How to Make Poetry Interesting to High School Students

We recently overheard a conversation between high school English teachers about how to make poetry interesting (and if it’s even worth including in your curriculum). The conversation covered a lot of ground, but, as is often the case among English teachers, landed on tying poetry to students’ favorite songs or giving them the opportunity to create their own poetry. These are certainly strategies that can increase student engagement, but we’ve found that these approaches can be limiting.

Many high school students don’t write particularly rich poems, and while there are many songs that merit rich discussion, lots of songs just aren’t (and don’t need to be) doing the same thing as poems. Students often struggle with poetry because it feels so removed from their own experiences, and leaning too far into their favorite songs reinforces that idea. When considering how to make poetry interesting, we can show them that the classics are far more accessible than they think, and the poems you select to teach can go a long way.

In the AP Literature curriculum, poetry is essential: a good percentage of the exam requires students to read and analyze poems. Because of its prominence on the exam, but also because of students’ fear (apprehension, dislike, fill-in-the-blank here) of poetry, we needed to figure out how to make poetry interesting and more accessible. This led us to spend the better part of the second semester focused on poetry. While many English teachers would find it hard to believe this went well for us (poetry is intimidating for all of us, after all), we found that one of the biggest keys to success was selecting the right poems.

This does require a bit of trial and error (apologies to the classes we used as guinea pigs most often), but making selections is not unlike the idea of the teachers who decided to tie poetry to students’ favorite songs. Choose topics that interest them.

One of the biggest obstacles when thinking about how to make poetry interesting to high school students is that poetry can seem dry or irrelevant, especially when students struggle with the vocabulary and fail to recognize its use of figurative language (to be fair, this is a problem we can struggle with, too). It can seem like poetry is all about nature or death or religion or just weird guys in tights musing about love in abstract ways. But with the right poems, you can have fun and engaging discussions (rich in literary analysis) while keeping the preparation simple for you and your students.

How to Make Poetry Interesting: 8 Recommended Poems

“Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy

Piercy’s allegorical poem about a young woman who grows up under constant pressure to conform to society’s gender expectations before finally succumbing, sacrificing her offending “fat nose on thick legs” to achieve fulfillment even though it comes at the cost of her own life, was a favorite in our classroom. The poem’s language is accessible, but there are complexities, especially in the poem’s final stanza, that allow for rich classroom discussion.

High school students (especially in a social-media-filled-world) relate to the girl in the poem and have a lot to say about the topic. (This poem pairs nicely with Pat Mora’s “Same Song,” which appeals to students at a variety of ages and reading abilities.)

Billy Collins (so much to choose from here)

Collins, who served as the US poet laureate from 2001–2003, is a delight. Our AP English Literature textbook heavily featured Collins’s poems, and we’re glad it did. His poems are written in clear, straightforward English that is very accessible to students, and he incorporates humor frequently, creating poems that don’t intimidate students but still have emotional resonance.

The College Board used “The History Teacher” for its 2007 poetry analysis essay prompt, and “Introduction to Poetry” appeals to students who, like the readers in Collins’ poem, would find it much easier if they could just “tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it.”

“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen

Owen’s poem held a permanent position in our introductory poetry unit. Despite its gruesome subject matter, the poem is arguably beautiful, using rich poetic language to convey the true horrors of war (particularly World War I) and criticize the commonly touted message that it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country. The poem is a favorite of ours, and it came to be a favorite of our students. It’s also relatively easy to help students see how Owens uses poetic techniques to convey his purpose, so it’s a good starter poem for any poetry unit.

Making Connections: If your students have read All Quiet on the Western Front or have seen the Netflix film, there is an opportunity for rich discussion about the soldier experience on both sides of the war. We would show either this or this trailer of the Netflix film (which is absolutely brilliant, by the way) to students prior to reading the poem.

“Hazel Tells LaVerne” by Katharyn Howd Machan

This poem makes for a quick but fun discussion: the speaker shares the story of finding a frog in the toilet of the Howard Johnson’s where she cleans rooms and flushing the “little green pervert” when he asks for a kiss. It’s a great way to reinforce the importance of titles (it’s shocking how long it takes students to figure out who the speaker and listener are), provide an example of an allusion students recognize (though post-2009 we had to explain that The Princess and the Frog was, in fact, not the original fairy tale), and discuss the importance of dialect in characterization.

“Is My Team Ploughing” by A.E. Housman

Another regular in our introductory poetry unit, Housman’s poem is accessible to beginning students of poetry and captures their attention with the plot twist at the end (wait, that’s what the last stanza means?). It’s a good poem to use early in your poetry studies as the two speakers and use of italics to differentiate them remind students about the importance of paying attention to all the details of a poem. Our students (as is the case for most teenagers) are delighted by the dramatic ending, but it leads to meaningful discussions about the world’s tendency to go on without us after we die.

Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s sonnets always made multiple appearances in our poetry units: when a type of sonnet is named after you, you’ve probably done some good work in the genre. Students generally enjoyed these sonnets (in part because they were already familiar with Shakespeare), and the “you’re no traditional beauty but I love you anyway” message especially appealed and led to rich discussions about tone (is this an insult or a compliment?).

“To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell

Marvell’s poem shows up often in poetry anthologies and textbooks, and with good reason. Rich in figurative language, the poem initially feels like an insurmountable obstacle to students. But when students realize what he’s actually talking about, the giggles reveal our students are learning that poetry is definitely not boring (by the end of the semester, students usually come to realize poets are less romantic and more, shall we say, lustful). And yet Marvell’s poem has an underlying message about living life to the fullest that gives the poem depth and appeals to students.

If you are really struggling with how to make poetry interesting to your students, this will grab their attention. Follow it up with John Donne’s “The Flea,” and you will not hear again how “boring” poetry is.

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne

Full confession: we love John Donne, so our students probably got more exposure to him than they would have preferred, but “Valediction” almost always came up in students’ “favorites” list at the end of the semester. Like Marvell’s poem, the diction and figurative language make for a challenging first (second, third, . . .) read, but once students get it (and learn the poet wrote it for his own wife), they have an “awwwww” moment, admiring the romance.

We do, however, recommend bringing in your own drawing compass as a visual aid: many students have not used one or have only used a “safety” one at school that looks nothing like the one Donne references in his climactic simile.

What strategies have you found helpful when considering how to make poetry interesting to your students? What have been the most well-received poems in your classroom? Reach out to us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works to share!