POETIC LANGUAGE, INTERDISCURSIVITY AND INTERTEXTUALITY IN FIFTH GRADERS' POETRY: AN INTERPRETIVE STUDY
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Certo, J.L. (2015). Poetic language, interdiscursivity and intertextuality in fifth graders' poetry: An interpretive study. Journal of Literacy Research, 47(1), 49-82.
Poetic Language, Interdiscursivity and Intertextuality in Fifth Graders' Poetry:
An Interpretive Study
Introduction
In spite of poetry's affordances for children to focus closely on the beauty, play, and emotive power of language (Elster and Hanauer, 2002), poetry writing remains underrepresented in the U.S. curriculum (Certo, Apol, Wibbens, & Yoon, 2010; Donovan & Smolkin, 2006; Scherff & Piazza, 2005). Drawing from a case study of poetry writing and performance in one U.S. fifth-grade classroom, the purpose of this article is threefold: 1) to understand what poetic language children draw on and identify in their written poems, 2) to trace any interdiscursive and intertextual writing practices that children draw on to write poetry, and 3) to understand how, if at all, the act of reading an original poem might influence children's writing practices and literacy learning?
Previous research has tended to focus on the poetic language children write given particular instructional environments (Kamberelis, 1999; McClure, 1990; Steinburgh, 1999; Wilson, 2007; Wolf, 2006), such as ones that present students with "mentor texts" (Calkins, 2007; McClure, 1990) or "literary models (Wilson, 2007). In spite of views that children's writing development is in large part a complex linguistic process involving their engagement within and across social activities in and out of school (Dyson, 2003), the literature is scant on the social practices that children draw on to animate their poetry writing (Christianakis, 2011). By social practices, I mean the ways in which children might actively integrate formal poetic language taught with their interdiscursive and intertextual writing practices (to be defined in the next section). Lastly, while considerable scholarship has focused on the literacy benefits of children orally reading or performing previously published poems (e.g. Elster & Hanauer, 2002; Griffith & Rasinski, 2004; Martinez, Roser, & Strecker, 1999; Rasinski, Padak, Linek, & Sturtevant, 1994; Wilfong, 2008; Worthy & Prater, 2002), there are few investigations of the practices surrounding children's performances of their own poetry.
Crafting Poetic Language through Interdiscursive and Intertextual Practices
I frame this study primarily around poetic language theory (Jakobson, 1987; Tannen, 2007; Theune, 2007a), theories of writing as social practice (e.g. Bakhtin, 1986; Bazerman & Prior, 2005; Chapman, 1999; Miller, 1984; Street, 1993) and the role of audience awareness in performance theory (Goffman, 1959; Ivanic, 1998). To begin, there are poetic language features that are accepted by language theorists and linguists (e.g., Brown, 1999; Jakobson, 1987; Smitherman, 2000; Tannen, 2007; Theune, 2007a), some of which have been previously employed for analyzing children's poems (Kamberelis, 1999). Due to space limitations, I report primarily on the poetic features that can highlight tone and mood (e.g., repetition, rhyme, alliteration, metaphor) as well as the poetic structures that operate at the whole text level. After all, and following Theune (2007a), poems do not just have features, they also have structures, which can be thought of as the ways a poem distinctly turns, moves and travels, often ending in surprise. Theune (2007b) clarified that poetic structure is fundamentally different from form (such as a haiku, acrostic or limerick). According to Theune (2007b), most poems regardless of form—and including even free verse poems---have poetic structure. For example, Theune's (2007a) classifications of poetic structures include the ironic (poems surprising the reader with a turn from set up to punch line), the concessional (poems turning from acceptance or defeat to making a positive argument), the elegaic (poems turning from loss to love to triumph over death), or the retrospective-prospective (poems turning from past to present to future). Theune (2007b) makes the point that "structure's great strength really is its familiarity. . . structure's turning is something people do all the time with and in language." (p. 11). Nonetheless, there has been no exploration of the particular kinds of structural turns that might be in children's poems, nor any attempt to trace the origins of those structures.
In addition to drawing on poetic language theory, this study is undergirded with theories of childhood writing as a social practice (Chapman, 1999; Dyson, 2003; Kamberelis & de la Luna, 2004). Following Dyson (2003), childhood writing can be thought of as a social practice influenced not only by teacher, instructional task or resources, but also by other forces including peers, family members and popular culture. But what, specifically, might children's poetry writing practices look like? Kamberelis and de la Luna (2004) explained that there are particular practices to keep in mind when analyzing children's writing because such practices function as essential scaffolds for writing. First, interdiscursive practices or "adhering to abstract conventional ways of organizing language" (p. 244) can be thought of as children simply writing a poem based on their knowledge of how a poem should generally look. For example, they may craft a poem that looks similar to other poetic texts they have encountered. Interdiscursive practices might be present, too, when children draw loosely on another poem's structure or form, perhaps creating stanzas and shorter lines that look similar to other poems they have seen in or out of school. This loose adaptation may resemble the "mentor texts" (Calkins, 2006) or "literary models" (Wilson, 2007) that children have previously been exposed to. Yet, since poetic structural turns are something people do all the time with language (Theune, 2007b, p. 11), it may be the case that the poetic structure children employ in their poems resembles how they have heard language unfold orally, such as in formal school poetry readings or informal conversations or interactions in their child cultures.
Besides interdiscursive practices, children may also employ intertextual practices which involve "the heterogenous production of texts out of other specific texts or text fragments" (Kamberelis & de la Luna, 2004, p. 244). In other words, children may write poetry by drawing on partial textual content from another poem, text or conversation. Dyson's (1997, 2003) groundbreaking research on children's writing suggests that children, in particular, negotiate social membership, friendship, and common interests through their intertextual practices. Although her research was in the context of children's multi-genre literacy practices (rather than just poetry), she found that children appropriated (borrowed or took over) textual content, then recontextualized (made new or fresh) that content for their own purposes." In particular, children in her study appropriated and recontextualized material from their school and home cultures, including lines from their school poetry books, lines from songs, and symbols from the media and popular culture (1997; 2003, p.4). In spite of the rich possibilities of both children's interdiscursive and intertextual practices to scaffold children's writing, these have yet to be studied in the discrete context of children writing poetry.
