Add Your Ingredients
- Kayla Matzek
- Apr 27, 2019
- 7 min read
In my poetry class (where I write my own poems) our professor showed us a couple poems written in the form of a recipe. They were prompting poems for us to think about when writing our own, including "Da Capo" by Jane Hirshfield and "To make a prairie" by Emily Dickinson.
It didn't take much thought to decide this prompt would be perfect for the classroom, because it has so much potential. In a literal sense you can form a recipe for a favorite dish, but that's not what I was looking for. I wanted them to write a recipe that makes up something they imagine in their life. For the sake of this prompt I told them to write a recipe for the best day ever, or a recipe that makes up them, or a recipe of what makes them happy, but I thought of so many possibilities beyond that. Have you ever broke down a day out in the garden with your grandmother into ingredients, listing all the things that make up her and the garden and the air and the life around you? Or all the ingredients it takes to make the person that you love smile? A poem like this really makes you stop to realize what beauty makes up your world each and every day.
Alejandra and I started off with a poem by Aashka Thakkar called "The Friendship Recipe." Finding the right poem was difficult at first because at the beginning we were choosing ones that were very abstract, that could only fit into the recipe category if you really analyzed it. With a lot of options on the table, we finally chose the one that listed many verbs that could be useful to the students when they wrote their own recipe poem such as chop, mix, cut, dissolve, stir, toss, etc.
When first sending over the confirmation email to the 8th grade teacher, we included a different poem called, "How To Make Rain" by Kevin Young. In our eyes it was beautiful, digging deep into your chest pulling on your heart strings. But we got a reply concerned about the last line of the poem. The teacher wanted to make sure it wasn't alluding to a boy committed suicide, as the last few lines read: "deep among clouds what you want to see/ is a girl selling kisses beneath cotton/ wood is a boy drowning inside the earth." It didn't even cross my mind that this could be interpreted differently, but the teacher was right. Even if that's not what the author intended to signify, young students might see it as more graphic when visualizing it in their heads. So since we decided to change the poem to something more kid-friendly, I will include this poem so its beauty doesn't go unnoticed.
How To Make Rain
By Kevin Young
Start with the sun
piled weeks deep on your back after
you haven't heard rain for an entire
growing season and making sure to face
due north spit twice into the red clay
stomp your silent feet waiting for rain
rain to bring the washing in rain
of reaping rusty tubs of rain wish
aloud to be caught in the throat
of the dry well head kissing your back
a bent spoon for groundwater to be
sipped from slow courting rain rain
that falls forever rain which keeps
folks inside and makes late afternoon
babies begin to bury childhood clothes
wrap them around stones and skulls of
doves then mark each place well enough
to stand the coming storm rain of our
fathers shoeless rain the devil is
beating his wife rain rain learned
early in the bones plant these scare
crow people face down wing wing
and bony anchor then wait until they
grow roots and skeletons sudden soaking
rain that draws out the nightcrawler
rain of forgetting rain that asks for
more rain rain that can't help but
answer what you are looking for
must fall what you are looking for is
deep among clouds what you want to see
is a girl selling kisses beneath cotton
wood is a boy drowning inside the earth.
After reading it again I realize how awfully dark it is. The poem we went with is much happier; promoting more happy thoughts while brainstorming than the original poem.
The Friendship Recipe
By Aashka Thakkar
Fold two hands together
and express a dash of sorrow
marinate it overnight
and work on it tomorrow
Chop one grudge in tiny pieces
add several cups of love
dredge with a large sized smile
mix with the ingredients above
Dissolve the hate within you
by doing a good deed
cut it and help your friend
if they should be in need
Stir in laughter, love, and kindness
from the heart it has to come
toss with genuine forgiveness
and give your neighbor some
The amount of people served
will depend on you
it can serve the whole wide world
if you really want it to
After presenting the example poem to the class, Alejandra and I decided that we needed to review a couple things about poetry before we let the students go off free to write. We stressed the idea of using line breaks and stanzas, something that most of the students didn't know about before or simply forgot about. The poems we were collecting each week were amazing, they really blew me away with the ideas they brought to the table. But the only thing missing was the structure we love to see when writing a poem. That white space isn't just area on the page that you haven't taken up, it brings pause, room for thinking, and wonder to the lines of poetry that are there.
