What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to explore the effectiveness of poetry explications in teaching EFL to Japanese university students.

April 4, 2026Open Access

Why Teach Poetry? Part 2: Explications of Poems by Contemporary Poets: Gwendolyn Brooks’s “The Lovers of the Poor” and Seamus Heaney’s “Digging”

Puntos clave

The aim is to explore the effectiveness of poetry explications in teaching EFL to Japanese university students.
Explication of Gwendolyn Brooks’s 'The Lovers of the Poor' and Seamus Heaney’s 'Digging'
Development of teaching activities and assessment tasks
Focus on enhancing students' skills in poetry analysis
Encouragement of deeper understanding of poetry among EFL students
Increased engagement in analyzing contemporary poetry
Positive feedback on teaching activities designed for poem explication

Resumen

This is Part 2 of a paper that gives support to the question of whether or not poetry should be taught.Part 1 explores the question in depth of why poetry should be taught and includes an explication of Elizabeth Bishop's "At the Fishhouses."Here, in Part 2, two additional explications by contemporary poets are presented: Gwendolyn Brooks's "The Lovers of the Poor," and Seamus Heaney's "Digging."Each explication is followed by activities for teaching poetry to Japanese university EFL students along with assessment tasks.The goal of the study is to encourage Japanese university EFL students to learn how to explicate poems and to provide an approach for EFL teachers to teach poetry in their second language classrooms. A Punch in the Face: Teaching Brooks's "The Lovers of the Poor"Whoever said 'the pen is mightier than the sword' must have been thinking of Gwendolyn Brooks.In "The Lovers of the Poor," Brooks delivers a scathing attack on a group of perhaps 10 charity women who visit the poor, specifically what appears to be the abode of the persona of the poem.Here, I give my intro-

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