Pupils learn poetry with helping of humor

LYNN – If laughter is the best medicine, then Cobbet Elementary School students, after a visit by children’s author and poet Jeff Nathan, are very healthy indeed.”I played football all through college and I loved it,” said Nathan, speaking Wednesday to fourth- and fifth-graders. “But along with playing football, I also loved to play with words.”Nathan shared his love of poetry, music and fun with students in grades K-5 and put on a fifth show in the evening for parents. His aim during the day was to tie learning with laughter. His goal for the evening was straight-up fun, he said.Nathan, who lives with his family in Andover, was working a high-tech job when his children began to get interested in musical theater. He said auditions usually included poetry reading, and every child seemed to do the same Shel Silverstein poem.”I thought if I wrote poems for my kids they’d do better, and they did,” he said. “Then other kids started asking me if I’d write poems for them.”Before long he had a stack of poems, and the local theater group urged him to publish.”It took 11 years,” he said.His first book was published in 2000, and, by 2003, he worked up the nerve to quit his job and perform full-time.”My first jobs were absolutely horrendous,” he said. “I was atrocious ? but I learned what worked well with the kids and what worked with the teachers.”And humor worked, he said.He introduced Sherlock Poems, who taught students how to read a poem by finding clues and asking some basic questions, like who or what is the poem about and where is it taking place.He explained the difference between a metaphor and a simile and the definition of “stanza” as well as his definition of a poem.”A set of words carefully chosen and organized to serve specific purposes,” he said. “What purpose could a poem possibly serve? I would have been asking the same thing at your age.”Painting a picture with words or bringing out an emotion are typically the purpose of most poems, he explained.The lessons, however, were carefully ensconced in music, hilarity and general goofiness.Nathan had fifth-grader Cris “CJ” Jimenez racing around the gymnasium during his poem “Take Me Out of the Ballgame,” Nathan’s take on the classic song, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”He had all students bouncing up and down like crazed yo-yos during “Life’s Ups and Downs,” and he showed them just how easy it is to change the very nature of a poem with just a few words, when he sang his version of “Mary had a Little Lamb ? with some salad and beans.””Be careful with the words you choose,” he said. “You can easily go from Mary had a little pet lamb to Mary eating a little pet lamb.”But he also told students the glory of writing poetry is that they get to make all the decisions, all the choices.”My job is doing word puzzles,” he said. “I do word puzzles for a living and I have a blast. It’s a really fun job.”