Crystal Beran

Engl 112B

5/1/06

Unit Plan

Poetry Across Time and Culture

Poetry may be the one section of a public school teacher�s curriculum where a teacher truly has control over what is read. While there is a class anthology that many teachers work out of, there is also a copy machine in the back, and obscure, multicultural, young-adult-directed, or otherwise non-canonized poetry can be distributed to students with greater ease than similar categories of novels or short stories. I have even, in designing this unit, left room for the students to select their own favorite poems for interpretation.

I have given special attention in this unit to the incorporation of multi-cultural poetry. The works in the cannon do not reflect the range of cultures and experiences of California�s public school students, and I would like to begin the year by celebrating the many cultures of the classroom. Poetry does not just come from Europe, but is as universal as painting and dance. This unit also requires the participation of all the students. Because we are a community of learners, each student can only learn if other students present the findings of their research in the form of the poetry they have discovered from many different cultures. The poetry the students read for the final day of the unit can be an English translation, or an original piece in another language, or even, say, a Spanish translation of a Tibetan poem read by an American student in their third year of Spanish at the high school. What is important is that students recognize that poetry is global, and that we can appreciate poetry in all languages and from all cultures and times.

My own personal education has influenced my decision to do a multi-cultural poetry reading rather than a comparative essay, or a research paper. I believe that many students learn best by doing, and that they can gain a greater appreciation of poetry if they are allowed to experience it and have fun with it. I myself was subjected to the �Dead White Men� who seemed to have written all the poetry in the world. Because many poems are short, a unit on poetry lends itself to a multicultural exploration. We can leave the anthology behind and find poems on the web, or in the library which we can make copies of to share with one-another. Poetry is an art that works best if shared, and also best if explored without the looming presence of a term paper on the horizon. Poetry is fun, and this is something I have to re-learn as much as many of my students do. Poetry is also not only the published and praised work of the Dead White Men, but it can be found etched into jail cell, or spoken only once by someone alone in the woods, or even in the minds of my own students, who will sometimes be brave enough to share that poetry aloud with the class. We need to all be reeducated and reminded that we are, each and every one of us, a poet.

Launching the Unit

This unit is designed for the first couple weeks of school. It should not last more than two weeks, and is meant to expose the students to poetry in a non-threatening way. The poetry for this unit should be selected with the following in mind: it is culturally representative of the students (ex. a teacher with no Asian-American students should not focus on Asian or Asian-American poetry), it is culturally diverse, it is thematically diverse, some of it is written for young adults. Suggestions for anthologies, poets, and poems can be found under the heading �resources�. The poetry in this unit is also used as a vehicle to introduce literary terms that will be used throughout the year, as well as library research skills. The teacher should also allow students to submit poems they have selected or written for literary interpretation by the class.

1. Before beginning the unit students will be asked to free write about their past negative experiences with poetry. After about ten minutes students will be asked to tear the page from their notebooks and to throw it in the garbage. The teacher needs to explain that we are now starting a poetry unit with fresh minds, and that we should each expect to come out of the unit understanding and enjoying poetry. After the negative feelings are released, the class will brainstorm positive experiences with poetry. They will then be introduced to their first poem of the year, a rap song by an artist suggested earlier by the students. We will end the class by listening to music.
2. In the second class the students will be exposed to a number of short poems from across cultures and times, as well as poems written by people of all poems. Poetry is a universal art form, and students will read and informally discuss a number of short poems that confirm this. The second half of class will be devoted to the students first self-composed poem, modeled after the �I Am� poem (see �resources�).
3. The remainder of the unit will cover literary terms needed throughout the year as students explore self-selected poetry. The self-selection process will help the students develop their library research skills as they develop their taste in poetry. Student selected poems will be supplemented by teacher selected poems (see �resources�).
4. The unit will culminate with a poetry reading in which students share their favorite short poems with the class. These poems can be from any time and any culture (and in any language) and can also be student written. There is no final paper for the unit: the students poetry grade is based solely on participation throughout the unit.
5. Extending the Unit: The unit will be naturally extended throughout the year as poems are brought in to pair with novels and short stories. With the exposure to poetry at the beginning of the year, students will be more comfortable with poetry. If the students express interest, a poetry slam can also be arranged in which the students recite their own work. It would be good to team up with at least one other English class for the slam. Books of poetry, especially books of poetry written for young adults should be kept in the classroom, and students should be encouraged to read these as outside reading choices.

