I don’t know how much poetry you’re doing, but one way I’ve tricked my H.S. students into writing detailed, fantastic-image-ridden poems is by showing them some performance poetry clips. Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Maggie Estep (look up “Emotional Idiot”) are both good. My students seem to like the mix of angst and image. Then we look at some of the “page” poets. Some they’ve liked so far are Ntozake Shange, Cornelius Eady, and there’s this poem called “Crater Face” but I can’t remember who wrote it. But they love the Drano on the face in that poem. They are still talking about it. And these poems have encouraged them to explore similar angst/image experiences in their own teenage lives. Hope this helps! I’d be interested to hear a follow-up from you and new strategies, readings, and activities you’ve implemented. I’m always looking for suggestions, too.

p.s. I saw a little blurb about you in the Eastern alumni magazine. Congrats!

Students in developmental college writing class have been known not to do outside reading, but mine seem to be doing it this semester with the introduction of the reading journal. Chris Howell assigns them. Naturally the reading notebook assignment I give has to be far more structured than the one he gives.

My students have to be prepared to tell me the main idea of the essay (we’re reading essays from the New York Times Writers on Writing series) and the key details that support the main idea. Then they get to choose from a more creative list of things to write about–one is to imagine a narrative, what happened to the writer that made him or her sit down to write this essay–to what or whom the writer is responding in writing this piece. I have been THRILLED by how carefully my students are doing the reading. And I act like I expect them to do it. That is vital. They read our expectations. Students of all sorts tend to be very good at that kind of reading.

An exercise I like to use with young people is to assign them to eavesdrop on adults and write down ten lines of dialogue (preferably from different conversations) and then use them to build a narrative (though it could easily be used to build a poem as well).

Other stories we used last summer that you might consider: “Emergency,” Dybek’s “Death of the Right Fielder,” and Aimee Bender’s “Off” (are there any girls in there?).

On the other note: I gave my brother-in-law The Quotable Douchebag for Christmas. It’s a good book for someone who doesn’t read books.