All posts in Josie Levin

“power already in my bones” Corrupting the Sonnet

This week in class we read “My earliest memory is telling myself stories without” by Diane Seuss and expanded on some of the history of poetic forms we started with odes. We discussed how […]

“How can you tell a name is yours? / You hold it tight”

This week in class we read “Everyone who happens to live where” by Kimberly Alidio. We talked about our names, what they meant in the past and what they might mean in the future. […]

“Lemon/Lime by itself” Odes to the Unusual

This week we read “Ode to my socks” by Pablo Neruda. Students thought about the things they love and were challenged to write an ode to the most unusual. The below poems are a […]

Erasure Poems

This week we took a look at some examples of erasure poetry. Students saw many different forms, using the page they were given for their own poems to make a variety of poems with […]

Poems (with footnotes)

This week Water’s 6th and 7th graders in Ms. Smallwood and Ms. Hernandez’ classes read “Thank you Letter (with footnotes)” by John Grandits. In class we discussed creating double meanings in our writing and […]

Comic Poems!

This week in Ms. Smallwood and Ms. Hernandez’s classes we read an excerpt from Cartoon Dialectics by Tom Kaczynskki and discussed how something can both be a comic and a poem. We came up […]

Poems after Paintings

This week students dipped their toes into art criticism. We read “Untitled #9, 1981” by Victoria Chang, after the Painting by Agnes Martin of the same name. We discussed how Chang’s poem described the […]

A Glossary of Glossary Poems

This week in class we read “Glossary of Terms” by Franny Choi and discussed how form affects poetry with a new and unique form. Students filled in their own categories for Choi’s terms as […]

Concrete Week!

This week in Ms. Smallwood’s 6th grade class and Ms. Hernandez’s 7th grade class we took a crack at concrete poems. We read “Spew Machine” by John Grandits and discussed the logistics of a […]

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

This week in class we read the poem “The Gift” by Ocean Vuong and talked about the way this poem uses repetition and how to incorporate it into our own poems. Students wrote about […]

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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