If I could, I would teach a poetry class.  Although I have a certificate in creative writing, I cannot teach poetry because academy culture prefers I teach within my discipline: rhetoric & composition.  It’s like checking a box named “African American” when you are also Native American & Hispanic.  I’m light-weight trapped.  Anyway, if I could, I would teach a poetry class.  & today, I did.

While grading resumes for my Improving Writing students, I discovered a poet in the midst.  A particular student currently has poems published in various spaces, & I wanted to share her with the rest of her classmates.  So, I did.  I required her to write a haiku to share w/her classmates.  Reluctantly, she did.  & after her brief presentation (for the haiku is a brief three-lined poem with 17 syllables), I required each student to write a haiku on the topic REVOLUTION.

Why REVOLUTION?

Well, at FAMU, students are engaged in SGA elections (& my FAMU alumn know how theatrical & fantastical this occasion is.) Anyway, two of my male students (who are/were members of the FAMU Court) were dressed in black suits w/a REVOLUTION campaign shirt.  The campaign is light-weight amazing, specifically because students are standing on the genius of civil rights activists.  Their entire campaign is the epitome of throwback.  I dig it–so much so that REVOLUTION became the topic of our haiku writing exercise.

Below, find the two haikus–well, I actually wrote one & provided two different last lines–that I wrote w/my students.  Each of their haikus should be available in my comments below.

rEVOLution

Can you see the love

hidden in revolution

like abstract notions?

*     *     *

Can you see the love

hidden in revolution

like it hides in us?