Tag Archives: poetry

Cultural Literacy: Emma Lazarus

Last but not least for Women’s History Month 2026, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Emma Lazarus. She wrote, as you may know, “The New Colossus,” the poem that visitors to the Statue of Liberty find at her base. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences, and the poem itself, and three comprehension questions.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Adrienne Rich

“Adrienne (Cecile) Rich: (1929-2012) U.S. poet, scholar, and critic. Born in Baltimore, she was a student at Radcliffe College when her poems were chosen for publication in the Yale Younger Poets series; the resulting volume, A Change of World (1951), reflected her formal mastery. Her subsequent work traces a transformation from well-crafted but imitative poetry to a highly personal and powerful style. Her increasing commitment to the women’s movement and a lesbian/feminist aesthetic came to politicize much of her work. Among her collections are Diving into the Wreck (1973, National Book Award) and The Dream of a Common Language (1978). Her nonfiction Of Woman Born (1976, National Book Award) was widely read.”

­­­­­­­­­

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Radclyffe Hall

“Radclyffe Hall: originally Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall (1880-1943) English writer. Born to a wealthy family and educated at King’s College, London, Hall began here literary career by writing verses, which eventually were collected in five volumes. She won prizes for her novel Adam’s Breed (1926), a plea for animal rights. She was condemned for writing openly and sympathetically about lesbianism in The Well of Loneliness (1928), one of the first lesbian novels in English. It was judged obscene and banned in Britain; the ban was overturned on appeal after Hall’s death. Most of her five other novels express her strong Christian belief.”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Audre Lorde

Audre (Geraldine) Lorde: (1934-1992) U.S. poet and essayist. Born in New York City to West Indian parents, she worked as a librarian until 1968, when he began to write full-time. She is best known for her passionate writing on lesbian feminism and racial issues, including Cables to Rage (1970), New York Head Shop and Museum (1974), and The Black Unicorn (1978), often called her finest work. Her battle with cancer inspired The Cancer Journals (1980) and A Burst of Light (1988, National Book Award).”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

The Weekly Text, 13 February 2026, Black History Month Week II: A Lesson Plan on Richard Wright’s Poem “Between the World and Me”

One of the better (by which I mean most interesting) things I worked on and finally finished last year is this lesson plan on Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me.” As you may know, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in an obvious homage, took this title for his exceptional and necessary book of the same name.

A few years back, a colleague of mine taught it to a class in which I was the co-teacher. This was during the 2021-2022 school year: we were back after the pandemic, still wearing masks, and I had just moved back to New York City after three years away. In other words, I filed away the poem for days when I had a clearer head.

Three years later, and after a second case of covid which left me cognitively bereft for about 18 months, I was able to recover my senses and develop this lesson. Without further ado, then, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Richard Wright (two-sentence reading, three comprehension questions–very simple), which serves as the do-now exercise for this lesson. Here is the the text of the poem itself; and here is the comprehension and analysis worksheet that is the principal work of this lesson.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

N[avarre] Scott Momaday

N[avarre] Scott Momaday: (1934-2024) Native American novelist, essayist, and poet, Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. He studied at the University of New Mexico and received his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1963. His first novel, House Made of Dawn (1969), received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Momaday’s work blends myth and tribal history with family tales and personal recollection: his essay collection, The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), examines his own cultural history through the native tradition of living in nature. He has also published The Gourd Dancer (1976), a collection of poems; The Names: A Memoir (1977), a family history and autobiography; The Ancient Child, (1989), a novel. A literature professor for many years, Momaday has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Cultural Literacy: Hiawatha

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Hiawatha. Most people, if they’re aware of Hiawatha at all, probably received that awareness by way of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Song of Hiawatha.” I vaguely recall reading “The Song of Hiawatha” in grade school, but Longfellow is more memorable to me as one of the suits in the old card game of “Authors.”

Incidentally, the Wikipedia page for “The Song of Hiawatha” suggests that Longfellow based some of the material in the poem on conversations with an Ojibwe man named George Copway, whose story interested me enough to mention him here.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Cultural Literacy: Ships that Pass in the Night

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “ships that pass in the night.” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three questions. A spare, but adequate, introduction to an idiom that may well be fading from public use.

Did you know this line comes from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? I didn’t until I prepared this document for publication here.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Octavio Paz

“Octavio Paz: (1914-1998) Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat. Educated at the University of Mexico, Paz published his first book of poetry, Luna Silvestre (“Savage Moon”) in 1933. He later founded and edited several important literary reviews. Influenced in turn by Marxism, surrealism, existentialism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, his poetry uses rich imagery in dealing with metaphysical questions, and his most prominent theme is the human ability to overcome existential solitude through erotic love and artistic creativity. His prose works include The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), an influential essay on Mexican history and culture. He was Mexico’s ambassador to India 1962-68. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Cesar Davila Andrade

“Cesar Davila Andrade: (1918-1967) Ecuadorian poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Davila Andrade published eight books of verse and two collections of short stories before committing suicide in a hotel in Caracas, Venezuela, a victim of prolonged depressions and alcoholism. While his work is known mainly in Ecuador and Venezuela, he was most often compared to Neruda and Vallejo. Of most influence as a poet, he carried certain key obsessions—evil in the form of sickness, passion, or death; sex as annihilation, and love as the absolute ideal—through several poetic incarnations. He began in the tradition of love poetry, as seen in Cancion a Teresita (1946). The second phase, which includes Arco de instantes (1959) and Boletin y elegia de las Mitas (1967), is dedicated to poetic experimentation and the geography and people of his American continent. The final period is complex, personal, and hermetic, best characterized by Conexiones de tierra (1964), which often voices his views of life, literature, and aesthetics. A lover of both the mystical and prosaic, he perhaps never managed a successful reconciliation of these twin currents in either his poetry or his life.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.