This is one of the Baca poems that might work. Oppression by Jimmy Santiago Baca.

Megan, I hope you feel better soon, as well.

Erin!

Most schools teach IHAD

Obviously UnAmerican, so I'm coming to this from a different context, but I've only very recently actually read the whole speech. A friend who TAs a class in communication and political science asked me to translate it into Hebrew for an exam of her students. It's so beautiful, I had tears in my eyes almost all the way through. All that Erin said, only I probably missed most of the connections, due to said UnAmerican-ness.

Mmm, Nilly, I don't think you missed many of them. Two, off the tops of my head are Biblical and Shakespearean.

It's a wonderful speech.

Kat, I love "Elena!" I will definitely be using that in my class; after sitting through P/T conferences, trying to communicate with many parents with little to no English, with my pidgin Spanish, I think my kids will really get this poem.

Thanks!

Thanks Nilly. I made some pear green tea to soothe myself. I also closed the blinds on my windows so now I feel like I'm in a little cocoon.

Megan, I find many times a cup of coffee with a couple of spoonfuls of sugar helps a migraine. I don't usually sugar my coffee, but the caffiene (if I remember correctly) constricts blood flow to the brain, and the sugar...well, does something pyhsiologically therapeutic, too.

And yo, a pillow over my face, and silence.

delicious soup for lunch. Soup Man rocks.

Biblical and Shakespearean

You assume I know anything about Shakespeare beyond copying the way you spelled his name from your post. That's already assuming too much, I'm afraid.

[Edit: well, I know that there was a Hamlet with a "to be or not to be" and that he died, that there were a Romeo and a Juliet with a being in love and that they died, that there was a midsummer night's dream in which nobody died, that there are sonnets and I have no idea regarding the mortality rate in them, and that's really all that I know about him. Embarrassing but true.]

Soup Man rocks.

"The" Soup man? Of Seinfeld fame?

there are sonnets and I have no idea regarding the mortality rate in them

NATLBSB!

Oh! Nilly!

The sonnets are a great way to start Shakespeare! Like:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

"bootless" means "hopeless"

"haply" means "I happen to," like, "I happened to think that moment about Nilly"

I LOVE Shakespeare!