The Unit
This curriculum unit is designed to be used throughout the school year in my class-- one to be pulled in and used when studying essays, speeches, novels, and plays, as the topic of diverse voices in American culture is the driving theme throughout the school year. I have divided the unit into four aspects of visions and versions of America that could easily be paired with other works teachers use in the classroom. I would use the unit subsections to guide your pairing with other texts you use in the classroom. For example, if your students are reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man or Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” you might pull poems from the subsection “American Visions of Race and Gender.” If you are teaching Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” or Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, you might use poems form the subsection “American Visions of Conformity and Nonconformity.” Teachers can benefit from this approach, as it does not confine poetry to the completely separate formal consideration that is often its fate in schools. This approach will intertwine poetry analysis with other literary work as year-long activities that will keep students working with critical thinking, close reading, and annotation skills. More importantly, this unit is designed to be flexible. I urge readers of this unit to take out, rearrange, or condense as they see fit.
Another note about the unit is that some poems and songs are assigned that involve some profanity and more adult topics. It is important to know your students, your parents, and administration before using works with questionable language or topics. My students are given a course outline with all the works we are using throughout the year, which parents must sign off on. The above will serve as a rationale for using the works I have chosen. I always offer alternative works to be read if a parent or student objects. If this idea does not work for your situation, you can always use excerpts from the poems listed, excluding any language your students, parents, or administration may find controversial, or search for alternative poems to use.
This unit will challenge your students to examine the complex and often complicated idea of patriotism, as well as urge them to discuss some controversial issues. The poems chosen will prepare my students to tackle issues that they will perpetually face as citizens of the United States of America and to think critically about the America they find themselves in. By scrutinizing their American identity through different visions and versions, they then will be able to apply those questions and discussions to a globally-oriented mindset, seeing that they are “citizens of a world of human beings, and that while they happen to be situated in the United States, they have to share this world with the citizens of other countries.”7
Guiding Questions
How can we celebrate America in one breath and criticize it when we exhale? Whose America is this? What’s the point of view? Does this poem promote belonging? Does the poem leave anyone out? Does this poem incite change? How does it help us understand important social issues? Does it promote the American Dream or criticize it? These questions will be at the forefront of every poem we encounter during this unit.
Visions of America: Celebrations and Criticisms
In the preface of Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman says “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”8 I want the first week of this unit to focus on four very connected poets who definitely have to say something about their America and offer students four distinct visions for their country’s future. Students will focus on Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” Bob Dylan’s “The Times They are A-Changin’,” and Allen Ginsberg’s “America” --- noticing connections between the four poets. Students will be given a list of literary devices, so not only will they be focusing on what these four poets are saying about America, they will also be familiarizing themselves with poetic devices and their effects on an author’s message.
Connections to make among Whitman, Guthrie, Dylan, and Ginsberg
It is important that students see how these authors’ poems are connected through style and purpose, ultimately noting how their particular use of language and syntax, even if they have different visions of America, has similar effects on their audience. Making connections among these poets and, hopefully, to other writers we study throughout the year is what will be the most meaningful achievement for my students -- to be able to compare and contrast and find a common thread that seems to be beautifully, albeit paradoxically, interwoven in works chosen. Beginning the unit with in-depth analysis of these four poems is intended to build a foundation that teachers can carry on throughout the year, especially since Whitman and Dylan are used in more than one section.
First, it is necessary to examine the subject of their poems and their audiences. In “Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and the Anxiety of Influences,” Ron Klier says, “Whitman believed that the poet’s ‘spirit responds to his country’s spirit,’ that he or she to be ‘commensurate with the people.’”9 In “I Hear America Singing,” Whitman seems to be writing for the everyman -- the working class, championing some of the underrepresented, mentioning “mechanics,” “boatman,” “shoemaker,” just to name a few. He ends by celebrating “the mother,” “young wife,” and “the girl.” We can look at this as a way to include people who the poet felt were not normally celebrated in society. Andrew Vogel writes about this amalgamation of different people, noting that this poem “indicates the joyousness and harmony of American life coming out of the confluence of individualism and mutual support that, Whitman insists, is the real engine of national progress.”10 While still celebrating the inclusiveness and expansiveness of his vision of America, he tells readers which persons we should not overlook anymore. Although he did incorporate the working class and women and his purpose was to celebrate all who make up America, it would be important to have students identify what traditional, stereotypical roles he seems to perpetuate. For example, you can point out how Whitman does include women, but shows them in their traditional roles “sewing or washing.” You might discuss with students how although Whitman mentions the working class, it’s not clear whether he means just white laborers or if he includes people of color. Looking at historical context and even Whitman’s own journalism, you could have students decide whether the voices singing include all races or if they are just white voices.
