Dear Educator:

This is about something I think you will enjoy personally and find helpful in your work with students.

Fooling with Words is a PBS documentary special produced with young people in mind. We wanted them to see just how vital, compelling, and enjoyable poetry can be. So we took our cameras to the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, New Jersey, to capture the excitement of "the Woodstock of Poetry." We covered the festival as if it were a sporting event, with cameras everywhere -- on the poets as they performed; the audience as it watched, laughed, wept, and cheered; workshops where students and aspiring bards talked face-to-face with the poets about their craft and their lives.

The result is a film that will introduce your students to the power and pleasure of poetry in many guises -- from the rhythmic cadences of Amira Baraka and Kurtis Lamkin (who accompanies his poems on the kora, the African ancestor of the harp) to the haunting evocations of Lorna Dee Cervantes and Shirley Geok-lin Lim, the puckish wit of Paul Muldoon, the spiritual power of Jane Hirshfield, the wry commentary by Deborah Garrison on the life of women in the workplace, and the moving remembrances of "Halley's Comet" by Stanley Kunitz, at 95 the dean of American poets.

This smorgasbord of contemporary American poetry comes at a timely moment. The New York Times says poetry is enjoying a resurgence in America. The Atlantic Monthly says, "the nation's hot romance with poetry shows no sign of cooling off." Esquire predicts poetry will be the pop-culture event at the opening of the new millennium. Volkswagen included poetry books as a "standard feature" in all its new cars during National Poetry Month, and poetry is being celebrated at events from the recent White House gathering of poets to poetry slams in smoky downtown bars.

Fooling with Words captures the spirit of this phenomenon. We hope you will tape the program and use the accompanying materials.

Sincerely,

Bill Moyers .

INTRODUCTION

Since 1986, the restored nineteenth-century village of Waterloo, New Jersey, has hosted the largest poetry gathering in North America‹the biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. For four days, thousands of people gather to listen to, read, discuss, and celebrate poetry.

FOOLING WITH WORDS with Bill Moyers captures the excitement of the 1998 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. It features performances by and interviews with some of the most accomplished poets of our time.
Broadcast: September 26, 1999 on PBS (check local listings)

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

Preview the programs and read each poem carefully before making class assignments, as some poets may deal with potentially sensitive and/or disturbing subjects.

Decide which segments and/or specific poems to offer to your class, and use the time code on the folder to identify and cue up each segment. Remember: You can tape programs from Fooling with Words or Sounds of Poetry and use them in the classroom for one year after each broadcast.

Familiarize yourself with all Poet Cards, noting that some poets are presented on two sides of a Poet Card, others only on a single side. Designed for photocopying, these cards offer poems and a range of other resources for each poet represented: a photograph, a bio note, a statement relating to poetry or being a poet, an introductory question, several questions designed to stimulate discussion, and suggested follow-up activities.

Use quoted statements by each poet to spark discussion about this poet's perspective on poetry and/or about poetry in general. Much can be gained by choosing and comparing favorites, by discussing how each statement relates to that poet's poems, by discussing how a statement by one poet relates to the poems of another poet, or by assembling these statements into a collage.

Use the single, introductory question for each poet to help students enter a poem by reminding them that poetry connects directly to their own lives. For example, start the discussion of a poet by asking students to determine which poem the large-print, introductory question addresses. Follow the question as it goes into that poem and back out into life. Encourage ongoing reflection by asking students to make up their own introductory questions.

Stimulate imaginative experimentation and cross-fertilization by modifying, adapting, and re-applying Poet Card activities as your inclinations and your students' capacities suggest.

Consider the relationship of printed text to actual performance, including on-the-spot improvisation‹as with Amiri Baraka, Coleman Barks, and Kurtis Lamkin.

Consult FOOLING WITH WORDS Online for additional poems, expanded statements about poetry, and a wide range of other program-related resources.


SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS:

1) Enlarge statements by poets on the Poet Cards and post them around your classroom.

2) Let students choose poems to read aloud, then review how the poets actually perform these poems on the video.

3) Distribute copies of selected Poet Cards to small groups of students, and ask each group to define linkages among the poets and the poems.

4) Provide students with copies of the complete set of Poet Cards, and ask them to organize their own anthologies, according to their own principles.


A Note on Interdisciplinary Use

This FOOLING WITH WORDS Teacher's Guide can be used in classes in the arts and social studies as well as in English and literature classes. The poets in Fooling with Words and The Sounds of Poetry represent different cultural perspectives, determined in part by differences in gender, age, and ethnic background. Their voices can spark interest in events, places, or historical periods and bring a human scale to large, abstract concepts. In addition to sharing these materials with colleagues teaching other subjects, many teachers regularly invite students to choose poets and poems relevant to their other courses of study