Today we read the first part of "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun," a poem from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. The poem is a pastoral: a vision of "the ideal life," as one seventh-grader put it. It begins:
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows . . .
I asked the students to write a poem on the same topic, to follow Whitman's use of anaphora (the same words begin each line), and to show off their vocabulary whenever they could (Whitman's poem contains many difficult & beautiful words). Here are three poems by seventh-graders from Room 112:
I Want to Sunder the Secrets of the Shallow World
by Zamar I.
I want to sunder the secrets of the shallow world
I want to find and construe the unknown
I want to let my dreams roam free and make the world a better place
I want to show the world what I can do
I want to shoot for the moon; even if I miss I will land among stars
I want to throw fear into the deepest threshold
I want to let my name be known
I want to let peace reign the world
I want to help people time after time
I want to die looking at the scarlet setting sun salute me to heaven
Show Me a Miracle
by Ahmad A.
Show me phoenixes throughout the sky
Show me sayings written in gold
Show me stars through the horizon
Show me a bird that sings velvet songs
Show me a cloth made of deep silk
Show me a cataract that never ends
Show me a sandspit to sleep upon
Shoe me a rainbow beyond the blue sky
Show me a desert where I can't get thirsty
Show me a life where I'm reborn
Show me a mountain easy to climb
Show me a glacier where it's not cold
Show me a light without any dark
Show me clouds that don't rain
Show me glass that can't break
Show me fragrent flowers without thorns
Show me a delightful dandy dream
Show me a breeze the flows through my clothes
Let Me Be Free
by Blerina
Let me forever smile at the gaze of the sun
Let me slowly shut my eyes, to feel the warmth of his rays
Let me run free until my own two legs fall on the soft, fertile soil
Let me sleep in a field of grass, where the baby tigers frolic
Let me have the right to believe whatever I feel
Let me cross a bridge to the other side, where reality can't follow me
Let me have hope and don't snatch it away from me
Let me sit on the fluffy clouds with a pile of books so I can venture through every story
Let me tie together a web of wise words, to form the answers I've always wanted
Let me run free until I fall off the edge of the earth; and fall endlessly into blackness, into a new dream
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1 comment:
Amazing poetry. I'm agog, wanting to go now a'gogo.
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