Teaching Poetry in a Fourth Grade Classroom
- 13 minutes ago
- 2 min read
By Abby E. Murray
Because I am a guest, I do not punch the teacher
on the jaw when he complains about Rahim
in front of Rahim, saying he takes too long to understand
most of his lessons, tells me I can move on to work
with students who will actually write something
on their pieces of lined paper, which I brought for them
because I am a guest. A poetry teacher of mine
once told me to never show up anywhere empty-handed:
always carry a gift, she said, and it took me years to realize
she was talking about poetry as well as the myriad ways
we arrive at each other’s thresholds in need of something:
to be fed, to be taken in, to be washed or warmed
or wondered about. Rahim wants to know if it’s okay
to start a poem with I remember and I tell him
those are the words every good poem needs in order to begin.
He writes i rember and I can feel his teacher frowning
down on us like some enormous lake-bird watching fish
dart beneath him in shallow water. Rahim stops writing
to roll up his paper and hold it like a telescope,
squints through it at his teacher, who turns away
as if this isn’t precisely what poets hope their words will do
once they’ve been brought forward: curl themselves
around the reminder that we remember, then be raised
to the open eye and seen through.
I Don’t Know Anything
By Abby E. Murray
These are the words I climb into some nights
and wear like an enormous sweater: I don’t know anything
but remember the pinching fit of certainty. Just years ago,
I made up rules for knowing the way my teachers did:
here is how a person writes good poems, bakes good bread,
raises a good child. I had students of my own
and gave them what I thought was the recipe for knowing
but turned out to be an old receipt for groceries.
The world grew around us, indecipherable and beloved.
My teachers are gone now and each bite of bread tastes different.
If a poem has meaning don’t ask me to find it.
Even my daughter surprises me, her innocence
as overwhelming as her selfishness—I am surrounded
by things I don’t understand and full of ways to feel about it.
Why not be stupid with happiness, here by a cold windowpane,
watching the city fill up with snow? There is more to love
than we have time and none of us know any better.
Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington.
