Do you like Cats?
Not the cute little fuzzballs that curl in your lap and purr as you read your favorite book, but the 1981, Andrew Lloyd Webber, fourth-longest-running-musical-masterpiece-performed-entirely-in-song Cats.
If your answer is no, bear with me and don’t go anywhere.
But if your answer is yes, then I’m sure you know that Cats is based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. It’s true: the American turned expatriate, 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature-winning poet who gave us “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land also gave us these wonderful lines in “The Naming of Cats”:
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
My point is that T.S. Eliot, one of the great voices of the modernist literary movement, had magnificent range in his writing, and there is an Eliot poem for every age and ability.
Poetry is essential and should be taught regularly in schools. Too often, poetry is severed from our regular lesson plans and relegated to the “poetry unit,” or we read a poem that supports a mentor text and never truly investigate it. Elena Aguilar, in her Edutopia article “Five Reasons Why We Need Poetry in Schools,” argues that poetry is essential for our youngest learners because it introduces them to the rhythm and rhyme of language, and for English Language Learners because it allows for free expression—the exact reason why music is so important when learning a language. Furthermore, Matthew James Friday elaborates on another of Aguilar’s points in his Edutopia article “How Poetry Supports Emotional Intelligence” by emphasizing that poetry helps create community, shared experiences, and connects to the core of humanity. These benefits mainly target reading poetry—so imagine the benefits when we analyze, question, recite, and even write poetry.
So, in honor of T.S. Eliot’s birthday (September 26, 1888), here are some Eliot-focused poetry suggestions for each school level:
- Elementary: Find a poem from Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats; one can find several individual poems on Poets.org (reviewed here), but “Mr. Mistoffelees” and “The Naming of Cats” are my favorites. Pick a poem your class would like, read it aloud, and discuss it together. Have fun with it—you can even play the song from the musical!
- Middle: Cats started as a creative writing practice. Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted to practice composing music based on someone else’s written words, and he picked Eliot. Invite students to do the same—select an Eliot poem and compose a song to match. If GarageBand isn’t available, have them try Song Maker from Chrome Music Lab (reviewed here), which lets students create a musical foundation by adjusting instrument, rhythm, tempo, and more to reflect the mood of the poem. Or explore Suno (reviewed here), where students can generate music to match the text of the Eliot poem they’ve chosen. Singing is optional—but always a delightful bonus!
- Another fun option is to have students create an image based on a poem. The image at the beginning of this blog was created on Canva using Magic AI (reviewed here). Students can read the poem and write a prompt that includes the images, colors, and emotions the poem invokes, then ask the Canva AI to create an image based on those impressions.
- High: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a go-to favorite for secondary teachers, but I have a challenge for you: teach The Waste Land [from the Poetry Foundation (reviewed here)] instead. Now, this poem is not for a poetry novice, so prepare your students for a deep poetry analysis. Send students to The Poetry Archive (reviewed here), where they can find The Waste Land separated into all five sections, each including the text and an audio recording of Eliot himself reading the poem. Break the class into five groups and assign a section to each group. Have the class analyze the poem any way you see fit, ask groups to share their findings with the class, and then have a class discussion on what the poem as a whole means.
If we make reading, analyzing, and writing poetry regular practice in our classrooms at all grade levels, students will benefit academically and emotionally. I can’t think of a better way to honor Eliot on his birthday than by helping the younger generations appreciate his work. Who knows, maybe we will get more Cats fans too!