Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
I love the very simple, straightforward way Langston Hughes' poems are written (here's another of his I shared earlier in the month). In this one, he piles perfect image on perfect image as he describes what it's like to wish and hope for something and to be continually disappointed.
This week my eighth grade students responded to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech by writing down some of their own dreams for Haiti. Each student wrote a longer response, but I only chose one sentence to post from each piece.
Here's what else I posted this week.
On Saturday I posted a prose article that reads like a poem, and found a poem in its lines. It's about workers in India who make perfume that smells like the rain.
Sunday was Easter, and I posted three poems about the resurrection.
On Monday I posted a John Ashbery poem about what we write about, plus a poem of mine about what I write about.
On Tuesday it was my blog's 13th birthday! Happy birthday to me!
On Wednesday I shared a Louise Glück poem and mused about connections between writing and photography.
On Thursday I linked to some poems about churches, including Notre Dame, and also to an article about grieving buildings.
Today's line for the Progressive Poem is here.
April
1 Matt @ Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme
2 Kat @ Kathryn Apel
3 Kimberly @ KimberlyHutmacherWrites
4 Jone @ DeoWriter
5 Linda @ TeacherDance
6 Tara @ Going to Walden
7 Ruth @ thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown
8 Mary Lee @ A Year of Reading
9 Rebecca @ Rebecca Herzog
10 Janet F. @ Live Your Poem
11 Dani @ Doing the Work that Matters
12 Margaret @ Reflections on the Teche
13 Doraine @ Dori Reads
14 Christie @ Wondering and Wandering
15 Robyn @ Life on the Deckle Edge
16 Carol @ Beyond LiteracyLink
17 Amy @ The Poem Farm
18 Linda @ A Word Edgewise
19 Heidi @ my juicy little universe
20 Buffy @ Buffy's Blog
21 Michelle @ Michelle Kogan
22 Catherine @ Reading to the Core
23 Penny @ a penny and her jots
24 Tabatha @ The Opposite of Indifference
25 Jan @ Bookseedstudio
26 Linda @ Write Time
27 Sheila @ Sheila Renfro
28 Liz @ Elizabeth Steinglass
29 Irene @ Live Your Poem
16 comments:
Ruth, these dreams....focused into one sentence...are beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing them. I'm sorry they are deferred. I hope and pray not for long.
Ruth, your students' dreams for Haiti pierced my heart with sadness yet there is hope in their one sentence posts. Perhaps, their dreams will become a reality one day. Here's to hoping!
Thank you for sharing those dreams from your students, those who need to be fulfilled! They wrote with heart, hoping and dreaming for better, something every one of us should dream.
Ruth, these powerful dreams are so basic, and so sad. Food. Cleanliness. Safety. Kids should not have to dream of these things. They should have them. Thank you for giving your students space to dream and express themselves.
Your students' sentences are simple and straightforward, too--and they describe specific wishes for things that so many of us take for granted. Everyone deserves access to food and education and a safe, clean environment to live in. I hope they don't have to wait much longer.
Your student's poems for Haiti break my heart. I hope their dreams are realized and not deferred.
Ruth, these dreams touched my heart. Thank you for honoring them with a place to express their dreams. I am a huge fan of Langston Hughes for the same reasons you mentioned. I used to keep a copy of his "Dreams" posted in my classroom.
What a beautiful thing for you all to do--sharing your dreams for Haiti. I imagine that's a moment that will stay with them for a very long time.
All those dreams presented together like that is a powerful statement. I truly hope it is one that can help spark change for the better.
Oh, my heart! These dreams look like a stained glass window, and it a way it seems holy that you captured their thinking so beautifully -- deferred or not, KEEP DREAMING! (and working to make them come true...)
These dreams are beautiful. They will never die as long as we continue to have hope, the kind of hope your students have in their words and hearts. Thank you for sharing!
I read your students' dream statements and immediately thought of Habakuk 2:2--
“Write the vision / And make it plain on tablets, / That he may run who reads it." There is hope in the dreams of your students, and in the writing of their dreams, they are making their dreams plain so all who read may "run." And in the running may they find the fulfillment. The writing, Ruth, is a first step. Blessings!
So much wisdom! I hope they hold onto their dreams and chase them into reality.
There's so much power in the combination of your students' dreams into one poem. Their simple statements pierce through all the rhetoric and posturing and get to the heart of it all, rather like Langston Hughes' poetry. Thanks for sharing and for giving your students a voice.
Hughes' poem was one of the first I memorized in my quest to learn more poems by heart. I find it speaks so much to today as well as to his time. Your 8th graders have some powerful dreams. I hope they will continue to work to make them a reality even though they have been deferred for too long.
Powerful project, Ruth. (Better teachers, eh? They certainly have a top-notch one in you, Miss.)
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