For almost 10 years now I have been teaching a required course at the local university. The university vision, mission, and guiding principles incorporate coursework about sustainability to "prepare students, faculty, and staff to be engaged citizens and leaders of the green economy." No matter what major a student selects, every undergraduate must complete a couple of required courses in civic engagement and sustainability. I teach the course on sustainability, which also incorporates local ecology and sense of place.
Needless to say, I have my share of students who are less than thrilled about the mandatory coursework they sometimes feel does not apply to their major, and worse, is of no interest to them. Sadly, some of them cannot be swayed. However, by the end of the course many of them begin to understand that all people in all majors can benefit from understanding concepts around sustainability and the value of their local environment and the natural world.
A couple of years ago, I decided a good way to engage students from the various colleges and to add a language and humanities component previously lacking in the course, would be to focus on the literary contribution of the work and the homage to the Florida Everglades. Thus, my lessons on found poetry were born! I have done this individually and collaboratively, and because of the nature of the course I teach, we focus on sense of place. I will include commentary and variations along with the steps and the work of some of my students.
A College Found Poetry Lesson with The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas:
Step 1:
The course text collection includes the first chapter of the book called "The Nature of the Everglades." The chapter has sections focused on The Grass; The Water; The Rock, and The River, as well as two sections called The River of Time, and Life on the Rock. Each of these is chock full of rich detailed and dynamic descriptions of the flora and fauna so unique to The Everglades.
The first time I tried this assignment I asked students to read with no particular section in mind. In subsequent lessons, I have tried assigning sections or asking everyone to read all of it, and asking afterward for students to select one section that resonated strongly with them. Best part about these lessons is that there really are no rules! The key to how you assign the text is how you plan to engage the students in the writing activity that follows. My students read it before coming to class.
Step 2:
This step can happen in tandem with Step 1, or if you are focused on multiple reads and close reading in your class, can stand alone as an actual next step to Step 1. Again, I have done it both ways. Either way, the task is to identify (by annotating, underlining, highlighting) while they are reading, or by going back and jotting on sticky notes or notecards, words, phrases, or pieces of description or information that resonate with them.
Depending on your purpose, you can ask for descriptive language, important information, sounds or verbs, etc. My courses is less about knowledge transmission or acquisition, and more about exposure to new ideas and experiences, so I leave the door wide open for quite literally, anything that resonates with them or strikes them as noteworthy. You can provide a target number of items if you wish, but I prefer not to.
*I find the sticky note or notecard method works best because students are able to move their text around for the next step. Even better is to have them annotate while they read, and then re-read and jot on the notecards or sticky notes. You can even have them write their text on paper and cut them into strips. Do whatever works in the time and space you have.
*I have done this two different ways. Sometimes I tell the students up front what they will be doing and why they are writing down the words and phrases. Other times, I leave them wondering. Sometimes not knowing what the purpose is at the start keeps them from editing and censoring themselves as they collect from the reading.
Step 3:
Here is when you have the option of using an individual or collaborative writing exercise. You can ask students to do this on their own (this was necessary as an online activity in several of my college courses) or as a collaborative group, which is my favorite implementation. I have done it both ways, but the collaborative aspect of group writing helps build classroom community, and it's fun!
Students bring their notecards or sticky notes to a group. They lay them all out on a table or desks in front of them, and work together to arrange their text into a shared poem. I often have to remind them they don't have to use every one of each individual's notecards, and inevitably someone asks if they can add any of their own words. I have never allowed that, but again you choose the rules! I do allow them to pluralize or singularize words and change tense and pronouns as needed. The poem can be in any form the students choose.
*I had some photos of my students working through this process, but can't seem to dig them up. It's quite the sight, especially when your groups get really into it, and many of them do!
Step 4:
Groups or individuals revise their poems and share them. If we completed them in class, I require the groups to read them aloud and I always require them to post them in Canvas (the online LMS used by our university). In the end, it is so interesting to see what they hyper focused on or what aspects of the text resonate with them. I also require students to reflect on the process and how it contributed to their comprehension and perception of the author and the text. It's really interesting to see how different students process the same text.
Here is some of their work:
Fiery Glade
Wetness that is sweet among salt
tiny hidden blossoms, luminous in the darkness,
give way to mile high pillars of orange light, roily tangerine
spears thrust into the burning brass
rolling clouds of heavy cream against a hyacinth sky
thin screaming hordes bend in the west wind
they bow, they burn
the fierce fire, lord, power and first cause over the Everglades
***
Half way down that thrusting sea-bound peninsula.
Grass and water together make the river.
Its stringy and grainy dullness glitters with the myriad unrotted silica points, like glass dust.
To try and make ones way among these impenetrable tufts is to be cut off from air.
Clouds fill with their steely haze and leave only outline of the visible world.
Water falls solid, in sheets, in cascades.
The sawgrass and all those acres of green growing things draw up the water within their cells, use it, and breathe it out again.
***
"like the birds, he is everywhere"
the great pointed paw
of which it marks the end,
the question was at once,
where do you begin?
subtlety and diversity,
a crowd of changing forms,
of thrusting teeming life;
vast glittering openness—
the bright where the color
of the water and the color
of the sky become one,
spreading and flowing
on its true course southward.
at the horizon, they
become velvet—
taller and denser in
the dark soil of
its own death,
superb monotony.
the glitter of rising water
will be everywhere,
the foundation stuff
of the world—
time, the vastest river,
carries us and all life forward.
here, the rain is everything.
***
At the End of the World
At the End of the World
Where the grass and the water are there
And the dew falls,
Where one sinks in mud and water
And neighborhoods form,
These impenetrable tufts
Beaten down by the sun,
Hold no weight.
Forces of the season
Balanced, like scales
Are green with thick-stemmed waterweeds,
White marly water
And glowing yellow.
Here at the end of the world.
***
The Everglades
There are no other Everglades in the world.
The Everglades, El Laguno del Espiritu Santo.
Beginning at lake Okeechobee,
Crisp lake waves.
The winds shatter the reflections.
The mystery of the Everglades,
is enduring, so hostile, so simple.
Land breezes and sea breezes
Coming from the west.
In the luminous unseen dark,
Yet moon flowers opened acres
Of flat white blossoms, cloud white,
Foam white, and still.
***
Following upward and downward
The Everglades curve grandly in the limestone
All this end of the peninsula is a country that the sea has conquered and has never left
The blue of the sky is caught down there among the grass stems
Flashing back their red and emerald and diamond lights to the revealed glory of the sun in splendor
Here the rain falls more powerfully and logically than anywhere else upon the temperate mainland of the United States
They are a world in themselves
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