Poetry!

A great start to the blog! Now let's dig into poetry. Generally, my students struggle w/ poetry more than any other genre so I think it's a good way to open the class. As we discussed last week, if you can read difficult texts, then you can read simpler texts better (newspapers, advertisements, etc.). I think students often struggle w/ poetry b/c they think they have to COMPLETELY understand a poem. But a poem, maybe, should be listened to and mulled over. It should be picked apart and then put back together. Maybe the secret to a good poem (or a good anything) is that we discover something new each time we read it. Here are some questions about this week's readings:

• What do these poems have in common? In what different ways do they approach the difficult subject of race in America?
• "Still When I picture it...": What about the weird spacing in this poem? Why did the author write the poem that way? What does it do? What does that long title do? (The title has more words than the first two lines do.)
• "Daddy Dozens": You can read about the dozens here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dozens How do these "insults" work in the poem? This is a prose poem. How is it different than the others?
• "I Dream of Horses Eating Cops": What do you make of this title? The author is a transgender woman. How does that information affect your reading of the poem? What do you make of that last line? What is its tone? 
• "The Tradition": Who are these names mentioned in the last line? What connections can you make between those last lines and the other italicized words in the poem? Why does the poet write "our dirt"? That's an interesting word choice, to possess the dirt. Why "our"? 

It is not necessary that you answer ALL of these questions. Pick and choose the ones that are most compelling to you. Feel free to ask your own questions. And answer each others questions while you're at it. The more good entries you make, the better your blog grade will be.