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A POEM AS BIG AS NYC: Lesson 6

T&W writers' in-class writing prompts and exercises inspired and generated the adapted poem found in A POEM AS BIG AS NEW YORK CITY.  From this imaginative, diverse, massive, and multi-faceted material, an adapted work emerged.  Here's a peek at one of the lessons that served as the raw clay to shape young writers' minds.  All lessons were taught in New York City classrooms, but could be adapted to suit your own community and place.

Arts Movements:

Expose young writers to poetic reflections of New York City written by poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Beat Generation, Black Arts Movement, Nuyorican/Pan-Latino Poetic Movement, and the New York School, among others. Using New York poems from Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Reverend Pedro Pietri, Kenneth Koch, Jack Kerouac, Audre Lorde, Willie Perdomo, et.al., young writers can read how other New Yorkers have envisioned their city, thereby becoming inspired to write their own reflections. 

Harlem

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

What happens to a dream deferred?

 

      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?

 

      Maybe it just sags
      like a heavy load.

 

      Or does it explode?