Poetry is not easy. Or should I say, real poetry is not easy.
Robert PinskyRead
The best argument for teaching poetry is to put a three-year-old or a four-year-old and read Dr. Seuss, or Robert Louis Stevenson, and to feel how the child and you are engaging in something that's really basic to the animal, which is passing on in these rhythmic ways, something that came from somewhere.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Teaching poetry to children fosters engagement and connection through rhythm and storytelling.
This quote emphasizes the fundamental role poetry plays in early childhood education. By reading works from poets like Dr. Seuss and Robert Louis Stevenson to young children, we not only cultivate their love for language but also connect them to a primal human tradition of storytelling and expression. The rhythmic and engaging nature of poetry resonates with children, enriching their understanding of communication and culture from an early age.
Themes
PoetryChildrenEducationStorytellingEngagementRhythmLearning
In practice
Example use cases
A teacher might quote this during a workshop about the importance of literacy and creative expression in early education.
More from Robert Pinsky
All quotes →The medium of poetry is a human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is just as physical or bodily an art as dancing.
Robert PinskyRead
Poetry is the most bodily of the arts.
Robert PinskyRead
Sometimes the ideas that mean the most to you will feel true long before you can quite formulate them or justify them.
Robert PinskyRead
New Jersey is the most poetic state: close enough to New York to be urban and cosmopolitan, far enough to be desirous and unsure; densely populated, but full of farms and woods, with the most deer of any state.
Robert PinskyRead
For a lot of people, well-meaning teaching has made poetry seem arcane, difficult, a kind of brown-knotting medicine that might be good for you but doesn't taste so good. So I tried to make a collection of poetry that would be fun. And that would bring out poetry as an art, rather than the challenge to say smart things.
Robert PinskyRead
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