Introduction : opening the door / Dominic Luxford
pt. 1. Essays. The read-aloud handbook / Jim Trelease
Poetry is an egg with a horse inside / Matthea Harvey
The process of opening gifts / Jack Collom
Life as primary text / James Kass
Teaching children to write poetry / Kenneth Koch
The care and feeding of a child's imagination / Ron Padgett
First class / Theodore Roethke
Children's poetry / Eileen Myles
The change agents / Phillip Lopate
Recitation, imitation, stillness / Jesse Nathan
Fears, truths, and waking life / Jordan Davis
The door called poetry / William Stafford
Making the rounds / Jimmy Santiago Baca
Radical strategies / Karen Volkman
pt. 2. Roundtable discussion. Featuring leaders of poetry organizations for kids from around the United States / Dave Eggers ... [et al.]
pt. 3. Lesson plans. Dream machine / Michael Dickman
Attending the living word/world / Elizabeth Bradfield
Eavesdropping on a figure at work / Yusef Komunyakaa
Syllabus / Meghan and Liam O'Rourke
Three imaginary soundtracks / Eric Baus
A perfect creature in the imperfect world / Valzhyna Mort
Poems are for everybody / Alex Dimitrov
The image list / Michael McGriff
Bad titles / Matthew Zapruder
Street sonnets / Deborah Landau
Autobiographia litter-aria / Christina Davis
Putting two and two together / Dara Wier
Dreaming in detail / Travis Nichols
Be a bunch of yous / Laura Solomon
(Soma)tic poetry exercises /
Eating couplets and haiku / Vicki Vértiz
The sonnet as a silver marrow spoon / Adam O'Riordan
Verse journalism / Quraysh Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff
Persona poetry / Quraysh Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff
A poetry of perception / Rebecca Lindenberg
Poetry walk / Harriet Levin
Love is the universe / Emilie Coulson
Advice for teachers / Stephen Burt
Afterword : a call to action (or what to do after reading this book).
