how i discovered poetry by marilyn nelson

Discuss whether this advertisement would ease your fears about a hydrogen bomb attack.

Who is the audience for this advertisement?.

What do you notice that you can’t explain?.What do you notice that you didn’t expect?.Study an image of Bert the Turtle promoting “duck and cover” as part of the Federal Civil Defense advertising campaign. “I read while the television talker talks about career and the hide drajen bomb…We ducked and covered underneath our desks, hiding from drajen bombs in school today.” Why would Marilyn Nelson describe herself as the “new girl in Dick and Jane country?”.What do you see on the page besides writing?.What do you see that looks strange or unfamiliar?.How much of the text can you read? What does it say?.Analyze not only the illustrations but also the text. “I am the new girl in Dick and Jane country.”Įxamine an image from a Dick and Jane book. There are three parts of the poem where primary sources can provide background knowledge and a framework for Marilyn Nelson’s poem. As Marilyn and her family travel through the United States, her narrative becomes as beautiful as the landscape she sees from her window.įor this primary source pairing, focus on the poem “Bomb Drill” Lackland AFB, Texas, 1952, page 10.

A first-person account of African-American history, this is a book to study, discuss, and treasure.Įach poem by poet Marilyn Nelson is rich with emotion, memory, and hints of history. Readers are given an intimate portrait of her growing self-awareness and artistic inspiration along with a larger view of the world around her: racial tensions, the Cold War era, and the first stirrings of the feminist movement. Looking back on her childhood in the 1950s, Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist Marilyn Nelson tells the story of her development as an artist and young woman through fifty eye-opening poems.

Ages 12 up.Written by Marilyn Nelson, Illustrated by Hadley Hooper Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne/ by a breeze off Mount Parnassus.' An intimate perspective on a tumultuous era and an homage to the power of language. Purdy read from her desk./ All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,/ but Mrs. Nelson's introduction to poetry reads like falling in love: 'It was like soul-kissing, the way the words/ filled my mouth as Mrs. The political and social climate of the 1950s infuses the poems through references to bomb drills at school ('Everybody's motto is Be Prepared,/ so we practice tragic catastrophes'), the Red Scare, the death of Emmett Till, and the stirrings of the civil rights movement. Complemented by muted screen print like illustrations, Nelson's 50 poems are composed of raw reflections on formative events, including her development as a reader and writer. Nelson crafts a stirring autobiography in verse, focusing on her childhood in the 1950s, when her family frequently moved between military bases.

How i discovered poetry by marilyn nelson