HOW TO READ A POEM ALOUD
by
April Halprin Wayland
First, read the title of the poem
and the poet’s name.
Be clear.
Now completely
disappear.
Let each line
shine.
Then read it
one more time.
When the poem
ends, sigh.
Think about the poet at her desk,
late at night, picking up her pen to write…
and why.
© 2009 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.
April Halprin Wayland writes stand-alone poetry, novels-in-poems, and picture books (including a brand new one, New Year at the Pier, coming out in June!). She's a teacher as well, and she is now part of a collective of six fellow teaching authors who have just started blogging together at TeachingAuthors.com. Oh, and she still has time to be one of the nicest folks I've met in the children's book world!
April is another poet who sent me a few poems to choose from, any of which, again, I would have been incredibly happy to post here. The poems were different as could be, but shared the same ability to connect with me... to make me see things from a new perspective (in one case, that would actually be from a dog's perspective!)... to make me ask myself fun questions. I always love reading April's work, so I'm especially glad to have gotten to read extras AND to be able to have a poem of hers here as part of 30 Poets/30 Days.
Yesterday, Kenn Nesbitt gave us My Chicken's On The Internet. Tomorrow... Douglas Florian!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
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10 comments:
I like that this seems to be about reading a poem aloud when you're alone -- which isn't something a lot of people think of doing.
i'm not generally a fan of poems (or fiction) that draw attention to themselves, but i do like this and am going to share it with my daughters later. what a great piece of instruction-by-example.
How fun that she broke down the fourth wall and made us think about her writing the poem and how we read it - and it's still a poem! "The Medium IS the message" comes to mind!
awesome!
namaste,
Lee
Lovely.
Love it - thanks for sharing!
Wonderful! Teaches, reaches out, makes the process a puzzle, and entertaining, too.
Lovely indeed, April!
And I enjoyed reading it aloud to myself!
Thank you, David!
One of the most important things I've learned about reading a poem aloud, is to read it twice.
The first time we're walking into the room the poet has created.
The second time we're comfortable on the couch with a cup of raspberry leaf tea.
I love this! And I love April's comment - well said.
Ah, that's lovely.
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