Learning English through poetry

This past summer, Royce Fellow Sarah Wells '01 used poetry to teach English to six students, all newly arrived from Spanish-speaking countries. Although many of the participants were hesitant at first to write poetry, by the end, all had improved their writing, reading and speaking skills. Here are samples of some of their work.

Hope

Only the hope
makes me move to you,
goal desired.

I might have me stay
alone with my dream,
but forever
I could have an expectation,
if I could be able
to fulfill the goal
that more I wished for.

For that,
I shall never give up
my dream.
And I shall overcome some day.
- Blanca Morán

Untitled

Hughes, Hughes, Hughes...
Poe, Poe, Poe...
One syllable, two surnames,
Two poets, two fighters,
Both against the power of
those who try to take over minds.

Dreams, run rings around the air,
Float outside a black young man.
Countries, cultures a Spanish hand
an English language,
an ancient past in Africa.

Alcohol, papers, words that came like a wood stove.
Heat glare in the mirror of an old man.
Darkness of life, bright of head.
He was a rebel guy and he got married
with a child but, who can blame you?
Who can forget the way you decorated literature?

Poe, Poe, Poe...
Hughes, Hughes, Hughes...
Two spirits and souls are still whispering,
Floating...One is black, the other is white...
Both fought against a state of mind... Both are free...
- Carolina Tofé

This Class was Like

A crystal class, as we saw through feeling,
through thoughts and ideas.

In this poetry class we became writers. We
expressed our pain our happiness, our
experiences.

Magic as if we were magicians, by the power
of creating a poem. Our magical tools our
pen and paper. A thrilling sensation of
happiness comes through me, as I feel poetry
being the window to the soul.

We saw through this crystal glass of poetry
a little bit of the likes of our classmates. As
we moved on through our poetry class.
- Iris Lara

Dinner at Carolina's

An abbreviated variation on the sestina

To the participants in the English through Poetry Class, with my love.

I am trying to write a narrative poem
to help me to explain yours:
what it did, what type of gift
it was. As her hand reaches to pass
more pupusas, laughter, and earned dignity this summer.
On an evening like this, the sun wants to bridge

the night, wants to squirm its way into a poem.
The food laid out before me is yours,
and mine too, if for an instant, as summer
likes itself into fall. What sort of bridge
can I create? Such a thing wants more, a gift
from you to me. I'd like to return it, pass

to you something more than apple pie, a summer
food, surely, but one gone quickly, not like a poem.
Whose nourishment continues, alimiento, bridge-
ing a small stretch of land, a gift
of eight weeks, a good short thing, yours
to me. I could say: pass

it again. It would continue. Some small summer
memory, bursting at its seams, its borders streaming bridges.
Insects and heat and light; buried in stacks of these poems
at night, some written and famous, some written and yours,
who seem to leave me breaths. I could pass
for content now, really could, rolling myself up in that gift.

She has worked hard, and now she turns to pass
the meal around again. A pregnant sun gives the smell of summer.
I find you, again and again, in the words I make to fit a poem,
it is what I have right now; it is yours.
Make me nothing less, I say, than a bridge,
that takes me from me to you, your transportation, always, a gift.
- Sarah Wells