Update: Apparently the Simpsons’ video was in violation of copyright, so YouTube has removed it.  Here’s another video instead, of John Astin (from the Addams family) reciting the poem:

Another great resource for studying Edgar Allen Poe is the progressive rock album Tales of Mystery and Imagination by the Alan Parsons Project, with narration by Orson Welles:

And finally, speaking of Orson Welles, you can download an mp3 of his infamous War of the Worlds broadcast from Mercury Theatre on the Air. They’ve got other great shows as well, including Dracula, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Man Who Was Thursday, and The Count of Monte Cristo.

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.  Not that all months aren’t rare.  But there be good and bad, as the pirates say.  Take September, a bad month: school begins.  Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet.  July, well July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school.  June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.

But you take October, now.  School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along.  You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on Old Man Prickett’s portch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month.  And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

Bradbury is the perfect author for October: from Something Wicked This Way Comes to The Halloween Tree to The October Country, Bradbury’s stories evoke the month’s crisp air and golden colors as the year begins to die.  Even the titles of his short stories echo the mysterious atmosphere of October: “The Coffin,” “The Scythe,” “There Will Come Soft Rains,” “The Last Night of the World,” “The Golden Apples of the Sun.”

If you’re looking for books to recommend to your students during the month of October, start with Ray Bradbury, but don’t forget October Sky (Rocket Boys) by Homer Hickham and by October 1964 David Halberstam.

You can also add to the October atmosphere in your classroom by reading October poetry and playing October music:

October Poetry 

• October by Hillaire Belloc
• Poem in October by Dylan Thomas
• Especially when the October wind by Dylan Thomas
• Maple Leaves by Thomas Baily Aldrich
• October Twilight by Edith May
• The Indian Summer by John Brainard
• Sonnet – October by William Cullen Bryant
• October by Paul Laurence Dunbar

October Music:

• Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting 1984-1994 by Sting
• October by U2
• “This is October” by Ceili Rain from Change in Your Pocket
• Songbird by Eva Cassidy, featuring “Autumn Leaves,” “Fields of Gold,” “Oh, I Had a Golden Thread,” and “Over the Rainbow”
• October Road by James Taylor
• “Forever Autumn” by Justin Hayward on The Best of the Moody Blues
• “Golden Autumn Day” by Van Morrison from Back on Top
• Moondance by Van Morrison
• Down the Road by Van Morrison
• Autumn by George Winston
• Jazz Moods: Sounds of Autumn
• Autumn Dreams by Danny Wright

The goal of the site is to make poetry “an active part of the daily experience of American high school students.” As Collins explains, the name Poetry 180 comes not only from the 180-day school year, but also from a desire to have American students turn back to poetry. Teachers are invited to visit the site each day, print out a poem, and read it to their students.

The Poems

Poetry 180 features poems by current U.S. poet laureate Charles Simic and other modern poets: William Stafford, Geraldine Connolly, Robert Bly, Donald Justice, Carol Snow, Wislawa Szymborska and many others.

Collins’ poem “Introduction to Poetry” leads off the collection:

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Clearly, Collins is worried about the way poems are taught in schools today. The Poetry 180 project is not about analyzing poems in an academic sense; instead, it aims at simply giving students the chance to listen to poetry on a regular basis, to make poetry part of everyday life.

How to Use the Poems

Collins gives the following suggestions for participating in the Poetry 180 project:

• Read a poem each day during morning or afternoon announcements. Collins emphasizes the “most important thing is that the poems be read and listened to without any academic requirements.”
• “At the end of each week, a packet of the week’s poems could be made available for interested students to take home.”

It’s a fantastic idea, and I think Collins and the Library of Congress have chosen some engaging poems for students to hear. The Poetry 180 site also has a brief but useful page on “How to Read a Poem Out Loud.”

If you’re passionate about poetry and you want your students to be, visit Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High Schools.

