All posts in B Sampson

This Book Is Made of Lava: The Secret Libraries of Avondale Logandale School

What a busy week! The very first of our residency is always jam packed: we’ve got to get to know each other, talk about what to expect, pass out poetry folders, and then get […]

Ancient nerds! The sound a freshly cut garden! Skies on fire!

The sound of the sky on fire! Ancient nerds! I am the sound of new idea.. of a freshly picked garden. That first sound above belongs to George Bradley and his poem, The Sound […]

Ode to a… huh?

Time for Odes! But not just any ode, no… Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market” started us off swimmingly. Let me tell you, Neruda really knows how to sell a […]

What The Mirror Said

This week we read “Mirror,” in which Sylvia Plath turns the poem itself into a mirror, and deploys her sniper-like precision, as always. Continuing our discussion of identity, we wondered about what the objects […]

Hanging Fire

We read the magnificent “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde. Worries big and small collide with equal weight all the while nobody does anything about it! During this year’s Taft residency we’ve focused a great […]

The Universe In A Book

This week we explored the power of books with Albert Goldbarth’s lengthy poem, “Library.” Before we read the poem, I asked the students to close their eyes and imagine the oldest, grandest, craziest library […]

Unrelentingly Lovely: Imagist Portraits

This week we continued with William Carlos Williams and read “Locust Tree In Flower.” I asked the students to write an imagist-style poem about something they could see (or visualize), one word per line. […]

Sorry Not Sorry!

Have you ever apologized for something you weren’t really sorry for? Me too. This week, we reveled in confessing our crimes, and saying just how sorry we… aren’t. I learned a few things about […]

Insecurity System

Moos – Week 9 This class looked at Audre Lorde’s “Hanging Fire.” I like it because of the equal value it gives ashy skin to death, and the mysterious repetition of her (supposed) uncaring […]

13 Ways Of Looking

The Taft 7th and 8th graders and I continued down our path of strange realities with an appropriately winterized poem this week, Wallace Steven’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Our writing goal […]

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I’M FROM THE CITY LIGHTS / STREAMING OUT IN THE NIGHT / AND HUGE SKYSCRAPERS / TOWERING OVER THE LAKE – MELISSA E., 7TH GRADE POET