This study is thirdly framed by conceptions of audience awareness in performance theory (Goffman, 1959; Ivanic, 1998). Goffman described performance as "all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his [sic] continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers." (1959, p. 32) These activities (whether it is a revision to a poem or deciding to read a different poem) seem important to isolate as they may signal children's increasing audience awareness on the cusp of the performance (Goffman, 1959). Following Ivanic (1998), the children-as-performers are still learning how to give meaning to their texts and to create a favorable impression of themselves by making discursive turns in their writings as they anticipate their performances for specific audiences.
Mentor Texts and Appropriation as Tools for Scaffolding Children's Poetry Writing
The research literature on children's poetry writing has been growing slowly in the past few decades, with studies suggesting that poetry writing allows children to express their interests and lived cultural experiences (e.g. Cahnmann, 2006, Flint & Laman, 2012, Van Sluys & Labbo, 2006). These studies document the powerful subjects that children take up in their poems, but they do not highlight the poetic features and structures that children employ in their poems. Likewise, previous research does not attempt to trace the social practices that elementary students might employ to organize their poems, nor how children might draw partial textual content from sources both in and out of school.
Previous poetry writing research has focused on the poetic language features that children use in their poems relative to the instructional environment (Kamberelis, 1999; McClure, 1990; Steinburgh, 1999; Wilson, 2007; Wolf, 2006). In particular, features such as repetition, rhyme, and metaphor are ones which, according to Cazden (1976) and Tannen (2007), children have an affinity for in their language play. It may be unsurprising, then, that these features were sometimes found in the poems of children in school (e.g. Schnoor, 2004; Kamberelis, 1999; Steinburgh, 1999; Wilson, 2007), with more demonstration, particularly of metaphor, in studies of older elementary students (Steinburgh, 1999; Wilson, 2007). In a comprehensive study of primary children's multi-genre writing, Kamberelis (1999) found that a few of the fifty-four first- through third-grade children wrote sophisticated poems, rich with imagery and metaphor, from a prompt to "write about an animal," but that most children wrote poems that tended to depend too heavily on rhyme and singsong meter patterns. He also concluded that their poems were shaped more like stories than poems.
Some literature demonstrates that when children are exposed to mentor texts or literary models (McClure, 1990; Wilson, 2007), they successfully incorporate poetic features in their texts that they had not used previously. For example, Wilson (2007) found that elementary children in the U.K. tended "to adapt the shape and words of the poems used as models" (p. 448) and were likely to "replicate" phrases from a teacher-presented model poem (p. 450). Besides mentor texts, poet-mentors themselves have been found to influence children's poetry. Namely, Wolf (2006) found that when children participated in a workshop with a visiting poet-artist, children wrote poems rich with poetic features to convey meaning.
Because childhood writing practices can be influenced by particular social forces (e.g. teacher, instructional task or resources, peers, family members and popular culture (Dyson, 2003), it would be useful to understand the myriad forces that may influence children's compositions. However, it is less clear in the context of poetry writing how children draw broadly on a wide variety of textual content (including, but also extending beyond, the teacher-presented mentor texts)(Christianakis, 2011; Dyson, 1997; 2003). One exception is Christianakis' (2011) ethnography of urban fifth grade children which found that children wrote rap and poetry hybrid texts that included popular culture references that their peers would recognize. If indeed children draw on "the heterogenous production of texts out of other specific texts or text fragments" for their writing (Kamberelis and de la Luna, 2004, p. 244), it would be revealing to understand this practice in the context of poetry writing.
Of course, the additional act of reading a poem for an audience can be a fresh literary experience for children (Certo, 2013). While research has demonstrated the literary affordances of reading previously-published poetry, there is a dearth of research on children's oral performances of their own verse. This considerable body of research, in the context of Readers Theater, has found that repeated oral readings of short, rhymed, "poetry scripts" improved children's reading fluency (e.g. Griffith & Rasinski, 2004; Martinez, Roser, & Strecker, 1999; Rasinski, Padak, Linek, & Sturtevant, 1994; Wilfong, 2008; Worthy & Prater, 2002). Readers Theater's characteristic focus on rehearsal and expressive performance has also been found to improve students' confidence in reading poems for classmates, their motivation to read the poems and songs on their own, their attitudes toward literacy and their reading proficiency overall (Wilfong, 2008; Worthy & Prater, 2002). Children, moreover, perceived such readings to be pleasurable and engaging (Rasinski, Padak, Linek, & Sturtevant, 1994; Wilfong, 2008).
Other research has also found that children's oral and performative readings of previously-published poetry can draw their attention to poetic language (Elster & Hanauer, 2002; Baumann, Ware, & Edwards, 2007). However, we know relatively little about how children grow as literacy learners when they orally read or perform their own poems. The performance studies of students' written poetry is a scholarship that is growing, but focuses on the writing of youth/teens of high school age (e.g., Fisher, 2003; Jocson, 2008; Weinstein, 2009; 2010). Since poetry and spoken word programs have been found to increase confidence and understanding of genre and process among adolescents and young adults (e.g. Fisher, 2003; Jocson, 2008; Weinstein, 2009), it seems worthy to investigate the educative possibilities of children performing their written poetry.
In summary, while studies have concentrated on the poetic features of children's poetry (Kamberelis, 1999; McClure, 1990; Steinburgh, 1999; Wolf, 2006), no studies focus on the larger poetic structures that children employ in their poems in spite of structure's potential for moving forward the themes in one's writing (Theune, 2007a). Moreover, only a few studies have demonstrated links between children's poetic language use and their tendency to borrow poetry from other texts and voices (Christianakis, 2011; Dyson, 1997; 2003; Wilson, 2007), specifically that children shape their poems from "literary models" presented by the teacher (Wilson, 2007). However, there is a dearth of research that attempts to trace the wide range of children's complex interdiscursive and intertextual poetry writing practices, in spite of the usefulness of these practices as scaffolds for writing (Kamberelis & de la Luna, 2004). Lastly, while the research literature acknowledges the literacy benefits of children orally performing previously published poems (e.g. Baumann, Ware, & Edwards, 2007; Elster & Hanauer, 2002; Griffith & Rasinski, 2004; Martinez, Roser, & Strecker, 1999; Rasinski, Padak, Linek, & Sturtevant, 1994; Wilfong, 2008; Worthy & Prater, 2002), the research is quiet about how children grow as poets and literacy learners from performing their own original poetry.
