Please listen to Ada Limón read from her book BRIGHT DEAD THINGS* at the National Book Awards a few years back. Her first poem is a favorite of mine:
How to Triumph Like a Girl
I like the lady horses best, how they make it all look easy, like running 40 miles per hour is as fun as taking a nap, or grass. I like their lady horse swagger, after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like that they’re ladies. As if this big dangerous animal is also a part of me, that somewhere inside the delicate skin of my body, there pumps an 8-pound female horse heart, giant with power, heavy with blood. Don’t you want to believe it? Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see the huge beating genius machine that thinks, no, it knows, it’s going to come in first.
*https://milkweed.org/book/bright-dead-things
In honor or National Poetry Month, I invite you to post a link to a poem—yours or someone else’s (video optional).
I have a chapbook with teaching resources for high school and college classrooms: My Childrens. I made videos for four of the poems--with the book and videos and by teaching, I hope to bring Latinx poetry into the high school and college classroom so that students can explore poetry, identity, and what it means to be a person of color in US society.
It's really fun. At first, I was hesitant about using my poems with students, but they work since each poem is followed by a writing prompt that appears in the chapbook.
I have a chapbook with teaching resources for high school and college classrooms: My Childrens. I made videos for four of the poems--with the book and videos and by teaching, I hope to bring Latinx poetry into the high school and college classroom so that students can explore poetry, identity, and what it means to be a person of color in US society.
It's really fun. At first, I was hesitant about using my poems with students, but they work since each poem is followed by a writing prompt that appears in the chapbook.
Here's the link to "Lorca's Rain"--https://youtu.be/kmay9STCpD8
How wonderful!! Thanks so much for sharing this. I look forward to listening.
This was so lovely, evocative, and delightfully bilingual. Brava!