When I teach National Poetry Month visits in elementary schools, I sometimes talk about fireflies to conjure up memory and sensory details of the outdoors. Recently, however, seventeen students in a class of twenty-two told me they had never even seen a firefly—they thought I was kidding, simply inventing an insect. So I asked them what they did for fun in that crepuscular-pink time just before dinner. When I was growing up, I played kickball, tag, riding bikes—anything, really, until my parents flicked on the porchlight. But the students’ most common answer: video games and movies. In other
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