Putting to words

"Sometimes there aren't words.
Sometimes sentences and phrases can't do the moment justice.
Sometimes language fails,
and you're speechless."
(Rob Bell, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, 87)


We are doing poetry in English class this week. Not so much teaching students what it means to read a poem critically, but doing poetry. I am sharing poems with my students. I am asking my students to share poems with me. We are investigating the tone, rhythm, and purpose of the artwork of poets.

But throughout it all, we are trying to understand what it feels like to put words to what can't be said.

Today we looked at Kaveh Akbar. We looked at Naomi Shihab Nye. We looked at Billy Collins. We looked at Nikki Giovanni. We looked at Osama Alomar. We looked at Pablo Neruda. We looked at Mikko Harvey. We looked at each student's own writing, their own exploration of what it means to put words to the impossible feelings and experiences of the world.

But the moment that won the day?

When I found a poem for one specific student. I slid the book over to them and just nodded my head.

And they read the poem. The poem by an unknown Chilean woman. The poem that put words to what can't be said. The poem by a person whose name can never be known.

And the student's response?

"That is the best poem I have ever read."


For today, those words are enough because I know when I see that student tomorrow she will have new words.