We were talking about eagles the other day as we were watching one over the river. I recalled that one of my favorite assignments when I was teaching middle-school English a long time ago — and this was before you could just google it — was to send students home to bring back a dictionary definition or the first paragraph of an encyclopedia entry on “eagle.” They’d come back with something like this:
ea·gle
ˈēgəl
noun
-
a large bird of prey with a massive hooked bill and long broad wings, renowned for its keen sight and powerful soaring flight.
And then I would have them read this:
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
After that, I didn’t have to tell them much about what poetry is supposed to do and what it can do. Tennyson had already done that.