This study seeks to fill these gaps by responding to the following research questions: 1) What poetic language features and structures do children draw on and identify in their written poetry? and 2) What interdiscursive and intertextual practices do children draw on to write poetry using these features and structures)? and 3) How, if at all, might the act of reading an original poem influence children's writing practices and literacy learning?
I begin by providing a description of findings from the class overall. Following, the majority of the results will focus on three focal students, highlighting three of the children's poems. Recall the first research question framing this study was: What, if any, poetic language features and structures do children draw on and identify in their written poetry? Findings revealed that the most commonly employed poetic features in students' performed poems were multi-stanzas, end or internal perfect rhyme, alliteration and metaphor (see Table 2). Indeed, about half of the class drew on these features to highlight the subject and mood of their poems. Notably, eight students each used some sophisticated types of rhyme. One type was internal slant (or half) rhyme (e.g. sheep/meet), where one partially-rhyming word occurs mid line. Another type of sophisticated rhyme used was assonance, or the repetition of vowel sounds to create an internal rhyming. Additionally, nine children drew on features of repetition or onomatopoeia. The focal student descriptions will demonstrate how children's use of poetic features and structures were not arbitrary, but rather helped to move the meaning and mood of their poems forward. Besides the broad range of poetic features that students drew on, some students' poems could even be categorized as having a sophisticated poetic structure. Though ten of the students' poems did not have an obvious structure, fourteen of the children's poems could be categorized as having primarily a Retrospective-Perspective, Descriptive-Meditative, Narrative, or Ironic (see Table 3) structure. Although students demonstrated a wide range of poetic features in their texts, they seemed less able to talk about them. Students mostly reasoned that their poems were poems because they contained stanza breaks, lines, descriptive words and "feelings."
The second research question was: What interdiscursive and intertextual practices do children draw on to write poetry? Findings included twenty-two of the students appropriated and recontextualized content for a single poem from a variety of semiotic material and voices that surrounded them in and out of school (see Table 4). The content for their poems could be traced to classroom books and individual poem handouts, peers, visiting poets, family members, and the media and popular culture. Of note, half of the students drew on more than one of these resources to write their poems. Classroom books, poetry books and individual handouts of poems were the most popular source of children's borrowing, whether they wrote a poem based loosely on a structure or wrote a poem with borrowed fragments. Closely following, however, children's appropriations were from entire poems or fragments of poems from one of the visiting poets. This was followed closely by seven students who either interdiscursively organized their poems similar to a peer or appropriated a fragment of poetry from a peer. Equally, that same number of students borrowed textual content from popular culture, including titles of video games, lines from songs, sports team names and figures, sports slogans or retail brand names. Interestingly, six students borrowed poetry fragments for their poem from a previous poem they wrote. Lastly, four students borrowed language for their poems from conversations heard in their homes. Findings suggest that children's poetic language features and structures were supported by their interdiscursive and intertextual practices.
The third research question framing this study was: How, if at all, might the act of reading an original poem influence children's writing practices and literacy learning? In terms of performance, twenty-three of the students enthusiastically signed up for the Poetry Jam open mic, and most children wanted to read more than one of their poems. The focal student findings will illustrate how children's perceptions of what they thought the adults and peers in the audience might value seemed to act as strong forces that influenced the poems children selected to read, the revisions they made, and how they chose to read their poems. That is, Jon, Angelique and Rejeanne revised to varying degrees on the cusp of the final performance to achieve more dramatic effect. They also selected poems that were, to varying extents, interdiscursively similar to the ones they admired (such as poems in a mentor text or performed by a guest poet). Furthermore, children also selected poetry to read to an audience that contained intertextual lifts from poems in a mentor text or poems performed by a guest poet. These decisions seemed to be guided by the goal of pleasing the audience and themselves. One student elected not to read a poem, and Ms. Jorgenson, the visiting poets and I respected and honored his wishes. As Lensmire (1994) explained, some children may feel there are great risks involved in writing for and speaking in front of their peers---risks to self, to their values and what they care about, and to their social positioning with peers.
As I move through each focal student in the next section, I begin with a brief description of Angelique, Jon and Rejeanne. The focal student descriptions will focus on the practices surrounding the poem that each of these students selected to perform at the school poetry reading. Each focal student description will conclude with a summary of the main points relative to the research questions. In all instances where children's poems are presented, they are exactly as the students wrote or typed them.
Angelique: Retrospective-Prospective, "White Space" and Metaphor
Angelique was quiet but engaged throughout the project. Self-described as "shy," she was seated in the rear of the classroom by the door. She seemed to be well-liked by her peers. She was one of several students who took copious notes during every poetry session. She was bused once a week to a pull-out gifted program in the district. On the eighth day of the project, when students were given open composing time, Angelique wrote Eyes of Our Loved Ones.
Eyes of our Loved Ones
Grandma's old eyes
staring down at us
our loved ones are watching
those who passed away
they are like special stars
that we wish upon every night
when we pass away
we will watch
our loved ones and they
will wish upon us, too.
When asked what made Eyes of our Loved Ones a poem, Angelique remarked,
Well, it doesn't have rhyme, but poems don't have to rhyme. And it has repetition with
"our loved ones". And with the white space [points to break between stanza], it pauses,
and I like in a poem when it pauses for a minute and then it goes back to going on.
When asked why else Eyes of Our Loved Ones was a poem, she shared,
Because it has feelings in it. A book report, it doesn't really have feelings. Book reports just tell you what the book was about. Like a poem tells you what you were thinking that day. I want to say it's [poetry] like a journal, but it's not. It's shorter. Like when Becca got her shot and was scared, she wrote a poem about her shot.
