All posts in Kenyatta Rogers

Early in the Morning

Li-Young Lee’s poem “Early in the Morning” tells of what appears to be a mundane daily routine in the lives of a couple, but in the end there is this epiphany of a simple […]

Hair-ography

The House on Mango Street is a fairly popular book in Chicago and is taught at both literary organizations and in Chicago Public Schools. The book takes snapshots of Cisneros’ life growing up in […]

History of the Old South

For this week we discussed a poem by Natasha Trethewey entitled “Southern History.” The poem discusses a student sitting in a history just listening to all the rubbish being spewed at them from their […]

A Whistling Through the Water

This week was a weird but fruitful week. We read the poem “Emmett Till” by James A. Emanuel (link to the poem and link to Emanuel reading it below) and had great discussion in […]

Nocturnal/Nocturne/Nightime/Nightmare

This week we discussed a poem by Li-Young Lee called “Nocturne.” When reading this poem we touched on the bases for a sonnet and alliteration. I personally like this poem because it does begin […]

Hangin’ Fire

“Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde begins “I am fourteen.” Right away, we know how old this speaker is and can put context into the mindset of the speaker. While the poem goes deeper than […]

They Said I Couldn’t Have “No Cherries”

I really like teaching the poem “Only Cherries” by Kenneth Patchen. It has a lot of subtext that young people tend to pick up on very quickly. It’s a poem that has a accessible […]

Because…Just Because

We talked about the nonsequiter or poems that appear to be non-linear (minus the humor, which the nonsequiter does a lot of the time). This really freed up some room for everyone to write […]

Carnival of Animals!

We will be working in collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the spring, we worked on poems that were a response to “The Carnival of Animals.” There is actually a Looney Toons special […]

Foolish Seasons

One of my constant “go to” poems is “First Fool” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. The poem is written in 4 quatrains and has a fun silly tone overall. I’ve used the poem to discuss stanza […]

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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