Rhyme and Reason

By Davi Walders

A hot morning in April. Students are dozing during a discussion of World War II, or drifting in French 4. Try this: Pass out Lucien Stryk's poem "Letter to Jean Paul Boudot, Christmas." Ask for a reader. Let the class share the harrowing experience of a young Frenchman, trapped, trying to survive.

A cold afternoon in winter. "Ugh," from students, "not another phys.-ed. lecture." Pull out "Rink Keeper's Sestina: Hockey, hockey," by George Draper. Have students read aloud as the winter solstice closes in:

See what happens. "Rink Keeper's Sestina: Hockey, hockey," is, at once, a humorous and very serious commentary on sports and violence in American culture today. And it is more. Written from the point of view of the large, lumbering Zamboni machine, it is also a graceful mathematical form of six-line stanzas with repeating end words in different arrangements, called a "sestina." Within these few lines, the poet forges words, form, and humor...