explore the power of language and build reading and writing skills. The resource is drawn from the PBS Poetry Everywhere series and produced in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. The videos on the website capture some of the seminal voices of poetry, past and present, from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to Seamus Heaney, Marie Howe and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Each poem includes a video, some analysis, and teaching tips designed for grades 7-12.

By JOHN CURRAN, AP

Call it poetic justice: More than two dozen young people who broke into Robert Frost’s former home for a beer party and trashed the place are being required to take classes in his poetry as part of their punishment.

Using “The Road Not Taken” and another poem as jumping-off points, Frost biographer Jay Parini hopes to show the vandals the error of their ways - and the redemptive power of poetry.

More than two dozen young people who broke into the former home of Robert Frost in Vermont and vandalized it while holding a party are being required to take classes on his poetry as part of their punishment.

“I guess I was thinking that if these teens had a better understanding of who Robert Frost was and his contribution to our society, that they would be more respectful of other people’s property in the future and would also learn something from the experience,” said prosecutor John Quinn.

The vandalism occurred at the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, where Frost spent more than 20 summers before his death in 1963. Now owned by Middlebury College, the unheated farmhouse on a dead-end road is used occasionally by the college and is open in the warmer months. . . .

Parini, 60, a Middlebury College professor who has stayed at the house before, was eager to oblige when Quinn asked him to teach the classes. He donated his time for the two sessions.

On Wednesday, 11 turned out for the first, with Parini giving line-by-line interpretations of “The Road Not Taken” and “Out, Out-,” seizing on parts with particular relevance to draw parallels to their case.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” he thundered, reciting the opening line of the first poem, which he called symbolic of the need to make choices in life.

“This is where Frost is relevant. This is the irony of this whole thing. You come to a path in the woods where you can say, `Shall I go to this party and get drunk out of my mind?”‘ he said. “Everything in life is choices.”

Even the setting had parallels, he said: “Believe me, if you’re a teenager, you’re always in the damned woods. Literally, you’re in the woods - probably too much you’re in the woods. And metaphorically you’re in the woods, in your life. Look at you here, in court diversion! If that isn’t `in the woods,’ what the hell is `in the woods’? You’re in the woods!”

Read the entire article.

In honor of National Poetry Month, ten definitions of poetry by Carl Sandburg:

1. Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break the silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.
2. Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly the air.
3. Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.
4. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.
5. Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief notted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring.
6. Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.
7. Poetry is the harnessing of the paradox of earth cradling life and then entombing it.
8. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
9. Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
10. Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.

The Academy of American Poets has designated today “Poem in Your Pocket” Day, a day to keep a copy of one of your favorite poems handy and to share it with others.

Here’s the poem in my pocket today:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

–Walt Whitman

Whitman’s poem affirms the value of one experience without deprecating the other, acknowledging, for example, that there’s a time to learn from others and a time to learn for oneself, a time to be in large groups and a time to be alone, a time to be indoors and a time to be with nature, a time for science and math and a time for simple magic. As a Romantic and Transcendentalist, Whitman prefers solitude, nature, and things that can’t quite be explained. He encourages each reader to follow the heart.

What poem’s in your (literal or figurative) pocket today?

The Academy of American Poets announces its first “Poem in your Pocket Day” as part of National Poetry Month.

As the Academy of American Poets puts it: “The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month, then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.”

The Library of Congress is joining in the spirit of the day, too:

The Library will celebrate the Academy of American Poets’ first national “Poem in Your Pocket Day” with two events on Thursday, April 17, a poetry reading at noon and a web conference from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.

For the poetry reading, bring a published poem (not your own) to the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the James Madison Building. The poem in your pocket will grant you entrance to the theater and the opportunity to read the poem to the audience.

If a trip to the Library isn’t possible, you can share your selected poem online during the web conference. Participants will present their poem in the order in which they log in to OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries). Those who have a microphone have the option of reading their poem aloud. Participants without microphones may provide a link to their poem, and Library of Congress employees will take turns reading these poems.

Tomorrow I’ll post the poem in my pocket, and I hope you’ll do the same!

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

–Emily Dickinson

This poem about the power of the imagination invites imitation. I wonder how it would work if it were used as a model?

To make ____(A)______ it takes ____(B)______ and ____(C)______ —
____(B)______ and ____(C)______ ,
and ____(D)______ .
____(D)______ alone will do
if ____(C)______ are few.

• C and D rhyme.
• A is a concrete noun, with B and C as components, also concrete nouns.
• D would be an abstract noun revealing a truth about A.

To make Thanksgiving it takes pumpkin pie and a turkey.
Pumpkin pie, a turkey,
and family.
Family alone will do
If pies are few.

Hmmm … that’s weak but it’s a start.

Would this work with your students?