After an interesting study of Whitman and his poem, it is time to introduce Woody Guthrie. Like Whitman, Guthrie includes Americans who he felt needed to be represented in his famous “This Land is Your Land.” Though many people misrepresent his folk song as one of America’s most celebratory anthems, it truly is a communist manifesto, pointing out “the exclusiveness and unfairness of the distribution of wealth in America.”¹¹ He wrote this song in response to the popular “God Bless America” after traveling throughout America seeing everything from the “landless migrant laborers” in California to the homeless alcoholics in New York City. As for Whitman, “For Guthrie, understanding the bad and the good of the people and the country allows for personal transcendence and redemption.”¹² Guthrie, like the other poets, finds it necessary to include the ugly with the beautiful to truly represent his vision of America.
Following Guthrie, teachers should have students tackle Bob Dylan’s “The Times They are A-Changin’.” This skillfully crafted song includes those people typically ignored in art but also empowered by conformity to success standards when he focuses on those unwilling to welcome change. He invites people to his conversation by using the imperative command “Come.” This imperative command is not meant to scold, but gently to nag the people he urges to pay attention. With these commands, he sings out to all “people,” but then quickly narrows focus to “writers and critics,” “senators, congressmen,” and “mothers and fathers,” representing the media, politics, and the family unit and advises them to be aware that the world is changing and to not to get in the way. By focusing on stagnant keepers of the status quo, he forces the reader to think of young people who recognize that the “old road is rapidly agin’” and “The order is rapidly fadin’.”
Lastly, we should explore a poet who could be seen as a more pessimistic Whitman. Allen Ginsberg’s “America” constructs a darker national landscape, targeting “fear, militarism, and greed. In a word, ‘America’ is an elegy for the ‘lost America of love’ that Whitman had envisioned.”¹³ Ginsberg represents the counterculture of the late 1950s, darkly celebrating the nonconformists of his generation, while condemning mainstream values.
Another important connection to make between these four poets is their use of cataloguing and anaphora to paint their differing depictions of America. As Klier says, “Whitman was fond of catalogues, of sweeping, panoramic portraits of America” and then goes on to say that “Guthrie identified with these catalogues. Joe Klein even argues that he wrote with ‘the unspoken assumption that he could cram the whole country into his songs; the belief --like Whitman’s--that he could say what America was.”14 And again, “Dylan (like Whitman and Guthrie) uses catalogues to capture the American experience in vivid images and sense impressions.” 15 Although Ginsberg is not mentioned in Klier’s article, we can again see a darker use of cataloguing as he tries to characterize the mistakes he sees America making and whom America is excluding. Vogel writes, “In ‘America,’ Ginsberg marks the asininity of American values and simultaneously mocks himself for being unable to fit in with mainstream society.”16
Versions of America: Celebrations and Criticisms
In Caroline Kennedy's introduction to her anthology A Patriot’s Handbook, she notes that she has included many “different views of America --what is best, and what could be better -- because patriotism requires understanding our limitations as well as our strengths.”17 This concept will drive the second section of this unit. Kennedy argues that “there are many varied realities within our society, but as a nation, there is more that unites us than divides us.”18 In these very divisive times that we live in, I don’t know if I completely buy that, and I don’t know if my students will either. The optimist that I am wants to totally agree with Kennedy, but I still find it important to struggle with either agreeing or disagreeing with her, so that is what we are going to explore for this section of the unit-- different authors’ versions of their present-day America. We will read Langston Hughes’s “I, Too, Sing America,” “Let America be America Again,” Claude McCay’s “America,” Abelardo Delgado’s “Stupid America,” and Green Day’s “American Idiot” juxtaposed with Thomas Paine’s “Liberty Tree,” Emma Lazarus's “The New Colossus,” Samuel F. Smith’s “America” (“My country tis of thee”), Katharine Lee Bates’s “America, the Beautiful,” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “I Like Americans.” If extra time is an option, I’ll throw in Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright,” which on the surface looks like a celebration of Manifest Destiny and American autonomy, but when analyzed further really can be seen as a criticism, much like Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” At the end of this section of the unit, students will decide who wins the great debate. Is America great or not? Is there more that unites than divides? Using textual evidence, historical context, and their knowledge of literary devices and their effects, students will attempt to answer these questions.
American Visions of Conformity and Nonconformity
Using clips from Dead Poets Society and selected poems, students will look at whether or not America values conformity more than nonconformity. I want us to consider how America seems to pride itself on the individual and value the idea of nonconformity, but paradoxically champions rigidly shared standards and sameness. Kennedy asserts that Americans “celebrate the nonconformist.”19 Again, I believe this is a debatable and complex issue, so using Malvina Reynolds’s “Little Boxes,” Emily Dickinson’s “Much Madness is Divinest Sense” and/or “I’m Nobody who are you?” Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool,” Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” and excerpts of Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” we will explore whether it is conformity or nonconformity that truly represents and drives visions of America.
