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"And I wrote my happy songs, every child may joy to hear": The poetry of William Blake in the middle school classroom

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From: ALAN Review
Date: 20030101
Author:Kazemek, Francis E

Miss Stretchberry wanted her students to love poetry (Creech 2001). She read to them daily both from the works of acknowledged masters and contemporary poets and encouraged them to write. Jack, an initially skeptical and reluctant writer (boys don't write poetry; girls do), was intrigued by William Blake's "The Tyger." (I have retained all of Blake's spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.) He responded to Miss Stretchberry's oral reading of the poem by writing that he really didn't understand it. However, he admitted, "at least it sounded good/in my ears" (Creech, 2001, p. 8). Not only ...

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