Inspiration: We have had many teachers in our life. Our parents were our first teachers — how to eat with our fingers, how to walk, how to tie our shoes, how to say please and thank you. Of course, there are the teachers since kindergarten — new teachers every subsequent year. But books, songs, poems, movies — those can also be our teachers. So, today, write a poem about what they’ve taught you.
This might be a good poem for anaphora – -the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.
From my mother, I learned…
From my father, I learned…
My Poets
Wordsworth’s words of Lucy:
whom there were none to praise and few to love
because she dwelt among untrodden ways.
Mora’s words for Elena:
embarrassed at mispronouncing words,
embarrassed at the laughter of her children,
but continues to lock herself in the bathroom
to practice English so that she will not be deaf
when her children need her.
Shihab Nye’s words for the Person
who wants to be famous–
to shuffling men/who smile while crossing the streets
and sticky children in grocery lines.
–for smiling back.
Wordsworth and Lucy.
Mora and Elena.
Shihab Nye and the Person
Help me see the violet hidden by a mossy stone,
Help me listen to the fear behind the mispronounced words,
Help me notice the Person smiling back in the grocery line, and, oh,
The difference to me!