poetry

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Walking Alone

Throughout the past few weeks we have been diving into the topic of segregation in the Deep South. For me personally I didn’t know much about how black Americans earned the right to vote and equality in the south. After just getting through half of this unit I have already been enlightened about the many hardships and tragedies these people had to face. To hear stories about lynching, church burnings, and marches made my heart heavy. With the knowledge I have today I know none of these things should have even happened in the first place. But I do always wonder what started all of this evil and hatred towards black Americans?

The Little Rock Nine were a powerful and insanely driven group of students. These nine high school students were picked to attend a once all white school, since the new law of school of school segregation had been put in place. All nine students had mixed feelings about this. Sure they were excited and hopeful that maybe they were getting somewhere to end the segregation, but there was still that pit in their stomachs from the nerves for their first day of school. However the fellow white students were not as happy about them coming to their school as the nine were. So they made a plan that going alone in the morning just wasn’t a safe option. image

Elizabeth Eckford, who was one of the nine, did not own a phone so unfortunately for her she didn’t know that all the kids were supposed to meet somewhere so they could walk into school together. As she was walking alone other students stared to gather around her and heckle her. Slowly a whole mob had formed around poor Elizabeth who was just trying to go to school. image

How do you explain the mob’s reaction to Elizabeth’s arrival at school? What do you think white protestors were trying to accomplish?
Below are two poems I have written. The first explaining what I believe the mob’s reaction to Elizabeth’s arrival at school could have been from one person in the crowd’s perspective. The next how I perceive Elizabeth to be feeling in this moment with the mob surrounding and yelling at her.

Mob Mentality:

All my life it had only ever been whites
Until those blacks decided to come
I’ve grown up knowing to leave them in fright
Now they prance our halls making us look dumb

A girl walks alone in a sea of us
Anger runs through my veins seeing her here
The crowd starts screaming and making a fuss
All I want is for her to disappear

You could tell she was scared by the way she shook
This made me pleased as I heckled her more
In her hands she was gripping a book
Oh how I wanted to smash it to the floor

School was a place where whites could be free
Till those blacks had to fight for equality
All I Want is Education:

My first day at a new school was bad
I didn’t even make it in the door
The protesters around me seemed quite mad
Even the police helped with the uproar

My knees shook, but I kept my head held high
For I could not let their words get to me
They surrounded me wanting me to die
My only option left was to flee

Words of hate flew by me left and right
I thought the new law said I could go to school
Yet these people wanted to put up a fight
All of their yelling made me feel like a fool

A fair education was all I asked
But these people could not leave their past

I believe the white protesters were trying to show the government as well as the African Americans that they are not needed here in schools. They think that things were just fine the way they were before. With blacks in their designated schools and whites in theirs. Also I think the white protesters were trying to scare off the students in hopes that they wouldn’t come back to the school or the neighbourhood again. But luckily their protesting against African Americans attending so called white schools did nothing. The Little Rock nine kept persevering and coming to school to prove them wrong. In the end it payed off well and the white protests were pointless.

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Death by Presentaion

Presenting is something that I have always dreaded doing. Every single time the words presentation or speaking come out of a teachers mouth I get all anxious and nervous. Although every time I know that once I am up there and I am in the flow of things everything will be fine. I still struggle with some aspects of presenting.

When looking back onto last year and the speaking presentations I did I feel I have really grown and developed my presenting skills. I feel that some key aspects as to why I feel more comfortable presenting today is because of PLP class. We have all been together for a year and a half now and I know the majority of the class very well. Everybody is comfortable in front of each other and I feel a lot more confident heading into presentations knowing that I will have the support of my classmates and friends.

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In my opinion poetry was a really entertaining and engaging thing to learn about. We got the opportunity to work in groups of our choice and focus on one category of poems. Our group chose death, which was surprisingly my suggestion. We then went on to find, analyze, and memorize poems for a final presentation. Going into this presentation I was extremely nervous that I would mess up the flow of the poem or forget a line and stumble along. Although just like every time I get up to the front of the class room to present I am completely fine. I really need to get it in my head before a presentation that I will be fine instead of after.

While presenting I believe I have improved on making eye contact and using an appropriate tone when speaking about my work. For example when I was reading out my poem I made sure to look all around the room and make eye contact with everyone. Also I used an appropriate tone when reading the poem, it was understandable, yet powerful considering my topic was death. Presenting I believe will always be something I am scared about, but I know that one day I will be truly proud of what I have said in front of my audience.

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American Revolution: Taxes on Tea

In class we have been studying revolutions. This past week we learned about the American Revolution. The stamp act in particular interested me. I wanted to dive deeper and find out a little bit more on how those taxes worked and why some things were taxed. So I asked a question, why was tea the only thing that was still taxed after they took all the other taxes off?

Previously in class we had been learning about William Shakespeare. As I was thinking of how to put all of my research together in a entertaining way, I thought back to this. I have always loved everything to do with Shakespeare, plays, sonnets, and poetry. So I decided to record my information in a poem format.

I chose to write my poem in a Shakespearean format. A Shakespearean poem is a 14-line sonnet consisting of three quatrains of abab cdcd efef followed by a couplet, gg. Example: Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 2”.

A Revolution started like this
All because the Brits needed money
They saw it coming and did not dismiss
This was not to be taken as funny

Everything was was taxed out there
All so the Brits could get their money back
The Americans did no think this was fair
So they came up with a plan to attack

The taxes were then taken awayimage
All of them except for the tea
So the Americans dumped the tea in the bay
To show that they would no longer pay the fee

Tea was expensive and everyone bought
This is why the Americans fought

I went into writing this poem thinking that it would be fairly easy. That coming up with rhyming words would be no problem. I was wrong about that. While I was writing this I had to change the lines several times because I was unable to think of a rhyming word that fit with the lines above. I learned that writing poems can be quite challenging, but they are always so fun to write.

Finding the information to answer my question was the easy part, although it was still challenging. I learned why the tea was the only thing still taxed. Tea was a luxury that almost everyone had back then. It was popular and a good trade. Here is where I found some of my information.

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TWIL: Creating Poetry and Extended Metaphors

imageShe is like a single flame
There is no way for her to be tame
When people try to turn out the light
She will always be there to put up a fight
Obstacles come in her way
But they will never make her stay
She keeps moving on
Yet she will never be gone
The way she burns bright
It could light up anyone’s night

Creating and writing poems have always    been a struggle for me. What I find as the most challenging part is making sure that it flows all together nicely. Also I find it difficult to stick to the format of the type of poem that I have chosen to write.

For this particular poem I chose to compare my mom to a flame. When I think of my mom I think of a flame because she has a passion that burns so bright. She is also very strong and is hard to control, much like a fire. Much like a flame, many things are able to come across my mom as obstacles that need to be faced so that she can keep burning bright. She is what keeps me going, she is what helps me to see my path by lighting the way. Even if she is having a bad day, she still finds a way to make me or anyone smile.

The format of this poem I chose was a couplet. I chose to write five couplets that all fit together will. This took me quite some time to come up with an idea for each pair. The pattern for my poem is AABBCCDDEE. I chose this style of poem because I thought it would be a challenge to create rhyming pairs. This took me quite some time to find rhyming words that flowed nicely with the message I was trying to say. To help me come up with rhyming words I used this website.

Image of flame