DISCUSSION
What poems do we know? Let’s recite them.
What poems have we heard? that had an emotional effect on us? Why? Let’s tell the stories.
Who are our favorite poets? Why?
POETRY LESSON #1: Awakening all our senses
ACTIVITY:
Taste: eat a madeline (“for Proust”)
Touch: materials in a box (cotton, silk, velvet, a weed …)
Hearing: listen to different music on CD
Sight: view a film clip
Smell: scratch-n-sniff stickers!! (why this phenomenon??)
The Sixth Sense: memory, imagination, non-verbal communication, empathy, telepathy, prayer
CRAFT:
Sensory vocabulary (word lists)
TRADITION/PEER POETS:
Read poems that speak to the five senses. For example, the Imagists often speak to readers visually, addressing the organ of sight. Consider William Carlos Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow.”
WRITE:
Write a free-form poem about your own sensory experience(s) … something you saw or heard, touched or tasted or smelled … AND one of your “sixth sense” experiences.
HOMEWORK: Read Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s The Color of Light: Poems on Van Gogh’s Late Paintings. Consider poems you might like to memorize, set to music, ponder, or write about reflectively.
THE POETRY PLACE 
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