Resources

Anthologies:

Adoff, Arnold, ed. I am the Darker Brother: An Anthology of Modern Poems by African Americans. Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Keillor, Garrison. Good Poems. Viking, 2002.

Liu, Siyu, and Protopopescu, Orel. A Thousand Peaks: Poems from China. Pacific View, 2002.

Stavans, Ilan. Wachale! Poetry and Prose About Growing Up Latino in America. Cricket Books/Carus Publishing, 2001.

Poets:

Carol, Lewis

Cervantes, Lorna Dee

Cisneros, Sandra

Clifton, Lucille

Collins, Billy

Dickinson, Emily

Hughes, Langston

Lorde, Audre

Mirikitani, Janice

Navarro, Joe

Silverstein, Shel

I Am Poem Template:

I Am

I am (two special characteristics)

I wonder (something you are actually curious about)

I hear (an imaginary sound)

I see (an imaginary sight)

I want (an actual desire)

I am (the first line of the poem again)

I pretend (something you actually pretend to do)

I feel (a feeling about something imaginary)

I touch (an imaginary touch)

I worry (something that really bothers you)

I cry (something that makes you very sad)

I am (the first line of the poem restated)

I understand (something you know is true)

I say (something you believe in)

I dream (something you actually dream about)

I try (something you really make an effort about)

I hope (something you actually hope for)

I am (the first line of the poem again)

Selected Poems:

Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between Races

by Lorna Dee Cervantes

In my lang there are no distinctions.

The barbed wire politics of oppression

have been torn down long ago. The only reminder

of past battles, lost or won, is a slight

rutting in the fertile fields.

In my land

people write poems about love,

full of nothing but contented childlike syllables.

Everyone reads Russian short stories and weeps.

There are no boundaries.

There is no hunger, no

complicated famine or greed.

I am not a revolutionary.

I don�t even like political poems.

Do you think I can believe in a war between races?

I can deny it. I can forget about it

when I�m safe,

living on my own continent of harmony

and home, but I am not

there.

I believe in revolution

because everywhere the crosses are burning,

sharp-shooting goose-steppers round every corner,

there are snipers in the schools�

(I know you don�t believe this.

You think this is nothing

but faddish exaggeration. But they

are not shooting at you.)

I�m marked by the color of my skin.

The bullets are discrete and designed to kill slowly.

They are aiming at my children.

These are facts.

Let me show you my wounds: my stumbling mind, my

�excuse me� tongue, and this

nagging preoccupation

with the feeling of not being good enough.

These bullets bury deeper than logic.

Racism is not intellectual.

I cannot reason these scars away.

Outside my door

there is a real enemy

who hates me.

I am a poet

who yearns to dance on rooftops,

to whisper delicate lines about joy

and the blessings of human understanding.

I try. I go to my land, my tower of words and

bolt the door, but the typewriter doesn�t fade out

the sounds of blasting and muffled outrage.

My own days bring me slaps on the face.

Every day I am deluged with reminders

that this is not

my land

and this is my land.

I do not believe in the war between races

but in this country

there is war.

Power

by Audre Lorde

The difference between poetry and rhetoric

is being

ready to kill

yourself

instead of your children.

I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds

and a dead child dragging his shattered black

face off the edge of my sleep

blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders

is the only liquid for miles and my stomach

churns at the imagined taste while

my mouth splits into dry lips

without loyalty or reason

thirsting for the wetness of his blood

as it sinks into the whiteness

of the desert where I am lost

without imagery or magic

trying to make power out of hatred and destruction

trying to heal my dying son with kisses

only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.

