Notes from Jack McHenry on NINTH GRADE ENGLISH

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.

Sought for much after that, it will be found

Either to have bone groping underground

(And taken with it all the Hyla breed

That shouted in the mist a month ago,

Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--

Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,

Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent

Even against the way its waters went.

Its bed is left a faded paper sheet

Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--

A brook to none but who remember long.

This as it will be seen is other far

Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.

We love the things we love for what they are.

Robert Frost

Robert Frost's "Hyla Brook" and Thornton Creek

After finishing a class segment focusing on the poetry of Robert Frost, including the memorization of "Hyla Brook," students have spent a day visiting sites along Thornton Creek.

The point of the exercise is to acquaint the class with two portions of the creek that show widely varying states of environmental "health". The first is a bucolic scene, the second a drainage channel near Northgate Mall. As a response to their visits, the class is asked to compose poems based on the experience.

Prior to working on their poems, students share key words they associate with the segments of the stream they have visited. The class also reviews discussion on the nature of voice in poetic writing. Students are invited to weave in key words and phrases they and their class mates found suited to the creek as they write.

The exercise has resulted in a series of poems that reflect heightened understanding of the ways in which a feature of the natural world may be changed, may change itself, and may be changed again as it is affected by the human world. The students also enjoy the experience of connecting their study of Robert Frost to their own Seattle world and the opportunity to function as poets themselves.