Hearing Angels Sing by Teresa Greco

I wrote my first poem after encountering a poetry anthology my first grade ELA teacher had placed at a writing station. When I opened that book, light tunneled up to the ceiling; angels sang. “People do this?? This is a job??” I asked her, and the word poet became part of me.

Not everyone hears angels when studying scheme and meter; however, the sinews of poetry connect to every muscle of the modern student. Poems are love letters and hate mail, selfies and group chats. And, in this age of binge-watching, each stanza is an invitation to add another episode of longing, self-reflection, whimsy, angst, or uncharted rhyme. Students inherently understand the anatomy of poetry.

Writing poetry is a metacognitive practice; a poet must carefully consider how his or her authentic voice will shape the voice of a constructed persona. I find it crucial to write alongside my students, to model the struggles and successes writers encounter from word to word, line to line, work to work.

On the first day of class, we write odes together. I offer the subjects of Pablo Neruda’s odes, so we can compare our writing choices with Neruda’s. Students are delighted to discover that a published poet has also pondered the lifecycle of an artichoke, a lemon, a pair of socks, a grain of salt.
My poem, “My Language,” is about the unraveling of a poet who can no longer control the words he entraps in his poems. I often invite students to critique, repair, and reinvent my work: Why did the poet exclude conjunctions and interjections? Which line would you rewrite or omit? How would you write a poem about your language?

Effective writing in a collaborative classroom is a journey of revision and reciprocity – a return to our earliest pages.


Teresa Greco (Tarello) attended The Palm Beach County School of the Arts (now known as Dreyfoos School of the Arts) for voice, received a BA in creative writing from Florida State University, and earned a MAT for English 6-12 at Stony Brook University. She teaches 9 Honors, AP Language and Composition, and Philosophy at Deer Park High School (Long Island, New York). She is the author of The Trials of Nothing: A Soap Opera for Philosophers. She highly recommends the book Writing Poetry: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them by FSU professor and distinguished poet, David Kirby. You can follow her on Twitter @GrecoRoaming or email her at GrecoRoaming@outlook.com.