Angelique's talk about her poem "containing feelings" suggests that a poem should be emotive. Her poem displays a rather sophisticated and controlled hybrid poetic structure, what could be interpreted primarily as retrospective-prospective (Theune, 2007a; Yakich, 2007) but also elegiac (Powell, 2007; Theune, 2007a). Though Angelique's poem shares feelings dear to her own heart, her poem also endeavors to appeal to all readers with the pronoun our in the title. Her poem, like some elegies, is an attempt to bring the deceased back to life, whether literally or metaphorically. Her poem is retrospective-prospective in that it begins in the present (Grandma's old eyes/staring down at us), then turns to the past (those who passed away), then turns back to the present (they are like special stars), then, at last, turns to the future with the ending lines: when we pass away/we will watch/our loved ones and they/will wish upon us, too. The retrospective-prospective movement is characteristically signaled by grammatical shifts in verb tense. Yakich (2007) explained that the retrospective-prospective structure often shares "private dilemmas, traumas, or feelings dear to the speaker's heart." (p. 61) Interestingly, once Angelique (already a popular student) was given credibility by the poet Logic choosing to read her poem--Angelique's retrospective-prospective poetic structure was taken up by four other students in the class, such as Aisha's poem, Worry (see Table 3).
Angelique also displayed stanza sense, and her mentioning of the repeated phrase "our loved ones" demonstrates that she knows poetry has subtle features. Angelique's poem is euphonic with a sound pattern that is harmonious, primarily through the use of repeated vowels and alliterative w's. There is also simile, a type of metaphor, with the image of Grandma's eyes being compared to stars that are wished on every night. One might even interpret her poem as a child's version of extended metaphor where eyes are symbolized and described as stars throughout her entire poem. When Angelique talked about how she got the idea for her poem, she related,
Well, there was the art picture book of eyes, and I just thought I could write about eyes.
And my brother has been drawing pictures of my Grandma's eyes, and they're with lots of lines, and I liked that about her eyes.
She continued,
Sometimes we go see her grave and my mom rakes up the leaves in a heart around her stone. My poem reminds me of doing that, but I didn't include that. In my second draft I put "Grandma's old eyes" instead of "Grandma's eyes." When she died, she was about sixty-five, and she had a lot of wrinkles on her face and hands.
Angelique's poetry writing practices demonstrate that she not only appropriated textual content from her family members (brother and possibly mother), but she also interdiscursively organized her poem similar to a mentor text. Her poem is also somewhat reminiscent of the song "When You Wish upon a Star" written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for Walt Disney's 1940 animated musical fantasy film, Pinocchio.
The day prior to Angelique drafting Eyes of Our Loved Ones, I began the session sharing individual copies of the book, Heart to Heart (Greenberg, 2001), a collection of diverse poems paired with twentieth-century art. Angelique settled on and volunteered to read the poem Pantoum for These Eyes by Kristine O'Connell George with the lines set alongside a print of eyes by artist Kiki Smith. O'Connell George's first stanza read: "Let yourself slide under their spell--/these eyes have something to say/Write the stories these eyes tell,/look deeply, don't look away." Angelique's poem is an interdiscursive attempt to organize her poem in an abstract way like O'Connell George did. That is, Angelique's poem is not a pantoum, but Angelique places some repeating words (e.g. eyes, away) at the end of the line, much like O'Connell George. Eyes of Our Loved Ones is similarly euphonic to O'Connell Georges. Thus, the poem in the poetry book served as a resource that likely contributed to Angelique's interdiscursive practices. Furthermore, the line: /Write the stories these eyes tell/ served to set up Angelique's dialogic response to the speaker in O'Connell's poem.
On the day of the performance, Angelique read her poem from the page, the page down low, and, similar to how her poem moved, Angelique faintly swayed side to side as she read the lines. She surprised many audience members (who knew her poem) by revising one phrase that she had not included in any previous draft. She changed "they are like special stars" to "they are like stars in pitch black night." It is likely that in rehearsing reading her poem, she revised to add more dramatic effect to her metaphor---a stronger contrast to the bright stars. Angelique's comments signal that it was her peers and a guest poet, Logic, who were instrumental in her choice to read Eyes of Our Loved Ones.
Well, I'm shy, so like, when we were in the classroom and picking what to read, and we were about to go down [to the library] to practice, I was really, really nervous but excited, cause I really wanted to do it. Cause I never did one, so my friend Aiesha that sits in front of me, she was encouraging me and so was Jon and Elizabeth. They said, "Read that poem that Logic [who demonstrated a performative reading of Eyes of Our Loved Ones] read, it's really good." And I said "Are you sure, I don't think it's that good?" And then everybody's saying, "Yeah, yeah." So I just decided to read it, and did, and it was great. And I was surprised everyone said, "Ahhhh" at the end and they liked it.
In summary, what we learn from Angelique is that she aptly drew on poetic features (e.g. euphonic sounds, stanzas and simile) to unfold a poem comparing Grandma's eyes to stars. Moreover, Angelique's poem could be categorized into a sophisticated poetic structure, with turns in her retrospective-prospective-elegy serving to honor the subject and mood of her poem. That several other children interdiscursively organized their own poems similar to Angelique's suggests that children wanted to try this structure on so as to meditate on, and even be comforted by, the loss of someone. Though Angelique appropriated the semiotic material "Grandma's Eyes" from her brother's drawings, she clearly recontextualized the text for a draft title for her poem. She organized, appropriated and recontextualized a varied range of content for this single poem from across an array of textual material and voices that surrounded her in and out of school. Specifically, Angelique drafted her grandmother poem in class spurred by multiple semiotic resources---the least of which included the mentor text O'Donnell George poem, an art print of eyes by Kiki Smith, drawings by her brother, and perhaps even the ritual of going to the cemetery with her mother. Angelique's talk about her poem suggests that she knows poetry can have repetition, pauses and emotive images, but that these features are dependent on the subject of the poem. Her reports furthermore suggest that she revised her poem with her audience in mind.
Jon: Description, Stylistic Imitation, and Sound Play
Jon sat four rows over from Angelique. He was highly inquisitive throughout the project, though I noticed he was one of a few students that Ms. Jorgensen sometimes corrected for side- talking when adults or other peers were speaking. He was described by Ms. Jorgensen as someone who "struggled" in writing.
To understand Jon's performance, it will be important to share his original choice of poem, then the poem he actually read at the event.
WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
SCHOOL IS WHERE I GO YOU KNOW.
TO GET AN EDUCATION YOU KNOW.
