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Get Lit Student Workbook Get Lit Student Workbook A 12-Week Course in Literacy (and Life) Through POETRY Diane Luby Lane Copyright © 2013 by Yellow Road Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. Order this book at www.GetLit.org/store ISBN: 978-1-300-88659-4 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval systems with- out the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them. The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions. Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock. Printed in the United States of America. “How soon the sunrise would kill me if I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.” Walt Whitman Table of Contents Week 1: What is Poetry? Where is Poetry? Why Do I Need Poetry? 1 Week 2: Claiming Your Poem, Claiming Yourself 4 Week 3: Becoming Your Poem (Memorization) 11 Week 4: Reclaiming Your Voice (Recitation) 14 Week 5: Realize & Respond (Writing) 17 Week 6: Going Below the Surface (Re-Writing) 36 Week 7: Speak Up! (Reciting Your Own Words) 39 Week 8: Strength in Numbers (Becoming Part of a Group) 43 Week 9: Raise the Volume, Raise the Roof (Reciting as a Group) 46 Week 10: Creating a Symphony (Responding as a Group)* 48 Week 11: The Sum of the Parts (Group Recitation) 53 Week 12: Putting it Together (Dress Rehearsal) 56 Tips for the Final Performance 59 Conclusion 61 Vocabulary 62 My Word Palette 63 Appendix I 74 Appendix II: List of Poems (Titles & Authors) 77 Appendix III: Poetic Terms 86 Appendix IV: Get Lit Curriculum’s alignment to the Common Core Standards 92 About the Author 108 About Get Lit—Words Ignite 110 A Message from Get Lit Founder, Diane Luby Lane I believe in something called “synchronicity.” Synchronicity means there are no accidents. Assuming this is true, there’s a reason you’re holding this book in your hands right now. Look at it. Open it up. Flip through the pages. It’s yours. Write your name in it. Take charge. Move in. Do you ever feel like no one listens to you? Or that no one understands you? Or that some things are just too scary to say out loud? Nancy Rubin says, “Paper is the best listener in the world.” And Alice Walker says, “I know how poems are made…There is a place the fear must go. There is a place the choice must go. There is a place the loss must go. The leftover love. The love that spills out of the too full cup…” I am suggesting that this workbook is where you free yourself, and let go. All my life I was a voracious reader but I definitely didn’t read poetry. Instead I read Daniel Steele, and Norma Klein. I left the “classics” for the honors students down the hall. Poetry, to me, was frou-frou imagery about roses. And who were these dead, white male poets with long white beards? Why did they always look so miserable and what were they saying? It wasn’t until I saw actress Viveca Lindfors perform Walt Whitman’s “Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born…” that I finally understood and liked a poem. “I am stuffed with the stuff that is course and stuffed with the stuff that is fine. a novice beginning yet of myriads of seasons of every hue and cast am I of every rank and religion…” I joined her Guerilla Poetry Troupe and began memorizing ‘classic’ poems by DH Lawrence, Yeats, Whitman, and more, and performed them throughout New York City. During that time I was writing monologues. My first book had been published through Samuel French, but when I suggested to Viveca that I perform my own work, she said for every one of my monologues I memorized, I should memorize two of someone else’s. When I asked her why? She said, “Just try it and see.” i So I did. And then I understood. There is something about having someone else’s words inside of you, especially when that someone is a master who expresses things you feel and think but don’t yet have the words to say. Or that someone’s words are direct, powerful and to the point. Or that someone has written words that move an audience to tears or bring them to uproarious laughter. When you recite those words suddenly you feel a power you never knew was possible. By ingesting someone else’s words, someone else’s viewpoint, you grow larger. You become someone else—a man, a woman, young, old, black, white, rich, poor, angry, empowered or in love. You think with someone else’s brain. Feel with someone else’s heart. You finally have words for things you’d never considered or for things you thought you were all alone in considering. You find friends in the writers whose work you memorize and there you find a more expansive version of yourself. This is what happened to me as I read and memorized the work of other writers. Alone in my New York apartment their words made me stop feeling lonely. Their words saved my life. And if those words could save me, I knew they could save other people too. The words didn’t belong to the “scholars” down the hall—they belonged to the people. All people. In the words of Beat poet, Lenore Kandel, “It was time to take poetry out of the classroom and into the street!” Years later in San Francisco, I met James Kass and was introduced to the revolutionary work of the nonprofit he’d founded, Youth Speaks. Youth Speaks is responsible for bringing teen spoken word around the world through Brave New Voices and has been documented on HBO. During their first year I was director of their theatrical division, which is a fancy way of saying I taught six kids who were interested in acting, but I also visited schools and saw raw, live spoken word by teens and it blew my mind. Years later I toured my one woman show about books called Deep Sea Diving/Born Feet First with Jimmy Santiago Baca. Jimmy is a world-renowned poet who learned to read and write in prison. He founded Cedar Tree a nonprofit organization in hopes of transforming lives through writing and literature. The organization is committed to reaching incarcerated and seriously at risk youth. My work with Jimmy took us into juvenile detention centers, gang programs, schools and universities. It was heart breaking the way the boys in juvi surrounded us and asked for our autographs when we finished performing. They looked so young. So innocent. Most of them were in there for drug related crimes. Some of the boys were twelve years old and already locked up! It seemed so unfair. I vowed to do something about it when I could and what I did was start Get Lit, an in-school poetry program that would introduce kids to the thing that saved my life— books, poetry, spoken word. The in-school Get Lit program I started was so successful that when it ended the kids didn’t want to leave so I created an after-school program for them to attend. The kids memorized so much poetry I booked them for shows around the community. Then I started auditioning kids throughout ii Southern California in order to find the best performers and writers I could find. This was the start of the Get Lit Players who now perform for over 10,000 of their peers every year inspiring them to read, write, participate in the arts and become leaders in their communities. They’ve even performed at the White House. The program attracted the attention of former California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes who suggested we write “response” poems to the classics giving original spoken word poems even more meaning. Once that component was added Get Lit as we know it today was born. Today our “Lit Kit” is in schools throughout the nation. Students just like yourselves are opening up this very same workbook and discovering greater versions of themselves through the process. Your journey starts with your first poem. My first poem was by Walt Whitman. I wonder who will have written yours. In the words of Chan Vega from Ramon C. Cortines High School in Los Angeles “I will never forget the day my poem claimed me.” Enjoy! Diane iii Promises of the Program 1.
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