When teaching American Literature, I find it difficult to cover the poetry throughout the year that I would like to do. With AP exams and traditional syllabus wedded to the novel, poetry can be marginalized and pushed to the side or into a two week poetry unit. The analysis of poetry tends to be tedious. As Billy Collins says in his rye poem " Introduction to Poetry", we (teachers and students) tie the poem to a chair and torture the meaning out of it.
Below is a list of poems from our $3 anthology. I appreciate the chronological order of poets and the relative diversity of voices. When class time is precious, how do we hit 101 poems between now and the end of the year. Does a poem a day work? Is that possible too tedious?
Let's see.
Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1672) "To My Dear and Loving Husband"
Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784) From "To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth"
