Feelings and Literature.

The material about Poetry by Bright discussed in class last Monday was just an example of the way poetry can be used in an EFL classroom. However, every teacher or professor must be aware about the purpose, the objectives and the type of material he/she is going to work on with the students. Not only to select a text because "I like it" but to consider it appropriate for the students and the goal courses. At this point, it is important to establish a clear difference between teaching literature and teaching language through literature. The Bright's material was focused on teaching language by using poetry as a resource to work on areas such as vocabulary, grammar neglecting culture and other important literary elements involved in the poem. When teaching literature, not only the language and the poem itself are the focused of attention but also another elements that are close related to literature such as culture, personal experiences, literary terms (rhythm, rhyme, literary devices, speaker, tone, setting and so on), and the reader response of the audience. It means, how readers react when they read a poem; what they feel inside; what the poem transmits us in its verses; what is the real purpose of the poem; what it is the message portrayed; how the audience interpret the text.
Feelings are part of literature and we cannot deny their existence when reading a piece of literary text and producing it. Literature is art and art is part of the human creation. Thus, feelings, emotions and creativity are the main ingredients when writing something no matter if it is a poem, an essay, a short story, whatever.
In fact, in the poetry writing exercise done in class, our experiences in life, the sensations, feelings, thoughts and emotions experienced once, guided us on writing a short poem. It was not an easy task because this is one of the most terrible fears human being has: to face his/her own feelings, the inner part of us that it is our pure human existence. However, I enjoyed the activity a lot because our creativity was the power that pushed us to build something by our own.