Love is a reason to exist

It's been decided by others that my calling in life is to be a Professional Dog Walker and Jane Austen Slash Fiction writer.

Until I can start that, mah twin told me to do this:

In the comments ask me five questions
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

You know what is a great gift that you can give some inner-city high school kids this holiday season or, better yet, RIGHT now?

Some ideas for me that I will, in turn, deliver to them in the form of carefully crafted English lessons. Seriously.

Here's what I (we) need.

I always drive myself crazy looking for the perfect poems to pair with the major texts I teach in my ELA classroom. Picture me bleary-eyed staring at the computer screen (much like I used to do at the Packet) all night long, old anthologies from college strewn about, post-its everywhere.... (more imagery etc.)...

Anyway, whenever I go through this process (approximately twice a month when I'm looking for shorter texts to supplement whatever major one I'm teaching) I wonder who I can call who will just have the answer because all of you are so literary. Of course, it's always way too late on a work night for me to actually call anyone.

Tonight I'm being proactive.

I'm in the early stages of teaching Hamlet. Our themes that we're focusing on include revenge, family (how far does our responsibility to our family members extend?) and reason verses passion. I'm also going to teach psychoanalytical criticism. I want to find a poem (or short text) for each of those themes so that students can choose a theme and write a comparative essay at the end of the unit (preferably using psychoanalytic criticism). I already know that I want to use Joyce's "Evaline" For either passion vs. reason or (more likely) family responsibility because it fits well with both AND works well with psychoanalysis.

In short, please give me ideas for poems. Any ideas (even bad ones) will help.

My kids can handle stuff we read in hs and college, but they get bit freaked out by really long stanzas.

Poems we read recently that you might remember:
"Mother and Poet" by Elizabeth Barret Browning
"Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning
"A Bronzeville Mother Loiters While A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon" by Gwendolyn Brooks

You get the idea.


Okay. Help me, please!

Hearts and cute smiley faces! <3 :)

Santa likes when you do good deeds and help the children...

They just want to learn.

:)