Poetry Unit

Kenneth Koch’s Wishes, Lies and Dreams, published in 1970, has long been considered a classic in its field. Herbert Kohl wrote that this is “perhaps the best book I have read portraying the joy and excitement young people experience when writing poetry.” Using this timeless book, for seven weeks, students in grades 4 – 8, explored writing poems about colors, sounds, wishes, and lies. They imagined what it would like to be a thunderstorm or a snowflake and then they considered what other topics they would enjoy writing poems about. Each lesson consisted of an anticipatory set followed by reading and discussing poems written by children, and then it was their time to write. Hope you enjoy a few examples of the poems they wrote.

 

 

Too Many Colors

 

I dislike colors

when I see a color, it burns itself into my mind a bright, insolent flame of color, maybe orange, or red, or yellow or blue.

 

uhg, i despise blue

blue embodies the worst things in the universe:

the sea is blue, you can drown in the sea

hot fire is blue, fire can kill you

poison dart frogs are sometimes blue, you can die by touching them

hypothermia victims are blue, you can die from that.

blood without oxygen is blue, if all your blood is blue, you die

 

red is almost worse:

spilled blood is red, that’s deadly

welts are red, that must hurt

burns are red, that can be horrible

regular fire is red, that can hurt you

 

uhg, I hate colors