Poet Brod Bagert
is the author of over ten books of poetry for children, young adults,
and adults. A former lawyer and New Orleans City Councilman, Bagert
penned his first poem as a favor to his daughter, who needed a poem to
recite in a school program. Bagert realized that few poems written in
children’s voices were available, and so wrote one himself. Since then,
he has helped change children’s poetry in America, focusing on
performance as well as the poem itself. According to Timothy Rasinski, a
literacy instructor at Kent State University, Bagert’s poems Bagert’s
poems allow children to “study art” through analysis of the poems, and
then “create art” when they perform them. “Since he is one of the few
poets to (truly) write in the voice of a child, it’s easy for (students)
to use his material for expressiveness,” Rasinski told the New Orleans Times Picayune in a feature on Bagert. The Picayune noted
that part of Bagert’s appeal to children was his ability to capture
their swirling moods and emotions: “Bagert’s verses often feature the
private emotions—raw, complex, humorous—of youthful characters he
created,” the article’s author, Ramon Antonio Vargas, noted.
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Bagert’s books of poetry for children include Elephant Games and Other Playful Poems to Perform (1995), The Gooch Machine (1997), Giant Children (2002), Shout! Little Poems that Roar (2007), and School Fever (2008). His collections for adults include A Bullfrog at Café DuMonde (2008) and Steel Cables.(2008).
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An active presence in schools nationwide, Bagert compares himself to
Johnny Appleseed because he journeys across America, planting a love of
poetry in children. He both performs poetry for children and instructs
teachers in his Performance Method, “a system which recognizes that
poetry is an oral art, and that, for children, a poem comes alive when
they perform it,” Bagert commented. Of his work’s overall impact on
children, Bagert noted: “It’s an important moment when a child stands
before an audience for the first time. There’s a lot of self- esteem at
stake. My children wanted poems they could act out and make everybody
laugh. They wanted poems that would help them succeed.SOURCE: The Poetry Foundation.
My favorite of Brod’s poems is Rambo Teacher:
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