End of the Year Haikus

It’s that time of year everyone is waiting for.  When I force my students to sum up their learning in well-formulated (or not so well formulated) haikus.

While I’m wading through this year’s exams, I thought I would give you some of the highlights from last year:

Life of Pi

Stuck on a life boat
with a tiger, for a year.
But guess what? He lived. -B.A.

In the lifeboat there
was one boy and one tiger
hungry to survive. -K.L.

Tiger and Pi. Boat.
Death swirling like a black bird.
Peace is kept. Life wins. -D.F.

A boy in a boat
Accompanied by his God(s)
And a large tiger -N.J.

Things Fall Apart

A culture crumbles:
The will of a “loving” God;
a man can’t stand it. -M.M.

He was a strong man
But he resided in fear
Destruction followed -Y.K.

Valiant we stand
Together unbreakable
They betray; I die. -K.G.

The Mission

The Lord is the light,
that’s on top of the darkness,
to light up the world. -K.N.

The Alchemist

I march to Egypt.
The treasure lies before me.
Wait, no, it’s back home. -J.T.

A shepherd no more
for dreams called him into a
golden world of love. -C.M.

Treasure can be found
If we travel great distances
We will find it there -A. H.

He dreamt of treasure,
Adventure. He searched for Gold
And found destiny. -C.M.

Personification and Hyperbole

My shoe attacked me.
It was like a mad falcon
falling off that shelf. -B.A.

The oceans roared and
Pi felt his whole world drowning
in the deep blue sea. -R.H.

The frozen drops dance
in the wind, then fall on me
smashing me apart. -M.F.

The chair talked to me
as I sat down. He said, “You
weigh a thousand pounds.” -K.L.

The sea receded.
The wave rose like a giant–
And then face planted. -Y.K.

This test is eating
me alive. My brain is mush.
Oh! What will I do! -C.G.

I have never felt
fear like this. The paper stares
at me with malice. -C.M.

To Teach A Poet

I’ve written elsewhere about my journey with poetry.  How I never loved it until I started to teach it.

These days, one of my greatest joys as a teacher is getting to teach poets.  Getting to read the beauty they craft from words and ink and the break of a line on a page.  Getting to catch a glimpse of the world they see when they open their eyes in the morning or close their eyes at night.

I have never been a poet — not really — and I don’t think I ever will be.  The beauty of narrative will always be the language of my heart.  But I fall more in love with the medium every year I teach it — every time I watch an artist discover that there exists within them a burning core of words.  A vision.  A brightness.

That they have something to say, and words with which to say it.

The following were taken from short answer questions on my Global Literature final exams.  They were created hastily and under pressure (as evidenced by the inconsistent punctuation).  Yet even so, in 17 syllables, many of them capture profound (and unique) truths about the texts read, and some do so while utilizing well-developed imagery and sophisticated enjambment.

I’m proud of these poets, these readers, these thinkers.  I’m proud of these kids.  And I’m thrilled that I get to teach some of them again next year.

Life of Pi (by far the most popular choice): 

Pi survives alone
In the lifeboat with Richard
But God is with him.  -M.R.

A boy of 3 faiths,
Stranded on sea with tiger,
No one believes him. -N.S.

Struggles in the sea,
Full of fear but not lonely–
Richard was with me. -J.H.K.

Pi almost lost hope
through fear, hunger, thirst and pain.
Then, he reached the shore. -J.J.

I’ve lost everything.
Hope grows thinner every day
I wait.  I watch, Pray.  -A.T.

Could this be a dream?
A tiger and a young boy.
What unlikely friends. -A.R.R.

Reading Life of Pi
was like a journey to me,
never-ending ‘ifs’. -G.O.

A boy all alone,
imagination was all
he ever had left.  -N.G.

The Mission: 

God sends Gabe to the falls.
Rodrigo joins after pain.
All is lost; light stays.  -R.C.

Things Fall Apart:

Okonkwo showed strength
His fear of weakness got the
Best of him. He died. -J.O.

I want to succeed.
I can’t be like my father.
In the end I was. -B.O.

The Alchemist:

He looks far and wide
The treasure that he must find,
in his heart it lies.  -N.M.

Not connected with a particular text, but needed to demonstrate hyperbole and personification:

Like a stoic mime
the rock sat atop the cliff
its ignorance, bliss.  -M.N.

the wind whistles through
the tress; like God would whistle,
loud; unforgiving. -R.C.

The rains have come here,
we hear the thunder screaming,
A sign, the world is dying. -N.S.

Agony screams.  Screams
Because her world is over.
Freedom is now queen.  -A.T.

The boat cried with fear
waves tall as mountains crashed down
we just wait and pray -J.A.

And one of my students wrote me a fairly long, utterly spontaneous “Ode to Global Lit.”  It began with this foreboding stanza:

Global Lit.  A class
full of homework and writing.
Where one can feel
the breath of death.
Where knees tremble like an earthquake
where fear can be made.

But ended with this one:

Well there is no class
like the Global Lit class
Where the teacher always,
Always laughs and smiles
and makes the class
smile with a laugh brighter
than the sun.
Thank you, Ms. Magnuson. -H.R.L.