March Madness comes on strong here in North Carolina. To capitalize on the energy, I planned a tournament of sorts for my four eleventh grade English classes. Rather than basketball teams competing, however, we've got modern American poems playing games. We skipped ahead in the tournament to the sweet-sixteen round (I don't think my students could handle 64 poems all at once). Over spring break last week, I selected the lucky 16, some by well known poets, others by poets I had never heard of but found on a website called "Poetry 180", complied by former poet-laureate Billy Collins. I tried to get a good mix of poems to appeal to a diverse group of students. The sixteen poems, in no particular order, are as follows:
1. "Out, Out--" by Robert Frost
2. "I Rise" by Maya Angelou
3. "Hate Poem" by Julie Sheehan
4. "Ballplayer" by Evie Shockley
5. "Fastbreak" by Edward Hirsch
6. "Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes
7. "Death of Santa Claus" by Charles Webb
8. "The Grammar Lesson" by Steve Kowit
9. "somerewhere I have never travelled" by ee cummings
10. "Wheels" by Jim Daniels
11. "What I Would Do" by Marc Peterson
12. "Sick" by Shel Silverstein
13. "Sure" by Adriana Tribia
14. "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath
15. "Richard Cory" by Edward Arlington Robinson
16. "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke
We've made it through round 1, and will complete round 2 on Monday.
Some observations:
I'll let you know which poem wins.
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