How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is poetry and where does it come from? What is it meant to accomplish?

Teaching Suggestion: Students are more likely to closely attend to Foster’s work and actively attempt to understand his ideas if they understand the significance of poetry as a form. Students may have many misconceptions about what poetry is and is not, and are likely to know little about its origins and history. You might first use the prompt questions as a schema-activation device, asking students to answer based on prior knowledge, and then offer them the chance to revise their answers after they have been exposed to the resources listed below.

• This article from Poetry.org explores the characteristics, origins, and purposes of poetry.
• This 5-minute video from Digital Poets offers an overview of the history of poetry.

2. What place do you think poetry has in today’s world—do you think it still matters to people, or do you think poetry is a dying art?

Teaching Suggestion: These tips can prepare students for this question or help them to discuss it after they’ve answered.