MODULE 6 RESPONDING TO POETRY

        JANECZKO COLLECTION

Janeczko, Paul and Melissa Sweet. Dirty Laundry Pile: Poems in Different Voices. New York. Harper Collins Publishers. 2001.

ISBN:0-688-16252-5

Dirty Laundry Pile: Poems in Different Voices is a collection of poems by different authors compiled by Paul Janeczko. According to Janeczko, the poems are persona or mask poems. In other words, they are written as if an animal or an inanimate object were actually speaking aloud. Most of these poems have been featured in other anthologies and the reader will recognize familiar poets such as Douglas Florian, Bobbi Katz and Jane Yolen in addition to new poets. The poems in this collection consist of rhyming and non-rhyming poems and the book contains one concrete poem entitled “The Mosquito’s Song.”

Readers will have no problem using their imagination to put themselves in place of these animals and objects because the imaginative language used practically puts them there. In the poem “Roots,” Madeleine Comora uses figurative language to enable the reader to “see” the actual roots under the ground.

Roots like ours,

coarse and strong

as a grandmother’s fingers,

reach into the earth.

A tangled weave,

rough and aged

like wooden lace.

Roots like ours

hold the world

in place.

The illustrations by Melissa Sweet are cartoon-like, watercolor depictions and complement each poem nicely. The book contains an introduction by Paul Janeczko but does not have a table of contents or index. The poems do not seem to be arranged in a particular order but poems about the same subject are grouped together. For example, poems about kites are grouped together and poems about the animals are grouped together.

SPOTLIGHT POEM:

     The Mosquito’s Song

        Peggy B. Leavitt

 I sing.                   You slap.

 I mean                   no harm.

          There is no cause

            for your alarm.

               A little drop

                is all I ask.

                It really is

  a simple task.

     So please

     hold still

       at this

     juncture,

      while I

       make

       a tiny

          P

          U

          N

          C

          T

          U

          R

          E

          !

To begin the lesson, I would ask the students if they had ever been bitten by a mosquito. I would then lead them into a discussion of how it felt and what they did about it. I would encourage them to think about how the mosquito felt and what they thought motivated it to bite them. I would then read them the poem while showing them the picture. A discussion could follow on concrete poetry and I could show them examples of other concrete poems such as Doodle Dandies by J. Patrick Lewis. To put into practice what we talked about, the students would be asked to write their own mask or concrete poem.