Wednesday, June 14, 2006
What Poetry Can Do
On the Academy of American Poets' website, students reply to poems they read during April this year. Here's one I particularly liked.
On "To You" by Langston Hughes
Reading "To You" by Langston Hughes made me think. Our world really is a problem world and we do nothing about it. I wish I could "sit and read, sit and dream or learn" about how to help this problem world. It makes me angry to think that people who don’t read poems like this think this world isn’t a problem world. So they do nothing to help this world. My teacher says, "Even holding the door for someone changes the world." Langston Hughes once said, "All you who are dreamers too, help me make our world anew."
Kayla Pinkney
Mrs. Gates’s & Ms. Bell’s 5th Grade Class
H.B. Lawrence
Holyoke, MA
Here's the Hughes poem:
To You
To sit and dream, to sit and read,
To sit and learn about the world
Outside our world of here and now---
Our problem world---
To dream of vast horizons of the soul
Through dreams made whole,
Unfettered, free--- help me!
All you who are dreamers too,
Help me to make
Our world anew.
I reach out my dreams to you.
Read more responses: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/353
On "To You" by Langston Hughes
Reading "To You" by Langston Hughes made me think. Our world really is a problem world and we do nothing about it. I wish I could "sit and read, sit and dream or learn" about how to help this problem world. It makes me angry to think that people who don’t read poems like this think this world isn’t a problem world. So they do nothing to help this world. My teacher says, "Even holding the door for someone changes the world." Langston Hughes once said, "All you who are dreamers too, help me make our world anew."
Kayla Pinkney
Mrs. Gates’s & Ms. Bell’s 5th Grade Class
H.B. Lawrence
Holyoke, MA
Here's the Hughes poem:
To You
To sit and dream, to sit and read,
To sit and learn about the world
Outside our world of here and now---
Our problem world---
To dream of vast horizons of the soul
Through dreams made whole,
Unfettered, free--- help me!
All you who are dreamers too,
Help me to make
Our world anew.
I reach out my dreams to you.
Read more responses: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/353
