African American Poetry

African American Poetry

 

Bibliography:

Woodson, Jacqueline. 2014. Brown Girl Dreaming. New York, NY: Penguin Group.  ISBN 978-0-399-25251-8.

Summary/Analysis:

Brown Girl Dreaming is Woodson’s collections of poems that tell her life stories and memories in free verse.  The entire autobiography is divided up into five parts with each part focusing on a change that happened in her life and take place in a new location.  The beginning of the book has a table of contents and a family tree that helps the reader keep up with the relationships in the story.  The end of the book has a letter of thanks and a photo album of Woodson and her family which really help the reader connect with her life story and experiences.  

Woodson’s free verse poems (with some Haiku) are varying in length and full of emotion and imagery.  She often uses figurative language to describe her feelings in different situations throughout her story.  Several poems are grouped together throughout the book(writing series, how to listen, after greenville, halfway home) while most of them are individual and unique to the specific situation and as simple as one haiku about her grandfather waking her up at night because he was coughing. Woodson uses descriptive language to make the reader feel that they are there with her.  This autobiographical collection of poems is great for upper elementary and an amazing selection when covering the Civil Rights movement.

Use:

sometimes, no words are needed

Deep winter and the night air is cold. So still,

it feels like the world goes on forever in the darkness

until you look up and the earth stops

in a ceiling of stars. My head against

my grandfather’s arm,

a blanket around us as we sit on the front porch swing.

Its whine like a song.

You don’t need words

on a night like this. Just the warmth

of your grandfather’s arm. Just the silent promise

that the world as we know it

will always be here.

So many of Woodson’s poems really capture a moment and give the reader a sense that they are there with her.  I would read this poem several times and have students close their eyes to imagine that they are there on the porch.  Have students come up with times in their life when they wish they could stop time forever and stay in that moment.  Have them either create their own poem or come up with several sentences using sensory language to help the reader feel as though they are also in that moment.  

Hopkins Collection

Hopkins Collection

 

Bibliography:

Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 2009. City I Love. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers.  ISBN 978-0810983274.

Summary/Analysis:

City I Love is a collection of 18 poems that each focus on a different aspect of life in a unique city.  Each poem represents a different major city like New York, Tokyo, Cairo, etc.  There is a world map on the inside cover that help the reader identify where the city is located in the world.  The poems are accompanied by illustrations by Marcellus Hall that provide a basic idea of the location of the specific poem.  While the poems are each about a different city, the same dog is found in each illustration and helps connect the poems and places together.

Alliteration and imagery are used in almost all the poems.  A variety of poetic forms are used, but each poem contains strong imagery and playful words that are easy for the reader to connect to.  Even though students may not have been to a city like Cairo, Hopkins includes something familiar like a child flying a kite.  He also exposes them to new and possibly unfamiliar aspects of these cities.  Hopkins uses the structure of the poems to help emphasis the imagery he is wanting to create.  In “Snow City” the word “down” appears to be floating down just like the snow being talked about and seen in the illustrations.  Each poem also is seen from a different perspective and the illustrations help tell each city’s story and keep the reader engaged. The poems are all very consistent in quality and short in length which makes this collection great for most elementary students.  The collection is without a table of contents or index.

Use:

City Lights

Blazing lights

flicker

flash

glitter

twinkle

sparkle

bedazzle

beam

so

brilliantly

bright

Reasons

why

city

stays

awake

all

night.

In this poem Hopkins writes about Tokyo, Japan.  The illustrations that accompany the poem are show off the city’s bright lights, billboards, and liveliness.  This is a good example of how in all the poems Hopkins takes a poem that focuses on something that most cities have, but allows the illustrations to bring it all together and let the alliteration and imagery of the text come to life.  After reading poem with students ask them why he chose to use specific words to describe Tokyo.  Then have students focus on their hometown and come up with one unique aspect of what makes it special and unique (Example: Austin, Tx and music).  Have students work in groups to come up with a list of descriptive words that describe that place and invoke a sense of imagery.  As a group or a class use the words to create a poem about the city that they live in.  If time allows have students create their own artwork that helps give voice to the poem.  

School Poetry

School Poetry

Bibliography:

Salas, Laura Purdie, and Steven Salerno. 2009. Stampede!: poems to celebrate the wild side of school. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN 978-0618914883

Summary/Analysis:

This collection of 18 poems by Laura Salas presents poems to students in a familiar school setting.  There is no index or table of contents in the book.  The mainly humorous poems focus on the different daily activities that students encounter on a school day.  There is a poem about a rainy day, recess, picture day, and lunch.  The poems are accompanied by cartoon style color illustrations that depict students as different animals (a pig splashing in mud puddles, a lost mouse in a maze, etc).  Most poems are rhyming (abcb) with one acrostic poem. The poems are easy to understand for most younger elementary students and with all of them focused on the theme of “school” most students will be able to form some sort of connection. The tone (light and funny) and the  amount of similes,metaphors, and personification used makes for a great teaching opportunity. 

Use:

Swarm

We crowd the empty schoolyard,

a flood of bumblebees.

We buzz and flitter-tumble,

trade gossip on the breeze.

I brought a kickball--

want to play?

I wonder what’s

for lunch today.

When the doors swing open wide,

we bumblebees all fly inside.

This poem represents a majority of the poems contained in the collection.  The poem features a metaphor comparing students to bumblebees and a simple ABCB rhyme scheme that is present in most of the poems.  The accompanied illustrations show students floating in the air while dressed in black and yellow stripes to resemble bees and have antennas on their heads.   

I would focus on the comparison of students to bumblebees and why the author decided to choose that type of animal.  Students would brainstorm another human activity (at school or elsewhere) and pick an animal that it would relate to.  Depending on the grade level students could write their own metaphors and then create a poem based on that animal and situation.