All posts in Washington

The Comeback ‘Kid’

This lesson centered around Eve L. Ewing’s consoling poem, to the notebook kid. Students talked about their present lives, future, goals and dreams, before writing their own poem on those very topics. Lesson Note: […]

‘I/ wanna be the places.’: Travel Poems

We took a look at Richard Blanco’s prose/mix poem about missed destinations, We Are Not Going To Malta. Students were then given travel brochures exhibiting lush locales (decidedly not always depicting reality), and asked […]

The Welcome Table

A common household object became the focus for this lesson, while studying Joy Harjo’s poem, Perhaps the World Ends Here. The poet James Merrill once commented that, ‘we understand history from the family around […]

‘…like police crossing tape’: Working with Simile

We explored simile in Michael Ondaaje’s poem, Sweet Like A Crow. We also talked about using epigraphs and dedications in verse. Students created poems in praise of someone or something! Lesson Note: Students played […]

‘My grandfather says my name beautifully./ It almost sounds like a wind chime./’: A Name Game

Students explored their names through a series of writing prompts after reading My Name (from the poetic novel, The House on Mango Street) by Sandra Cisneros. What does your name mean? What is the […]

Worth Repeating

We explored the powerful device of Repetition in Phil Kaye’s poem of the same name. Some poems in our workshop are ‘after’ Kaye’s work. Lesson Note: Writer/Performer Anna Deavere Smith who interviews people and […]

Put That On The List: List Poems

This lesson circulated around the concept of lists. Through Albert Goldbarth’s List Poem, ‘Library’ (truncated for our purposes in class). We began class by making lists of nouns that described memories. Anything was game. […]

A Place In The Sun

A lesson on Personification, giving human qualities to something non-human via the poem, A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island. We took a look at Frank O’ Hara’s touching and […]

Food For Thought: Memories Sparked and Chewed Over

A discussion of food and memory began our class in preparation to study Gary Soto’s Narrative Style poem, Oranges. Nostalgia and feelings came up a lot in our talks. What emotions are attached to […]

Tree Lined

.We dug right in to examine William Carlos Williams’ minimalist Imagist style poem, The Locust Tree In Flower. This poem is inspired by William’s interest in minimal / abstract art of the day (1930s). […]

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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