The policeman who shot down a 10-year-old in Queens

stodd over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood

and a voice said �Die you little motherfucker� and

there are tapes to prove that. At his trial

this policeman said in his own defense

�I didn�t notice the size or nothing else

only the color,� and

there are tapes to prove that, too.

Today that 37-year-old white man with 13 years of police forcing

has been set free

by 11 white men who said they were satisfied

justice had been done

and one black woman who said

�They convinced me� meaning

they had dragged her 4�10� black woman�s frame

over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval

until she let go the first real power she ever had

and lined her own womb with cement

to make a graveyard for our children.

I have not been able to touch the destruction within me.

But unless I learn to use

the difference between poetry and rhetoric

my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold

or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire

and one day I will take my teenaged plug

and connect it to the nearest socket

raping an 85-year-old white woman

who is somebody�s mother

and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed

a greek chorus will be singing in ¾ time

�Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.�

Breaking Tradition

by Janice Mirikitani

My daughter denies she is like me,

her secretive eyes avoid mine.

She reveals the hatred of womanhood

already veiled behind music and smoke and telephones.

I want to tell her about the empty room

of myself.

This room we lock ourselves in

where whispers live like fungus,

giggles about small breasts and cellulite,

where we confine ourselves to jealousies,

bedridden by menstruation.

The waiting room where we feel our hands

are useless, dead speechless clamps

that need hospitals and forceps and kitchens

and plugs and ironing boards to make them useful.

I deny I am like my mother. I remember why:

She kept her room neat with silence,

defiance smothered in requirements to be otonashii,

passion and loudness wrapped in an obi,

her steps confined to ceremony,

the weight of her sacrifice she carried like

a foetus. Guilt passed on in our bones.

I want to break tradition--unlock this room

where women dress in the dark

Discover the lies my mother told me.

The lies that we are small and powerless

that our possibilities must be compressed

to the size of pearls, displayed only as

passive chokers, charms around our neck.

Break Tradition.

I want to tell my daughter of this room

of myself

filled with tears of shakuhachi,

the light in my hands,

poems about madness,

the music of yellow guitars--

sounds shaken from barbed wire and

goodbyes and miracles of survival.

The room of open windows where daring ones escape.

My daughter denies she is like me

her secretive eyes are walls of smoke

and music and telephones,

her pouting ruby lips, her skirts

swaying to salsa, Madonna and the Stones,

her thighs displayed in carnivals of color.

I do not know the contents of her room.

She mirrors my aging.

She is breaking tradition.

I Got My Revenge

by Joe Navarro

I found a way

To get back

At those suckers,

Those peddlers

Of brown ignorance,

Those profiteers

Of class exploitation

I showed them,

Those who would

Sacrifice poor people

And dark people

To the cycles

Of oppression

I beat them

With my pride

I struck against

Mighty institutions

With the brute force

Of intelligence

They kicked me out

And tried to

Kick me down

Hoping to leave me

In the darkness

Of social madness,

But I found light anyway

I got my revenge

Me, this pushed out,

Locked out

Target of

Cultural genocide;

I got my revenge

By becoming

A teacher

Works Cited

Cervantes, Lorna Dee. �Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between Races.� The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume E, fifth edition. Edt.Lauter, Paul.Boston, 2006. 3010-3011.

Donelson, Kenntih L and Alleen Pace Nilsen. Literature for Today�s Young Adults. New York: Pearson, 2005.

Lorde, Audre. �Power.� The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume E, fifth edition. Edt.Lauter, Paul.Boston, 2006. 2490-2491.

Mirikitani, Janice. �Breaking Tradition.� The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume E, fifth edition. Edt.Lauter, Paul.Boston, 2006. 2767-2768.

Navarro, Joe. �I Got My Revenge�. taken from Kress, Helen, EDSC172a.