How to Read Any Poem, Anywhere Class 8: Rhyme (MP3)

This was the sort of class that makes you beyond happy to be a teacher. We started with an intense reading of Wilfred Owen's “Anthem for Doomed Youth.”

Then we watched this and I lost it.




I didn't cry aloud but students in the front row could probably see tears in my eyes.

I was having a slight dilemma about whether to show them the tears because I didn't want that moment to be about me.

I was crying because this is the sort of poem that wants you very much to not die. And you can feel that, not just in the imagery, but on the texture level of the poem. It's in the sound. The authority with which Angelou reads it, wow.


And I related it to this.



See? When you write a poem you are fucking with causality.