As a teenager in the 90’s, I admit that I still revel in of memories of Blockbuster Video, Doc Martens, and any and every Friends character. I also have a soft spot for Tupac Shakur. While he is no longer with us, his poetry is. I use his most popular piece, which is also the title for his published collection of poetry, “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” as a kickoff to Song Week, usually my third week of National Poetry Month.

Using Brett’s Poem of the Day routine, students enter with the poem projected (without the author) and the task to turn to a table partner and try to identify the underlying theme. While discussion can vary, many often find motifs of the diamond in the rough or the feeling of being dismissed. I then ask to identify a possible author, not necessarily a specific name, but rather consider those in our society who feel underrepresented and/or underappreciated. I have found this part extremely valuable discussion in a school that lives in a world of white privilege -- but that is a different conversation.

This leads to the eventual reveal of Tupac as the poet and our gameshow version of Tupac: Poem or Song? Students who are already grouped in tables compete by trying to identify whether some of my favorite lines are lifted from poems or songs, all PG rated of course. We use an interactive notepad (to click and drag) and rewards of candy to further motivate… though it’s really always about bragging rights.





This bit of silliness leads to the assignment for students to choose one of their favorite artists and select one verse of a favorite song to share and analyze for poetic devices/rhyme schemes that we have previously covered.

After the sharing the devices and schemes, I ask them to type up the verses and bring them to class for the following day. We take a minute or two for students to each cut their verses into lines. This creates anywhere from 20-30 different lines that we throw into a pile at our tables. Student groups are then tasked with fusing the various lines into a unique poem. While some end up being far from poet laureate worthy, you can only imagine the combinations we see when someone brings in “Strawberry Fields Forever” that gets paired with “Party in the USA” while a third partner has the lyrics to “She Thinks My Tractor is Sexy”.




The activity is obviously intended to further blur the line between poetry and music, especially for this still hesitant to embrace the head first dive. Admittedly, I was that student, and I know many are still out there who haven’t embraced the symbiotic relationship between the two genres.

Further Reading:

by Carol Jago

Teaching the sonnet is a ubiquitous (and too often tedious) poetry lesson focusing on accented syllables and rhyme schemes. Most of us begin with Shakespeare. The next time around, consider starting instead with Terrance Hayes’ “American Sonnet for My Once and Future Assassin.”

In this sonnet Hayes reflects upon the structure and purpose of the form (much as Billy Collins does in his poem “Sonnet.”)

Before handing out copies of the poem, have students listen to the audio recording of the poet reading his sonnet.


1. Draw students’ attention to Hayes’ reference to Jim Crow as “gym and crow.”

2. Give students their own copy of the sonnet and ask them to read it and choose a line that struck them for whatever reason.

3. Have students share the line they chose with a partner explaining why it stood out, puzzled, or otherwise interested them.

4. Read the poem once more to the class.

5. Discuss: Where has Terrance Hayes conformed to the “rules” of the sonnet form? Where has he broken those rules for greater artistic expression, calling the form “part prison / Part panic closet”?

6. What do you think the “beautiful catharsis” entails? Who or what is changing?


Now read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.


Further Reading:


Carol Jago has taught middle and high school in Santa Monica, CA for many years and served as president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Her latest publication, The Book in Question: Why and How Reading Is in Crisis is now available from Heinemann (2019).

by Penny Kittle

Some students resist writing poetry because they struggle to find words to contain their ideas. Poetry feels Important, Serious, and Literary. It is. But it is also simple, playful, and found in the everyday. In fact, that is its Superpower.

To help my students learn to play, I spend days on found poetry.  We use words we find in an editorial, news article, school hallway, book, or in this case, songs to compose our own poems. The rules are simple: you can't add your own words; you use what you find.  This takes pressure off and opens possibility.

My writer's notebook was open and under the document camera at the start of class one day.  I had strips of lyrics to three songs from the Lumineers piled on two empty pages.  I placed one line, then another, searched for phrases to repeat, and then added those between emerging stanzas. The beauty was in the clean, efficient revising: I lifted lines from my emerging draft and returned them to the word pile or cut a phrase into smaller parts and played with the power of line breaks to slow down my reading.  I searched for consonants to repeat and unlikely combinations that led my poem to new ideas.

“Can we get started?” students asked.

Yes, please.



Penny Kittle is a high school English teacher and writer from North Conway, New Hampshire.  You can follow her work on Twitter @pennykittle.

by Lisa Levin

Musician Jeff Tweedy recently turned Carl Sandburg’s poem “Theme In Yellow” into “an airy, idyllic folk song” that appears on Brooklyn musician David Nagler's tribute album, Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems.

The poem describes a midwestern October and is filled with images of "prairie cornfields / Orange and tawny gold clusters" and children "singing ghost songs / And love to the harvest moon" while gathered around a pumpkin (or someone pretending to be a pumpkin), who serves as the poem's speaker.

I project the text of this poem on the screen while my students listen to the song. I tell the students very little beforehand, except that they should try and ascertain whether the poem develops a story from the images the poet creates. After the song, I ask a student to volunteer to read the poem to the class. Next we discuss the literary element of mood. Students define the mood of the poem and then provide lines from the poem as supporting evidence. It was interesting that half of the students found the mood to be peaceful and half found the mood to be sinister!