One of the things that I love most is poetry. This love began early in my life, as I heard and read the poems in Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, and continues in my teaching of high school English. As I think of the beginning of each new school year, one of the things I look forward to most is being able to teach my students about poetry. The basis of my teaching this subject, and every subject, is the following principle, which is central in the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method: "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." I've learned: poetry is not just a lovely thing, but presents what the poet and founder of Aesthetic Realism, Eli Siegel, explained in his essay "The Immediate Need for Poetry," is "a picture of reality at its truest, most useful": useful to us as we meet and think about the world, ourselves, and other people every day. In its music and its meaning, it is accurate about reality as WE NEED TO BE!
I list here several websites that I value very much. They're not only for English teachers, but for everyone to read and enjoy!
http://www.bartleby.com/
http://www.elisiegel.net/poetry/
http://www.oldpoetry.com/
http://www.poemhunter.com/
