Celebrate Nat’l Poetry Month with SPI’s Poet Series, Grades 4-12
Donald Hall at his home in New Hampshire, 2007. Tony Cenicola, Photographer. ©2018 The New York Times Company.
Explore the Prose and Poetry of World-Renowned Poets
For National Poetry Month, Story Preservation explores the differences and similarities between prose and poetry by comparing and contrasting poems, essays, and works of non-fiction as written by a single poet about a life experience.
DONALD HALL
In 2011 Story Preservation Initiative had the honor of recording the personal narrative of Donald Hall at Eagle Pond Farm, his family home in New Hampshire. Donald is considered to be one of the most significant poets of his generation. In 2006, he was named United States Poet Laureate, and in 2010 he received the National Medal of Arts from then-President Barack Obama. His awards and accomplishments are many.
In addition to poetry, Donald wrote numerous books of prose, including essays, short stories, and children’s books.
As taken from his Story Preservation Initiative recording, Donald shares, A poem is something that “fills you up. You put the poem in your body and you experience it. A poem’s end is experience, it is not understanding.”
For middle and high school age students: Listen to SPI’s recording of Donald, found on the 4-12 Learning Lab site, Arts/ Poets.
Then read an essay from Donald’s book “String too Short to be Saved,” (1960). The stories recount, in prose form, Donald’s boyhood summers spent on his family’s farm.
Following, read or listen to an oral rendering of Donald’s poem “Kicking the Leaves” (Harper and Row, 1978), a poem that reflects Hall’s happiness upon his return to the family farm, a place rich with memories of his boyhood and links to his past.
For students of all ages: Consider reading Donald’s book “Ox Cart Man,” coupled with reading or listening to the poem ”Ox Cart Man,” found here.
Teachers and parents may find this article from Slate Magazine to be of interest, click here.
WESLEY MCNAIR
In 2015, shortly before his memoir “The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry” was published, Story Preservation Initiative had the privilege of recording the personal narrative of then Maine Poet Laureate, Wesley McNair. He is the author of ten volumes of poems and more than twenty books, including poetry, a memoir titled “The Words I Chose”, nonfiction essays, and edited anthologies. McNair has held grants from the Fulbright and Guggenheim foundations, two Rockefeller grants for study at the Bellagio Center in Italy, two NEA fellowships, and a United States Artist Fellowship as one of America's "finest living artists."
Wesley McNair is often referred to as an autobiographical poet of place.
For middle and high school age students: Listen to SPI’s recording of Wes, found on the 4-12 Learning Lab site, Arts/ Poets.
Students are then encouraged to read Wes’ memoir, “The Words I Chose.” A review by the University of Chicago Press states: Beginning in poverty and a broken home, Wesley McNair went on, through family hardships and setbacks, to become what Philip Levine has called “one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry.” This memoir tells how he developed into a poet against the odds, incorporating his struggles into his art.
SPI provides a hyperlink to the Colby College Special Collections Digital Portal for access to Wes’ poems, photographs, work papers, and correspondence.
An SPI pilot project that coupled reading Wes’ prose with related poetry proved to be immensely successful. After reading selections of his work, the students in the pilot were tasked with writing an autobiographical sketch in prose and then turning the sketch into a poem.
Pictured: From the Colby College Special Collections Digital Portal, an image of Wes’ work paper for the poem “After My Stepfather’s Death,” with audio. To access it, click here.
Maxine Kumin
Maxine Kumin was a highly celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet (“Up Country,” 1973) and author who served as US Poet Laureate from 1981- to 1982. In 2012 Story Preservation Initiative recorded Maxine’s personal narrative at her New Hampshire farmhouse.
SPI invites educators and students to listen to her audio recording and explore her writing, in both prose and poetry form. Her book of essays titled “In Deep: Country Essays” chronicles her life with her husband Victor, their children, horses, and the tending of their homestead farm. Many of her poems, likewise, reflect the daily habits and wonder of life there.
A view shared by many is that “Ms. Kumin’s finest poems were those that trained their focus close to home.”
SPI also had the pleasure of recording Victor Kumin’s story (uploaded to the Learning Lab site Humanities / American History). Victor served as a (reluctant) “soldier-scientist” at Los Alamos where he worked with Oppenheimer and others on the making and testing of the atomic bomb.
Maxine’s SPI story can be found by accessing our website, found www.storypreservation.org / Arts / Poets.
We close out this post with an excerpt from Maxine’s poem Homecoming, a personal favorite.
… we will hang up our clothes and our vegetables
we will decorate the rafters with mushrooms
on our hearth we will burn splits of silver popple
we will stand up to our knees in their flicker
the soup kettle will clang five notes of pleasure
and love will take up quarters.
Story Preservation Initiative makes its work available to all, free of charge. We are a small non-profit dedicated to inspiring young people by sharing first-person stories told by extraordinary people in the arts, sciences, and humanities.
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