Introducing Poetry Appreciation

My parents introduced me to poetry at a very young age. To this day, they recall how I could recite "The Owl and the Pussycat" from memory, and how I used to laugh with childlike delight at the word "bong-tree".

That is what poetry appreciation is all about. It's not about big words like "caesura" and "iambic pentameter" or decoding obscure messages in poems, although these can come later. It is about falling in love with language and discovering the power of words. I owe my current vocations as a lawyer and as a writer to many things, but I am sure having been introduced to poetry at a young age had something to do with them.

How do you teach your children poetry appreciation? Just read poems aloud to them.  Let them enjoy the sound of the words: the rhythm, the rhyme, the repetition of words and sounds...

You can start off your children with the same "The Owl and the Pussycat" poem I started out with.  Another exercise in poetry appreciation is to read aloud to your children "The Lamb" and "The Tyger", both by William Blake.  Point out to them how just the sound of the words in "The Lamb" reminds one of a lamb, while the sound of the words in "The Tyger" reminds one of a tiger.  "Buffalo Dusk" is another good poem to illustrate how words can paint pictures. Read the poem aloud and notice how the pacing of the words evoke how a prairie is like before, during, and after a buffalo stampede.  For an example of how the power of even made-up words, read Lewis Carrol's "The Jabberwocky" aloud.

It does not matter that you had never won any oratorical or declamation contest in your grade school days. Just read the poems aloud to your children, and let poetry itself show them its power and beauty.