Education Prof Benita Bruster was invited to work with five 4th grade boys identified as struggling readers. When she asked them to suggest a favorite poet, the response was not unexpected “Poetry is dumb”, “Girls like poetry”, etc. When she asked about a favorite musician, she got a rousing response – but then she countered with, “I hate to break it to you, but you all like poetry…lyrics are just poems set to music.” Drawing on some cutting edge academic research (see Turn Your Boys to Readers on page 14), Benita predicted that boys would enjoy poems that were “silly, bizarre, gross, or absurd”. She chose her start with the poem, A Wild Turkey Comments on His Portrait. “Rather than passing out copies of the […]
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