Using Black Poetry in Creative Writing Courses
When teachers talk to their students about Black literature , they should talk about a wide range of poets. This will help students learn more about the different literary traditions they can choose from. African-American poetry has been around since before the written word and has a long history of being told orally. Styles of music like blues, gospel, and jazz also influence it. Poetry is a form of art that focuses on the beauty of language and often uses different literary devices to make people think of and feel things. It is usually made up of lines of stanzas or verse paragraphs that have a certain pattern, meter, and rhythm, like rhyme and rhythm. Poems can have a single speaker (a lyric), a group of speakers who all talk about the same theme and feelings, or a dramatic poem that tells a story, like a medieval romance. Some poets have made styles unique to their cultures and genres due to how their languages work. The verse usually differs from prose, which tries to say more abo...