Love to Langston

Being April and National Poetry Month, I hoped to inspire my students with some poetry from Langston Hughes.I showed the students this stack of books:

I love to play the seven degrees of separation game in my library collection.  This is just the start of my Langston Hughes thread. 

I know I could keep going with other books for quite a while by following a thread to other poets, writers or the Harlem Renaissance.  There are also electronic resources that I could add to my thread, like the Children's Poetry Archive, where you can hear Langston Hughes read I, Too.

(For those of you that play seven degrees of separation with Kevin Bacon, I am three degrees away...or used to be, before his children graduated from the school my niece attended.)

Back to Langston!

Today I read Langston's Train Ride by Robert Burleigh.  I love this biography.  Written in the first person, Burleigh captures that moment when Langston realizes he is a writer and poet.  

I stopped reading the book just as Langston's poem appeared and cued up Langston talking about and reading The Negro Speaks of Rivers on the Poets.org Website. 

Cool Beans.  

Where to go next!

Explore My People with its glorious photographs by Charles R. Smith, Jr. and visit TeachingBooks.net to hear him talk about his photographs?


...or...


Explore Love to Langston by Tony Medina and have the students write their own Langston Hughes inspired poem...

Already I can feel that this school year is going to end far too soon and I will not have accomplished what I should nor spent enough time exploring what I would...


What to do with that stack of books in my arms?

I created 

this 

Ode to Langston Hughes

Book Spine Poem 

today

I

Langston Hughes

The Dream Keeper

II

Langston Hughes 

Visiting Langston 

African American Author and Poet

Pass It On 

My People

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Coming Home

I, Too, Sing America

Love to Langston