Young Poets Society
Classmate Jonah Thompson takes the floor and matter-of-factly announces his poem “Death,” which he recites from memory with a hint of a smirk. “You can’t escape your awful fate… / But death isn’t always so bad / If you do what you’re supposed to / It’ll make you glad… / I wish I could tell you more / Just pray that death skips past your door.” In the manner of a poetry slammer, Thompson talks about his inspiration. “I wrote that in sixth grade. I made it up at lunch because I forgot to write it the night before for class. Some kid wrote a poem called ‘What Is Life?’ and I thought I could write a better poem, so I wrote about death. But you know, death is gonna happen one day anyway, so why be afraid? It’s just a part of life.”
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The students in Sandra Cap’s class have already identified with the words of poets Margaret Walker and Langston Hughes, using what they’ve read to write about their own realities. Like a latter-day transcendentalist, Claudia Peters reads to the rhythm of a different drummer: “What a wonderful thing to be said– / To be your own kind / Even if you’re crazy.” Joseph Alvarado follows up with a sincere reading of his piece “To Be as One”: “The world has many great places / With many different races / Mexican, Indians, and more / To be as one is the core.” And Robyn Owens details the simple pleasures of being “African-American”: “We love to eat all kinds of food– / Greens, chicken–it’s all good.”
