Poems as Songs and Songs as Poems

It was a summer time when people got burned walking outside and cooled down in an air-conditioned room. There were some people sitting in the room, either having conversations with others or doing something unimportant. Waiting. Suddenly, a 6’5” man walked in from the back of the room, with a guitar on his back and a messenger bag on right shoulder. He wore a light blue Hawaiian style shirt with palm trees, beaches, and sea gulls on it, a khaki short, and a pair of black sport sandals. His short mid-long gray hair, his gray mustache, and his strong and steady strides caught everyone’s attention. No smiles, no facial expression, no greetings. Nothing. He walked straight, and his eyes looked straight ahead as if there were no one else in the room. He looked as if he just came here from beaches, or as if he just came out of jail. As he walked to the front of the room, he put his bag on the desk, leaning his guitar against the wall. “Hi folks,” he said, “welcome to the class.” “I’ll introduce myself first, and then all of you.” After the introduction, he gave out and talked about the class syllabus. “Questions?” he asked, “No?!” “Alright, you can ask me whenever you want.” “Don’t be scarred by me though I look like a killer. I frown because I am thinking, ok?!” He continued, “Then, let’s sing and play guitar!” A burst of thunderous cheers filled in the room. “This is the song I wrote a few years ago…”

        This unforgettable moment happened when I was doing my mater program in California. In one summer, my graduate program did not offer any classes, but I wanted to take one or two classes to improve my reading and writing in English. So, I took an undergraduate English composition class, and the one who played guitar was the instructor. We read some, poems, and some excerpts from classical literature; we also watched classical movies in class. One thing I remembered clearly till now was what the instructor said as we read a poem. He said, “As an English major, I sucked at reading and writing poems. I felt so frustrated when my poetry professor asked me to write a poem. It beat me. But when I started to write songs for my band, I started to realize that my songs are my poems. The lyrics express my thoughts; the melodies express my feelings; the rhythm and the rhyme; taken together, my songs are my poems.”

        As I read through Koch’s chapters, I thought of this instructor and his words that are so powerful and so true. For many times, teaching and learning poems could be a daunting task for teachers and students. I have an ambivalent feeling toward poems as well. However, Koch’s gentle approaches to guide students to read poems, feel poems, think about poems, and then write pomes seem to be able to let students experience and appreciate the beauty of poems. Of course, selecting appropriate poems for teaching is the first step that Koch stresses. For example, teach William Shakespeare’s poems with a focus on song-like rhyme and fantasy, William Carlos Williams’ poems on the one-word-per-line form of poetry, and Walt Whitman’s poems on using repetition for self-exploration. Such suggestions by Koch may be a start for teachers to want to try teaching poems.

                       At Fiddlers Green (Ha'penny Bridge Band), written by Mark McKinnon.

                       (Mark McKinnon, the guitarist, was my English composition instructor.

                   This was the performance of him and his band, Ha'penny Bridge Band.)

       To date, in Taiwan many popular songs are written in the form of ancient Chinese poems and become teaching materials for many Chinese language arts teachers. Also, some musicians will compose melodies particularly for some famous ancient Chinese poems which become so popular that many young people know the poems because of the songs. I wonder whether there are similar phenomena in the United States, and whether English teachers would use songs as a way to introduce or teach poems.