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Humanities LibreTexts

8.1: Classroom Lecture and Activity

  • Page ID
    386510

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    Since you've learned a little bit about poetry, lets learn by reading some more poetry and writing about it.

    Gwendolyn Brooks and the Poem kitchenette building

    Click on the link below to listen to the poem being read at poetry foundation website.

    poetry foundation kitchenette building [www.poetryfoundation.org]

    Screenshot 2026-03-07 at 9.46.43 AM.png

    kitchenette building

    BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

    We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,

    Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong

    Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

    But could a dream send up through onion fumes

    Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes

    And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,

    Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

    Even if we were willing to let it in,

    Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,

    Anticipate a message, let it begin?

    We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!

    Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,

    We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

    poetry foundation kitchenette building [www.poetryfoundation.org]

    Copyright Credit: Gwendolyn Brooks, "kitchenette building" from Selected Poems, published by Harper & Row. Copyright © 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.

    Source: Selected Poems (Harper & Row, 1963) Poetryfoundation.org

    Activity 1:

    Journal:

    What are some experiences that you would like to express through poetry?

    1. Think about where you, or your friends and family, live. Who are you neighbors and what do you have in common with them? Try to write a poem that uses, like “kitchenette building,” the plural “we” to talk about a set of shared circumstances.


    2. Brooks wrote at a time when African Americans were denied equal rights; for many of her generation, it seemed unlikely that they would achieve their dreams and ambitions. What dreams do you have for your future? What hardships may make achieving those dreams difficult? Write a poem that confronts the difficulties your dream may face—try to be as explicit as Brooks is, naming the “onion fumes,” “yesterday’s garbage” and cramped living conditions that keep her dream from singing its “aria.”

    poetryfoundation.org


    This page titled 8.1: Classroom Lecture and Activity is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by .

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