I teach British Literature to 17 and 18 year olds of various levels and degrees of interest (in different classes). Something that I’ve noticed over the years is that just about all my students feel something when we read World War I poetry. I don’t know if it’s because it’s visceral, perhaps they appreciate the simple plain language, or maybe they can relate to the poems where the young authors express regret and naivete about their involvement in the war. Because come on, I remember […]
A Memoir constructed from poetry
I’m a sucker for award-winning, young-adult novels. So, I can’t remember how it came to be there now, but it’s not too surprising that I had Brown Girl Dreaming (2014) by Jacqueline Woodson on my wait list at the library. From my diligent research before borrowing this book [reading the title], I assumed that it was the coming-of-age story of a young, black girl. On the one hand, I was right,Brown Girl Dreaming is a coming-of-age story. However, where I was expecting a fictional novel; this turned out […]
The Life of a Woman Poet
Last year for my birthday, my friend S got me a book. He told me that when he went to Half-Priced Books, he asked to see the Feminist Literature section. It tickled me to no end. He decided on Eavan Boland’s Object Lessons, which I had never read, though I *loved* In a Time of Violence, one of her poetry collections. He chose well, since Boland gets more personal in this memoir/poetry criticism hybrid. I found it to be an enjoyable, if challenging, read. Object […]
A Young Woman’s Dreams
Last year, my sister bought me the young adult memoir-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming. And then it went on to win the National Book Award for young readers! Hooray! I have been meaning to read it again and again, and something else got in the way. So when I was at my conference, chilling in my hotel room, I decided to pull out the audio copy I had borrowed from the library and listen to it. It was a good choice. Jacqueline Woodson covers her birth […]
Poetry…purposely complicated
Readings 4 & 5 for the masters program are two collections of poetry, “Holding Company” by Major Jackson, and “Poems” by Elizabeth Bishop. I’ve come out of it with the understanding that poetry isn’t for me. I mean, I sort of went in with that notion, but slogging through over 200 pages of it has really hit the nail into the coffin. This isn’t to say that I hated them; there were many of the 150 or so poems I read that I liked for […]
Make mine a double (cannonball) with this beautiful and wrenching book.
For the past four years, I’ve been teaching poetry as part of my social justice as creativity unit in Composition II. I’ve taught several different poets–including favorites Katie Ford, Marvin Bell, and Yusef Komunyakaa–but have also been turning to novels in verse as a means of making the poetry more approachable to young adult students. I taught an excerpt from Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (and I will read the whole thing this CBR, for sure), Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out […]
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