Resources

by Julie Carr

Julie Carr taught in the New York City public schools for Teachers & Writers Collaborative and for the Children’s Movement for Creative Expression. She also teaches improvisational dance in festivals and schools nationally. Her poetry has appeared in Pequod, Salamander, the Greensboro Review, and Poet Lore. She is the 1998 co-winner of the Grolier Poetry Prize.

Teaching the Five Elements and Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”

ODE TO THE WEST WIND (Section I)

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being.
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver: hear, oh, hear!

I wanted to teach Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” to sixth-grade students who were used to reading mostly contemporary work. I wanted to let them know that Shelley was still accessible to them despite his “old-fashioned” way of writing. Since I also was being called upon to design a series of classes focused on science, I tried to figure out a way to combine my teaching of Shelley with the teaching of science. The following class happily wed the two tasks.

As my first step, I asked the students to stand up and close their eyes. I talked them through a meditation/visualization in which they imagined themselves to be made up entirely of stone. Then I prompted them to slowly transform into earth, then into mud, water, rain, mist, air, wind, warm wind, fire, and finally into ash and then earth again. This can take some time as it is important to really let them feel each element throughout their bodies. Teachers can suggest to their students that they imagine their feet are mud (or water, air etc), that their hair is air, that their tongue is water.

After I was done with the visualization exercise, I asked the students to open their eyes. I had placed paper in front of them while they were going through the exercise, and now I asked them to write immediately about their impressions of the experience. (Allow about 10 ten minutes for them to write.) When they were done, they put that writing aside as they got ready to hear about Shelley.

Now I introduced Shelly’s ode. I talked a little about the language in the poem, preparing them for the strangeness of 170-year-old phrasing. I read only the first section (which follows the form of a sonnet), pausing to explain unfamiliar words, and then I read it again. We discussed what Shelley was saying about the wind; how, in the middle of the poem, he “turns” his argument around by focusing on the wind’s restorative actions rather than on the more destructive qualities described in stanzas one and two. I felt that the students were able to understand the overall meaning of the poem, but I wasn’t sure they were really getting much from it. Their eyes looked a little glazed and they seemed put off by the “thous” and “thines”. However, we moved on.

In the final section of the class I asked the students to write their own odes to an element. I asked them to look at the short writing they did from the meditation exercise and to choose the element they felt most connected to, or which they were drawn to write about previously. Before writing I asked them to close their eyes again and silently meditate on the element they chose. I hinted that they could go into a memory associated with that element if they wanted to in order to invite a more personal, less abstract approach.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that many of the students seemed inspired by Shelley’s poem. Instead of putting them off as I had feared, it seemed to give them permission to write in a grander voice which lent a power to their writing I had not seen before. Also, a few students were drawn to rhyme. I didn’t discourage this, but helped them try rhyming creatively. Here are some examples:

ODE TO WATER AND FIRE

Water and fire are
many times desired.
Water gives people something to drink
and it helps some people, like me, think.
Fire warms people and things,
it makes some people feel like they have wings.

Water can turn into tears that soothe.
Fire destroys many people’s moods.
Water can cause floods all day,
many people must go far away.
Fire can destroy land
and turn houses into sand.

—Christian Cymielevsky

ODE TO THE EARTH

The Earth, all so moist and tender
grows plants in spring and in winter
it inhales the decomposed leaves.
It shakes me in a quake,
it also rocks me and
rocked me when I was young.
Shared all his memories with me,
can always tell me secrets that
I never knew. And keeps mine with him.

—Ana Yhokocka

ODE TO WATER

I could see it flowing
down the river, down the valley
until I saw it far away.
Humans play
around it, animals drink it.
We live upon this liquid creature
who is never out of sight.
Reflection of the moon at night.

—Neghat Khan

FIRE

Firing flames
Beginning of
Excitement
The thoughts
of treachery
Ending of
Envy.
Starting thyself
To create
Energy.
Firing flames
Fire,
Street, alley wise
Not thinking
Things through.
Fire,
Responsible for
Everything.

—Carla Vanessa Cruz Moreno