We also explained that a lot of the words they were including in their poems were unnecessary. Empty words like: the, who, when, very, amazing, and awesome are just words begging to be transformed into something with flair, something that brings the poem to life. We suggested if they got stuck with what words to include, they could pull out the thesaurus and find some fun, interesting words. But we also explained that too many words isn't always good. The purpose of creating these poems was to "show, don't tell." And lastly we reminded them to add a title before or after they have written their poem, depending on when a great one comes to mind.
The students took this advice seriously, I noticed when I walked around the room that they were line breaking and building stanzas. The two problems I encountered with this prompt however was 1. They didn't know how to start when creating a recipe about life and 2. When they decided what they were going to write about, they made a list (like an actual recipe taken from a cooking book) of just single words.
Making lists for poetry is fine and all, but right before they all started writing I advised them that a recipe list was not what I was looking for. I wanted them to create a story with their ingredients, bring it to life, even stray away from the ingredients and create something more. But I can only tell them what to do so much before they decide they'll just do whatever it takes to have a finished poem on their paper.
I noticed for a lot of them it took a while to figure out how to make a recipe in general. A big portion of the workshop was spent talking amongst themselves, because all they could think about was the food their mom's recipes would make. My main piece of advice to them was to take those words you use to describe making and preparing food and insert them into a story that's broken down into parts. So, I told them to tell me what makes up their idea of the best day ever, just to give me a list of things that would rock their world. A student listed to me taking a nap, playing Fortnite, and ordering an extra-large pizza... (my best day ever might look a little different). I giggled and said that was great! Now, I said, give it to me in a story, adding in words like: add, mix, stir, sprinkle, etc.
The best day ever to me would be held in a giant mixing bowl, add blissful naps under sheets, a spoonful of dominating enemies in Fortnite, and a sprinkle of Dominos pizza, pepperoni, sausage, bacon, spilling over sides while mixed together in my bowl of one great day. This was my example to them and almost immediately I saw imaginary lightbulbs flicker on above each of their heads. They took to their pencils and began writing.
This was one of Alejandra and I's more successful workshops, even though the teacher was absent from the classroom for most of the time. At the beginning of class there was an incident with one of the students coming to school on drugs, and it was taken care of very quickly. By the time I had noticed, the student was already out of the classroom on the way to the principal's office. This was a very stressful day for the teacher, so keeping the students under control while she was gone was our main priority.
Other than a pencil being thrown across the classroom and some out of control giggling, we had it under control. Sometimes it's hard to act as the student's friends while still keeping the composure of being in charge, but a balance needs to stay in place. I always try to be silly and laugh with them, but when it goes too far, I'm never scared to raise my voice a little and be serious. When this happens on rare occasions, I feel like it's more effective than always being strict. When all of a sudden a favorite teacher who's always so joyful and personal with their students slams down their hand on a desk and yells, the students know it's no joke. When teachers are too strict almost all the time, students tend to take it less seriously.
At the end of our workshops we always try to get volunteers to read their own poems, but it never happens. So at first Alejandra and I offered to read their poems to the class instead of them reading their own, because we know how terrifying it could be. But sadly, this still didn't work so we thought of a better plan. We always collect their poems to write feedback on them and then hand them back during the next workshop, but this time we collected them early and shuffled them up. Without reading their names, we started reading a few poems aloud and they loved it. Sometimes it was obvious when their poem was being read, because they would get so embarrassed and turn to their friend in comfort. This was a great way to get their poems appreciated without the stress of reading them themselves to the class. We also introduced them to snapping when a poem is especially good. In my own poetry workshops my professor explained to us that instead of clapping (because that's a little too obnoxious for a classroom) we snap when we enjoy a poem that was read. To be respectful to everyone though, we explained that every poem should get snaps, because it's somebody else's art that was made to be appreciated by others. Here are a couple of poems from this workshop that I thought were beautifully written:
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