YOU SHOULD HAVE AN EDUCATION YOU KNOW.
IF NOT YOU'LL HAVE NO ONE NOTHING WORKING AT
MC. DONALD'S YOU KNOW.
MAKING 20 OR 30 THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR
WHEN YOU COULD BE MAKING 80 OR 90 THOUSAND
A YEAR WITH AN EDUCATION YOU KNOW.
YOU NEED AN EDUCATION WITHOUT ONE YOU WON'T
HAVE THE SAME LIFE AS YOU WOULD WITH AN
EDUCATION YOU KNOW.
THAT'S WHY I GO TO SCHOOL TO WRITE CURSIVE, DO
MATH ON THE BOARD SCIENCE AND SOCIAL
STUDIES.
EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION YOU KNOW.
YOU HAVE TO LISTEN IN SCHOOL AND DO YOUR
WORK YOU KNOW.
AND WITH IT YOU COULD BE THE RICHEST MAN/OR
WOMAN IN THE WORLD YOU KNOW.
DO YOU KNOW?
WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
Clearly, "What Do You Know?" successfully employs the vernacular practice of the
refrain (the repeated "you know")—and this gives the poem a church- or sermon-like voice with
a preaching/teaching undertone. Jon also uses the practice of double negatives and repetition as
intensifiers and the hyperbole of "the richest man," practices that Brown (1999) and Smitherman
(2007) suggested are defining characteristics of African American language. The poem's
structure might be described, on the one hand, as using the dialectical argument structure, one
that turns from thesis to antithesis to synthesis (Theune, 2007a). "What Do You Know?"
vacillates not only in its perspective turning from speaker to reader, but also in its turning from
thesis (/you should have an education you know/) to an imagined antithesis with and without
wealth (without one you won't/have the same life as you would with an /education you know) to
synthesis (/education, education, education you know/). On the other hand, focusing on the end
of the poem, the structure could be read as offering a self-confirming turn. Essentially, Jon gives
a brief quiz at the end of his poem, and the answer key to the quiz is the poem that precedes it.
Jon's interdiscursive practices may be traced to the influence of the spoken word poet, Blair, who had visited the prior week, opening the session with his poem, My Name is Karl (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycUaSsyJNtk), a poem bookended by the line "I was drawn here." The poem describes a time "the black guy from the Simpsons" found an N written on his locker at the Springfield nuclear power plant where he worked. The poem had significant repetition with a preaching/teaching quality arguing for the importance of "visible" rather than "invisible" friends. Jon adopted Blair's style for a new rhetorical goal. The spoken word style and references to education were ones he may have thought his teacher, Blair and peers would simultaneously look upon favorably. When it was time for volunteers to read a poem for the class, a student in front of him, Rejeanne, urged him to read What Do You Know? However, when Jon read his poem, a classmate, Akesha, in the front row let out a confused and slightly sarcastic, "Huh?" Perhaps this peer's utterance was enough to signal to him that a student trying on a spoken word poem was atypical, misunderstood or not valued.
Interestingly, Jon showed up on the day of the Poetry Jam with an entirely new poem written in block text, and he was sporting a fake snake tattoo on his lower arm.
Snake Eyes
Snake eyes beady vicious like a lion
watching your every move like a mother
watching her baby. Slashing whipping
like a slave owner whipping slaves.
Waiting for the right time to attack. A
dangerous fierce animal sticking venom
into its prey flesh killing it from inside
out watching as it slowly dies no sound
quiet. Waiting for it to die the beast
the poisonous snake, the rattlesnake to be
exact. When something looks into its
eyes it gets petrified. That's when the
beast attacks.
Snake eyes.
When asked in his interview how he got the idea for Snake Eyes, Jon shared:
Because they [Janine and Ms. Jorgensen] said we could take this one home [points to poetry journal] to write our poetry if we thought of something. Like, I was at my grandma's house, and I went to the store and they had a tattoo machine. And I got a fake tattoo out of it, and the picture said "Snake Eyes." So, like, I took it home, and then I looked at my tattoo and then just thought that I could write a poem about it.
Though Snake Eyes does not have a central or obvious poetic structure, the poem is certainly descriptive of the snake's physical features and movements. The imagery is well-realized with considerable sound play in the poem, particularly with the use of repetition, alliteration, assonance, slant or half rhymes, internal rhymes and the metaphorical, onomatopoetic reference to slavery with slashing and whipping. The title and the last line of the poem serve as "bookends," a repetition feature that Jon heard demonstrated in Blair's poetry. He articulated why Snake Eyes is a poem.
I was just thinking, like, how snakes are like rattlesnakes are. Their eyes are beady and vicious. I thought of descriptive words to go with it. See [points to lines], I put "beady and vicious like a lion," then "watching their every move like a mother watching her baby," "slashing and whipping like a slave owner."
Fascinatingly, Jon is trying on comparisons using three consecutive similes (a type of metaphor) in Snake Eyes, shaping them from across multiple instructional and social forces. First, his play with repetition, in the style of Blair, may have manifested itself in repeating comparisons with Blair's stem "like a." Additionally, "like a mother watching her baby" can be traced to the short poem by Issa shared by poet Laura Apol at the end of week two of the project. The poem, A Mother, reads,
a mother horse
keeps watch while her
child drinks
"Like a lion" is actually appropriated from one of Jon's own poems from an earlier writing session where he wrote a poem about an animal. Lastly, "slashing and whipping like a slave owner" may serve as a way for Jon to link to and recognize an African ancestry in the face of his audience.
Further adding to the complexity is that Jon's poetry phrases "no sound/quiet" were arguably inspired by particular content and features in a peer's poem. At the "practice run-through" of the Poetry Jam, a fourth grade student, Matthew, closed a highly descriptive poem about a Komodo Dragon eating its prey. The poem had the ending lines "no more noise/not a sound" and the final line "not a sound" was performed by Matthew with suspended syllable length and notably decreased volume.