• 15 Mammoth Books for Teens – I’m not sure why, but this is my most popular document, with 494 views.
• ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature – My ebook has been viewed 421 times since I released it three months ago.
• Dead Poets Society Teaching Unit – 292 views since August 1
• 300+ Recommended Books for Junior High Students – This was the second most viewed document in August with over 250 views. Update: This link will not work because of a copyright allegation. See this post for more information. (August 27, 2007, 3:50 PDT)  Update #2: Scribd has re-enabled the list after not hearing back from the SFWA about my counter-notification.  (September 11, 2007, 2:55 PDT)
• Chronological Middle-earth Reading List – 169 people viewed this document in August

Scribd is a great place to share your documents with the rest of the world. Why not upload some of your homemade teaching materials and make them available for other teachers to use?

The Poetry Archive is a collection of streaming audio recordings of poets reading their own poems, and in some cases commenting on them.

“The Poetry Archive exists to help make poetry accessible, relevant and enjoyable to a wide audience. It came into being as a result of a meeting, in a recording studio, between Andrew Motion, soon after he became U.K. Poet Laureate in 1999, and the recording producer, Richard Carrington. They agreed about how enjoyable and illuminating it is to hear poets reading their work and about how regrettable it was that, even in the recent past, many important poets had not been properly recorded.”

The president of the archive is Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, who reads some of his own poems, such as “St. Kevin and the Blackbird.” The archive even features newly-named U.S. poet-laureate Charles Simic reading “In the Library” and others.

There’s something magical about poets reading their own words. Listening to a poet read his or her own words helps to make poetry more accessible and more personable.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch finally overcame her fear of Boo Radley by meeting him face to face. Students can overcome their fear of poetry by meeting poets in The Poetry Archive. The archive puts a personality to the words, and helps students to break free of the myth that poetry is boring, “fluffy” and remote.

There are some real gems in the archive:

• Billy Collins reading “Sonnet.” This is a very funny poem to use when teaching your students the sonnet form.
• Langston Hughes reading “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” As Monica Ali says of the recording, Hughes’ voice “conveys both strength and emotion and makes the poem all the more moving. When you hear him say, ‘my soul has grown deep like the rivers’ you find a little catch in your throat.”
• Tennyson reading “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Who knew a recording of Tennyson even existed?
• T.S. Eliot reading “Journey of the Magi.” I never thought I would hear T.S. Eliot reading one of his own poems. He also reads “The Waste Land” in its entirety.
• Margaret Atwood reading “Siren Song.” A great companion piece to The Odyssey.

The Poetry Archive also includes resources for teachers, including tips for listening, and The Children’s Poetry Archive featuring poems like “The News” by Michael Rosen.

The Poetry Archive is a must-see web site for every literature teacher.

“The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe – My students love studying this, even if they’ve read it before.  I use Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” to help them understand one poet’s view of his craft.  In this essay, Poe explains how he creates a poem, and he uses “The Raven” as his example.  One of the extremely rare instances where a poet explains the meaning, symbolism and theme of his or her poem.  I’ve prepared a four-page outline of the essay that you can download from Scribd if you think it might be useful for you.

“The Seven Ages of Man” from As You Like It by William Shakespeare – I pair this dramatic monologue with the song “100 Years” by Five for Fighting.  They complement each other well, and using the modern song helps to engage the students.

“George Gray” by Edgar Lee Masters – This is a great poem to use to get students talking about their fears and ambitions.  If you use my Dead Poets Society Teaching Unit, “George Gray” would fit right into it.

“The Lady of Shallot” and “The Highwayman” – I play Loreena McKennit’s versions of these poems before we read them, and I use Waterhouse’s painting of the Lady of Shalott to enhance their experience. The songs can be found on two of McKennit albums, The Book of Secrets and The Visit.

There are others that I teach, but these seem to resonate most with my eighth graders.

Materials Needed:

• Windows Movie Maker software (available with Windows XP or as a free download)
• Librivox.org (for public domain recordings of poetry)
• Wikimedia Commons (for public domain images)

Procedure:

1. Students find a poem they like on Librivox.org and download the mp3 to their computer. (Or, alternatively, they can record their own version of the poem and save it as an mp3.)
2. Using Windows Movie Maker, students import the poetry sound file.
3. They then search for images on Wikimedia Commons and import them into Windows Movie Maker using transitions and titles to make the movie more interesting.

Remember to review copyright law and public domain with students.

Make one yourself to see how it’s done, and post a link to it in the comments section. Here’s one I made a while back: