Open the Door: How to Excite Young People about Poetry

This one-of-a-kind mixture of essays, interviews, and lesson plans gathers the best thinking about how we can impart the value and joy of poetry to kids. The essays in the first section from Matthea Harvey, Ron Padgett, William Stafford, Eileen Myles, Kenneth Koch, Theodore Roethke, and many others illuminate the importance of poetry to a well-rounded education, in and out of traditional classroom settings. The next section is a roundtable conversation among a handful of creative men and women who’ve helped set up or run poetry education centers around the United States. In the book’s final segment, award-winning poets (Matthew Zapruder, Yusef Komunyakaa, many others) offer an array of brilliant lesson plans for people teaching poetry to kids of all ages. Open the Door will be useful for first-time and veteran teachers, as well as parents, babysitters, MFAs with no job, and anyone else with an interest in poetry’s place in the lives of our younger citizens.