Thus, Jon's poetic features were appropriated and recontextualized from Blair's spoken word style, fragments from mentor poetry texts in the classroom, a fragment from a peer in another class, and even intertextual lifts from his own poetry. Further, Jon drew on other cultural material to help him achieve his purposes with his performance. Kirkland (2009) has suggested that older Black youth mark their flesh for particular purposes, and while younger Jon's tattoo was, as he clarified, "fake", it still served several purposes for him. First, Jon may have seen it as a way out of reading What Do You Know? a poem that he may have thought was not taken up by his peers in ways he had hoped. Second, the topic may have been a natural vehicle for him to impress others (and please himself) with his oral creativity. His choice of Snake Eyes also set him up favorably with peers, for "Snake Eyes" was not only his literal tattoo, but also the name of a fictional character and ninja toy from a 2009 live action film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
To summarize, Jon actively integrates his poetic language use with interdiscursive and intertextual practices. In Snake Eyes, he drew on a remarkable variety of sound play and metaphor that were highly similar stylistically to the poems of visiting poet Blair. Jon's poems also evidence how he appropriated and recontextualized fragments of poetry from a wide range of semiotic resources (textual, oral/performative, pictoral) in and outside of the classroom, and, similar to Angelique, his ideas for what to write about were spurred outside of the classroom. We also learn that in spite of the numerous poetic features Jon employs in Snake Eyes, Jon primarily described his poem as having description. In terms of performance, while Angelique revised her poetic language slightly on the cusp of performance, Jon arrived with a completely new poem, one that was interdiscursively similar to the ones that spoken word Blair tended to perform and allowed him to incorporate the Snake Eyes symbol from popular culture. Lastly, it is also worth noting that writing and performing poetry was a way for Jon, perceived as "struggling in writing," to win favor of his audience through his display of poetic skill in the style of a spoken word poet.
Rejeanne: Irony, Rhyme and Reading "Kinda Sassy"
Rejeanne was seated just in front of Jon. She was often turned around toward him, and they frequently talked to (and shared poems with) each other during the composing process. Though she was not as vocal as Jon throughout the project, Rejeanne had a dry sense of wit in her talk. When poet Laura Apol visited the classroom on day six of the project, Rejeanne was invited to write from the broad prompt: "Write about a family member." To support such writing, Laura shared several family-themed poems as mentor texts. In Rejeanne's poem, she appropriated the advertising slogan "Just Do It," making clear on the top of one of her drafts that it was "a reply to her mother."
Just Do It
My mom wants me to have an excellent education
She tells me to correct the most insignificant things
When I say why I get the reply
"It's for your benefit, not mine
Do you want to go to college for free?"
"Yes mom" that's the reply from me
So I fix it and I just do it
Like NIKE just do it
Interestingly, Rejeanne takes up the topic and ideology of education, similar to Jon's poem "What Do You Know?" Perhaps Rejeanne, like Jon, knew that the topic would be valued by a mixed audience of teachers, adults and peers. Recall too, however, that Rejeanne expressed a fondness of Jon's poem, encouraging him to read it aloud for the class.
When asked why Just Do It was a poem, Rejeanne reported,
Because it has stanzas and lines, and it rhymes. And it's not, like, in a story form. Because it means something. It has feelings. A story can just be like a funny story, but it doesn't really have to have a meaning or anything. But a poem most of the time, it's from people's hearts, and it's supposed to mean [her emphasis] something deeper.
Rejeanne reported that she drew on the use of a thesaurus to "impress the audience" with using the word "insignificant" as opposed to "small" for the things that her mother tells her to correct. Her comments demonstrate Rejeanne's keen audience awareness, and that she revised her poem by clarifying for a non-classroom audience. Her interview revealed further that she understood the function of lines---so much so that she emphasized the pause for one line even further with an ellipsis and a stanza break.
Well, I changed "Monday folder" to "report card" because not everyone knows what a "Monday folder" is. And at first I didn't have a pause in between, but then I changed the pause [points to ellipsis at the end of a line]. The line that says "As and Bs" like has little dots, so I pause, and then they wonder what I get.
On the cusp of Rejeanne's performance, she reportedly made notes directly on her poem to serve as a scaffold for her reading. She continued:
Findings of this study, demonstrating the children wrote poems by actively integrating formal poetic language with their interdiscursive and intertextual practices, contribute to our understanding of children writing and performing poetry in at least four important and related ways. First, this study enriches our understanding of poetic language theory (e.g., Brown, 1999; Jakobson, 1987; Smitherman, 2000; Tannen, 1989; Theune, 2007a), but in the discrete context of children's poetry writing in one classroom. Specifically, this study extends the literature on children's use of poetic features (Kamberelis, 1999; Steinburgh, 1999; Wilson, 2007) to document a wider range of features that older elementary children might employ. This study suggests that by fifth grade, these students displayed strong stanza sense in their poems and formed their poetry into lines and drew on repetition, rhyme, alliteration and metaphor to enhance the meaning and mood of their poems. Recall that repetition, rhyme, and metaphor are features which, according to Cazden (1976) and Tannen (2007), children have a particular affinity for in their language play. This study demonstrates children were able to use various kinds of rhyme and sophisticated subtleties of rhyme, including internal rhyme, slant rhyme, and assonance. Additionally, Angelique, Jon and Rejeanne used alliteration in ways that fit the subject and mood of their poems. Furthermore, each child happened to include at least one metaphor in their poem. Students in this study often expressed their emotions and identities directly through those metaphors, whether it was identification with a popular culture icon or image, an attempt to link to one's ancestry, or even a comforting image of what might happen to loved ones when they pass.
Second, this study also enriches our understanding of poetic language theory by demonstrating how the children were able to write poems with distinct poetic structures. Prior studies of children's poetry writing have tended to focus on poetic features of children's poetry (Kamberelis, 1999; McClure, 1990; Steinburgh, 1999) rather than larger poetic structures at play. The present study demonstrates how Theune's (2007a; 2007b) work on poetic structure is highly relevant to the writing worlds of children. Findings indicate that children may try on some similar poetic structures that resemble the poems they encounter in school and that are even similar to structures that adult poets employ (e.g. retrospective-prospective, elegy, dialectical-argumentative and ironic). Furthermore, this study suggests that children's structures, whether loosely or solidly framed, may sometimes be borrowed by some of their peers. It may also be the case that some children's written poems will not have a central structure, such as Jon's Snake Eyes. After all, children are still being exposed to ways poems can turn. Angelique, Jon, and Rejeanne were not always able to say back some of terminology of the sophisticated poetic features they were employing. Over multiple genre experiences with reading and writing poetry in and out of school, perhaps children may increasingly be able to talk about the features they are employing so ably in their poems.
