PoemWorks - Boston Globe Article

NURTURING THE POETRY OF YOUTH `GOOFING AROUND WITH WORDS' BRINGS CLASS ALIVE
Author(s): Jerry Taylor, Globe Staff Date: March 26, 2000 Page: 1 Section: Northwest Weekly

ANDOVER, MA - When Barbara Helfgott Hyett breezed into Kathleen Kendall's class at St. Augustine's School the other day, the 24 fourth-graders in their plaid jumpers and blue neckties knew what to do.

They began putting on paper whatever they saw happening in the room. "Miss Kendall was on the shelf watering plants," Alexandria Kury, 9, wrote. Another student had the teacher "hanging green streamers over the windows." A third noted "a strange man taking notes."

"Let's breathe, then write down what we're experiencing," said Helfgott Hyett, the school's poet-in-residence for a month.

"Heard myself breathing, ah, breathing," Chris Gilbert, 10, wrote.

Employing a teaching technique she calls "goofing around with words," Helfgott Hyett, 54, has taught people of all ages to write poetry, from 3-year-olds at a preschool in Somerville to high schoolers in Lexington and Brookline to Boston University undergraduates to adults in evening workshops at her Brookline home, workshops that have begat 24 published works.

"It's not about intelligence," said Helfgott Hyett, who has four volumes of poetry in print. "It's getting children to listen to themselves."

A unit of the school's parent organization, St. Augustine's Guild's cultural committee, raised $4,000 to have the poet enliven the literary broth two days a week for four weeks. Besides working with grades 2 through 5, she led workshops with teachers, getting them to write poems, too.

Teachers at the red-brick parochial school seemed ecstatic.

"My kids were wilted flowers on her first day, but she got them pepped up," Laura O'Hagan, a second-grade teacher, said. "She got them writing. She's wonderful."

Kendall, after the poet's second session with her class, said: "The first time here she had them reading poems from the bottom up and from right to left. Kids loved it. Keep editing, she'd tell them. The level of language that the children used in just these two visits is astonishing. They're breaking away from traditional grammar and using their creative souls. She's absolutely magic."

Doris Tiney, whose 10-year-old daughter, Nicole, is in Kendall's class, sat in on the poet's second visit. "She's captivated all of them," she said.

Helfgott Hyett maintained a brisk pace, keeping Kendall's youngsters writing feverishly.

She led a reading in unison of her chosen poem of the day, Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody."

"I'd like you to take one line and change one word," the visiting teacher said. "This is the part where you steal a line from a famous poet."

"I love poetry," Dennis Pellegrino, 9, whispered while the lesson proceeded. "I like to read it. The latest book I've read was `A Light in the Attic.' "

Helfgott Hyett asked Kendall, aided by Doris Tiney and another parent, Kathy George, to distribute small stones to the class, then fired a barrage of questions and instructions, much like the exercise with shells and ballpoint pens in visits to other classes.

She had them drop the stones on the desks and describe the sound.

"What does it remind you of?" she asked. "A place you've been? Where do you find these things? Where would you never find it? Why does it exist anyway? What does it do? How does it make you feel? What's the season of this thing, the weather? What does it smell like? How is it exactly like you?"

Paul McCarthy, 9, wrote that his stone was green, orange, black and faded white, that it was found in a cave, a spring thing.

When the poet asked what their stones would be if found in a refrigerator, Mackenzie Mulcahy, 9, wrote a strawberry.

The only technical term she mentioned was quatrain. "What's the `rain' part?" she asked. "What's the `quat' part?"

"Uno, dos, tres, quatro," Stephanie Halks, 10, said.

The poet asked the children to draw upon the notes and phrases they'd written.

"Put a circle around anything you said about reconciliation," she said. "Mark anything in Emily Dickinson's poem you changed. Find the place you put an exclamation point or dash or question mark. Look for the phrase you wrote about breathing. Look at all the things you wrote about your stone and take the really good stuff."

She asked for a show of hands on students opting for "I'm Nobody" or "I'm Somebody." The class split about 50-50.

"You're writing about you," she said.

A few minutes later, she read all the children's efforts aloud, ending with a burst of applause.

"I know what it's like to be a stone," Meghan Thomann wrote. "Bumpy and small and smooth/ I have a nose - it smells/ like wind, like a black cloud/ confessing its sins/ I can't stand it on the top but I can/ on the bottom?/ a century in the ocean/ In a church, on the pew."

Tyler Reddington wrote: "I am what keeps things/ whole. Who are you./ It feels sand-like. Don't tell/ The phone is ringing. Like a frog/ I'm somebody. Then there's a/ pair of us."

"I can feel my stomach moving," Kristina Harris wrote, "when I'm breathing,/ and my lips bleeding./ A strange man is walking around,/ confessing his sins like plain young/ Miss Kendall."

In a workshop late one afternoon, Helfgott Hyett discussed poems written by Kendall, by Patsy Hemeon, a second-grade teacher, and Ann Doherty, a sixth-grade teacher, all of the early drafts dealing with dead animals.

"Three out of three did not identify the creatures," the poet said.

She devoted much of the conversation to approaches she believes work best with children.

"Poetry is the synthesis of speech," Helfgott Hyett said. "Poets simulate speech. Don't ask kids what it means. I never talk about the meaning of a poem with children. You're not allowed to ask your kids if it's true. They'll feel threatened. In poetry, we're talking about truth with a capital T. Poetry is when you don't know what it's about. It's a way through language for children.