Thirdly, this study enriches our knowledge of how mentor texts can work as useful scaffolds for children to organize the overall look of their poems. This study found that interdiscursive practices occurred when Angelique, Jon and Rejeanne were inspired by a particular poetic structure they encountered in a mentor text, a structure that a visiting poet employed in an oral performance, or a structure they heard through conversational discourse. Indeed, Rejeanne's performed poem and Jon's abandoned one suggest that what is pervasive in conversation can be a scaffold for children's poetry writing (Tannen, 2007; Theune, 2007a). I and other elementary writing scholars have previously touted the critical importance of using published "mentor texts" (e.g. Calkins, 2006), "model texts," (Certo, 2004) or "literary forms" (Wilson, 2007) to support children's poetry writing. This study also confirms other work (Wolf, 2006) that inviting artists into the classroom can facilitate children's use of poetic language. What this study underscores, however, is that children's poems may not be scaffolded only by adults or mentor texts in the classroom. Building on Dyson (1997; 2003), this study suggests that children draw on any textual resources and voices in or out of school, including material from their families, other adults in school, their peers, and the media and popular culture.
These findings advance our understanding of childhood writing as social practice (Chapman, 1999; Dyson, 2003; Kamberelis & de la Luna, 2004) by focusing on poetry in particular. Similar to children in Dyson's (2003) research, students appropriated material for their writing from their home and school cultures, including lines from their school books and symbols from the media and popular culture (1997; 2003, p.4). Similar to Christianakis' (2011) research, and childhood writing research more generally (Dyson, 1997; Kamberelis & de la Luna, 2004), children in this study drew from a range of textual fragments, including those found in popular culture, for their poems. However, what was new in this study was that children's borrowing was more numerous for a single poem, with sources including classroom books, poetry books, individual poems, peers' poetry, visiting poets' performance styles, conversations with family members, the media and popular culture, and even children's own poetry.
Lastly, this study enriches the literature on children's poetry performance. Elster and Hanauer (2002) found that reading previously published poetry was particularly well-suited to capture children's attention to language, and this study widens these findings to the context of children reading their original poetry. Similar to Readers Theater's focus on rehearsal and expressive performance (Wilfong, 2008; Worthy & Prater, 2002), it appears that children rehearsing and performing their own poems has literacy benefits as well, namely that the act helps build a sense of audience awareness. Findings here are similar to those at the adolescent level, in that the act of reading aloud a poem for an audience piqued an understanding of genre among children (e.g. Fisher, 2003; Jocson, 2008; Weinstein, 2009). What was key in this study was how children's audience awareness seemed to influence their interdiscursive and intertextual writing practices. Goffman (1959) theorized that performers gather information about their audience based on their behavior, appearance, and an anticipation of what they might say or how they might respond. Angelique's, Jon's and Rejeanne's performances were marked by careful deliberations on which poem to perform, by getting advice and encouragement from peers, by revising for a sharper metaphor, by "impressing the audience" with sophisticated "thesaurus" vocabulary, or by deciding to perform poems with subjects, styles, symbols, or slogans that they perceived would place them favorably with the audience. It is a challenge for many individuals to understand what might be accepted by particular audiences and how those audiences might respond, but children in this study displayed audience awareness in particularly dexterous ways.
Implications and Conclusion
The significance of this study is that children can write poetry by actively integrating formal poetic language taught with interdiscursive and intertextual practices. Findings highlight the complexities of classroom children writing and performing poetry relative to instructional contexts and social practices. There are five educational implications, some of which are long held assumptions about teaching poetry writing.
First, share mentor texts regularly in printed material and accompanied (if possible) by invited poets in order to immerse students in the language of poetry. Similar to other research at both the secondary (Wiseman, 2011) and elementary (Wolf, 2006) levels, children in this study were enriched as literacy learners by engaging with published poems as well as with visiting poets from the community. Furthermore, this study suggests children not only learn to write poetry alongside poet-mentors, but they also may draw loosely on the actual voices of visiting poets. Since this study found a documented larger web of social forces and voices influencing students' compositions, educators and visiting poets should ensure that children have opportunities to read and to see each other's work, as the poems of peers might also serve as valuable "mentor texts." Appropriation and fresh recontextualization are a part of the healthy play and experimentation that should take place in childhood poetry writing.
Secondly, this study suggests the idea of children being exposed to different poetic structures (Theune, 2007a; 2007b) may have tremendous pedagogical appeal for expanding the possibilities for children's written poems in schools. I do not necessarily recommend a concentration on structures for the sake of imitating structures themselves, but rather exposure to mentor texts with varying poetic structures. With access to varying structures, children might draw on the structures as additional resources they can use to scaffold their poems. An emphasis on poetic structure might help children to write beyond the popularized forms of haiku, limerick or cinquain, and it might also help students to refine their free verse poems.
Thirdly, in terms of performance, it is important instruction provide multiple occasions for children to practice orally reading their poetry. Such repeated performances may help elementary students gain an understanding of genre (including audience and purpose) and encourage students to revise their poetry on the cusp of performance.
Fourth, educators' own pedagogical content knowledge, confidence and enthusiasm are of vital importance when considering how best to support children's poetry writing. Alas, some literature suggests teachers report a lack of confidence in teaching poetry writing (Certo, Apol, Wibbens, & Hawkins, 2012), a lack of knowledge of literary and linguistic metalanguage (Myhill & Wilson, 2012), and even a lack of teaching it altogether (Faust & Dressman, 2009). Though the focus of this study was not on classroom teacher practice, it seems reasonable that educators need more meaningful teacher education and professional development experiences with reading, writing and teaching poetry (e.g. Certo, Apol, Wibbens, & Hawkins, 2012; Dymoke and Hughes 2009; Rosaen, 2003). Findings in this study suggest that teachers and students should explore, read, question, and talk with each other about a wide range of poetry, diverse by poet, historical context, subject, structure, form, subject and mood. Consistent with other studies (Wilson, 2009), the writing of poetry should include a balance of open composing time with some semi-scaffolded ones. Throughout, educators might model genuine curiosity and passion for poetry. After all, successful poetry teaching can be nourished by the collective enthusiasm of teachers and children experiencing poetry together (Lambirth, Smith, & Steele, 2012).
Lastly, elementary students should be invited to bring their own language practices to bear on their writing (e.g. Ball, 2006; Heath, 1983; Lee, 1992). In this study Jon's stylistic imitation and language practices, though taken up by his teachers and most of his classmates, were also publicly rejected by a classmate. The fact Jon chose not to read "What Do You Know?" suggests that even a single, subtle disapproval may be powerful enough for children to adjust their choice of performance text. In an interesting turn, however, later that week, when Akesha was assigned in-school suspension for reportedly fighting on the playground, she wrote a hybrid essay-poem on the assigned topic, "What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?" Her writing, entitled "What Will You Be?" was closed with a poem loosely structured on Jon's topic and style. Her writing was concluded with a "hidden" taking up of Jon's poem, further evidencing children's use of interdiscursive and intertextual practices.
You have to have a good education
You see
You have to push yourself
You see
You have to ask questions
You see
You have to take notes
You see
You have to set goals
You see.
In classrooms, some argue the two genres that receive the most attention in writing are stories and informational texts (Donovan & Smolkin, 2006). This study suggests that because writing poetry can draw children's attention to poetic language, they should be given more opportunities for writing and performing it in school. As this study illustrates, poetry writing is more than creative luxury in elementary writing curriculum. It is a highly linguistic, intellectual, social and cultural act in which students engage both creatively and cognitively in writing and performing it. What is at stake here is not only engaging young people as literacy learners, but engaging them deeply with language and more fully with the human experience as writers of poetry.
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Table 1
Demographic Summary of Student Participants
African American
White
Chicano/Latino
Hmong
American
Gifted/
Talented
Program
Speech and
Language
Services
M
4
2
3
2
1
1
F
8
1
3
1
3
N=24
Table 2. Poetic Features in Children's Performed Poems
Number of
Stanzas
End or Internal
Perfect Rhyme
Alliteration
Metaphor
Repetition
Onomatopoeia
End or
Internal
Slant Rhyme
Assonance
Refrain
Owen
1
1
1
1
Angelique
3
1
1
1
Aiesha
5
2
2
Kim
2
4
1
1
1
Silvio
5
1
1
Elizabeth
3
1
1
1
Rajeanne
4
3
1
1
2
1
1
Troy
3
3
2
DeMarcus
1
1
2
1
Carter
1
1
Hung
5
1
1
1
1
Akesha
1
1
Jon
1
2
3
4
2
1
2
1
Candice
3
2
3
1
1
James
1
1
1
Becca
3
1
2
3
1
1
1
Lateica
4
1
1
Colleen
2
1
4
1
1
Emily
3
2
3
2
Eileen
1
1
Bertram
3
1
1
Booker
1
1
1
Maliyah
3
1
1
1
1
Long
5
1
1
4
1
Total Students
Using Feature
13
13
10
9
9
8
8
5
Table 3. Poetic Structures in Children's Performed Poems.
Structural Poetic Turn
Definition
Number of Performed Poems with the Structure
Example of a Child
Drawing on the Structure
(exactly as children composed them)
Retrospective-Prospective
Poems vascillating or turning between past, present, and/or future
5
Worry
I'm not scared of lions and tigers
and bears but I'm kinda scared of you dieing
Yea they all said it was apart
of life but you never know when
your going to leave you husband or
wife
I don't worry about
you dieing or living anymore
I just worry about
the love your getting now
So the next time
someone asked you are you scared
to die give them the look and say
Bye
Bye
Bye
by Aiesha
Descriptive-Meditative
Poems turning from description of a person, object, scene or event with emphasis on the image. Includes meditation or abstraction on the person, object, scene, or event
4
Nazi
Nazi army marching
300,000 soldiers
Body of people everywhere
Tiger tank firing through the air
Hitler killing Jews
Artillery destroying plane in the air
German soldier fighting to death
American sent troop on land
Man running through the death field
Let us bow upon you
Honor will protect you
God will take you to heaven
Man by man fighting
People running away from battle
Children lose their parent
by Long
Narrative
Poems with an arc that primarily tells a story or that contain one or more characters, a setting, and a series of events
3
Video Game Fury
I Went to
My
Dad's house.
I
Was playing his new game system.
I was plying agents the greatest.
That is my dad.
He beat the game in a day!
He was tuff like biting a jawbreaker.
I dodged left to right as fast as I could
press the buttons.
Using the fury
As the last seconded I won.
The second round was tuff, but
I was determined to win.
I eventually won.
by Owen
Ironic
Poems offering two points of view, or two conflicting attitudes toward a single subject, and allows playful tension of those contradictions to stand.
2
This Teenager/Adult
For: Deandra
This teen/adult girl
works hard in the hospital
as a nurse assistant.
when she gets home
she sleeps for 8 hours then
she works hard again
She forgotten it was
my birthday yesterday
3-24-09! It the same
thing every time, never time for
herself, never time for me
By Lateica
Classroom books, poetry books, and poems
Visiting poets' poetry
Peers' poetry
Media & Popular Culture (included Video Games, Music, Sports Teams and Figures, Slogans, Retail Brand Names)
Their Own poetry
Family member(s) language and conversations
Total Per Student
Owen
X
X
X
3
Angelique
X
X
2
Aiesha
X
X
X
X
4
Kim
X
1
Silvio
X
X
2
Elizabeth
X
X
2
Rajeanne
X
X
X
X
4
Troy
X
1
DeMarcus
X
1
Carter
X
X
2
Hung
X
1
Akesha
X
X
2
Jon
X
X
X
X
4
Candice
X
1
James
X
1
Becca
X
X
2
Lateica
X
1
Colleen
X
1
Emily
X
X
2
Eileen
X
1
Bertram
X
1
Booker
X
X
2
Total Per Resource
9
8
7
7
6
4
Table 4. Textual Material and Voices that Children Drew on for Their Poems
Comments
Report "Poetic Language, Interdiscursivity and Intertextuality in Fifth Graders\' Poetry: An Interpretive Study "