Concentrating on moments of championed nonconformity like Reynolds’s resistance to “boxes,” Dickinson’s “Madness” and “Nobody,” Brooks’s “We,” Frost’s “road less traveled,” and Whitman’s “barbaric yawp,” students can examine the “individual[s need] to resist the pressures of conformity”20 in relation to the “effort by various authorities and experts to codify, unify, and contain personal identities and activities provoked” by societal expectations.
At some point during this section, I will show a few scenes from the movie Dead Poets Society to help further my students’ understanding of conformity and nonconformity. My students love when I throw in something to watch, even if it is only a few minutes long. Visuals help to engage my students and usually make for more dynamic class discussions. For example, in the scene where Mr. Keating takes his students outside, the boys start walking and after a short time, they eventually start marching and clapping in unison. He then stops them and talks to them about conformity and nonconformity. Mr. Keating explains, “Now we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go, [imitating a goat] ‘that's baaaaad.’ Robert Frost said, ‘Two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’" This would be a good scene to show before you have the class read “The Road Not Taken.”
American Versions of Race and Gender
“Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.”—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass.
Not only will we focus on American versions of gender and race during this section of the unit, but we will also examine why authors make specific stylistic choices and how they are used to enhance their message. We read the following poems: Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” Quraysh Ali Lansana’s “statement on the killing of patrick desmond,” Reginald Harris’s “New Rules of the Road,” Huang Zunxian’s “Expulsion of the Immigrants,” Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll,” Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy.”
I would start with Dylan’s song first to model how to look at gender and race in a poem. In Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” it is important to comment on how Dylan never mentions that William Zanzinger is white and that Hattie Carroll is black. Christopher Ricks points out this use of restraint. Ricks says, “It’s a terrible thing that you know [their race] from the story, and from the perfunctory prison sentence, even while the song never says so. It’s white upon black, it’s man upon woman, it’s rich upon poor.”21 This song not only discusses the injustices of race, but of gender and social status as well. Teachers can also use this song as an opportunity to discuss the power of sound devices. Ricks points out that Hattie’s sound is the -l sound. 22 He discusses how that sound is found within the following words: “Carroll,” “table” (which is repeated several times to reinforce the monotony of her her work as a maid in a hotel), “level,” and “gentle.” Then juxtapose those soft sounds with the more cacophonous sounds used to describe Zanzinger: “Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle.” Another interesting detail teachers can point out to students is the importance of stanza structure. Ricks explains how the stanzas increasingly get longer. They go from nine lines to ten lines, with the last two stanzas ending with 11 lines equally.23 Ricks suggests that “The final verse, pronouncing the sentence of (and upon) this court, must not be allowed to trump the life of Hattie Carroll. The scales of justice must hold perfectly level the scale of the two verses, however disgracefully the court failed to be on the level.”24 Students should try and figure out the author’s intended effect of stanza length, with a little nudging and guidance from the teacher.
After discussing and analyzing Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” as a whole class, I would introduce Quraysh Ali Lansana’s “statement on the killing of patrick desmond,” having students analyze the lack of capitalization and use of specific diction focusing on word pairs like “hoodlum (cop)” and “proven false (white lies)” and Reginald Harris’s “New Rules of the Road,” where students would specifically look at form, the effects of repetition, and imperative commands which seem more pressing than Dylan’s commands in “The Times They are A-Changin’.” When writing about the many murders of unarmed blacks in America, Michael Warr argues that “today’s terror [must] be opened to the world and portrayed in all its gut-wrenching layers, legal and extralegal, cultural and intellectual, in plain view of the national conscience.”25 These two poems should spark some difficult, but necessary conversations about race in America. Warr continues, “We hope to expose and project poetic consciousness on the issue of police killing more broadly in the Public Square.”26 That is exactly what these two poets will do in the classroom and I know my students (and countless others) will find this conversation relevant and valuable as they are evaluating their own feelings about their country.
Another poem on race worth teaching is Huang Zunxian’s “Expulsion of the Immigrants.” Chinese poet and diplomat, hurt by the anti-Chinese sentiments and the continuous renewal of the Chinese exclusion Act of 1882, which eventually made Chinese immigration permanently illegal, wrote this poem as a response. 27 Students should take note of the cataloguing, anaphora, and use of imagery and connect these to the author’s purpose. Connections can also be made to modern day immigrants, the Muslim ban, etc.
Finally, we will focus on gender. Starting with Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll,” students need to examine the imagery of “dolls,” “GE stoves and irons,” and “wee lipsticks,” just to name a few, and how these images contribute to a stereotyped view of women in American society. Make sure to point out the use of situational irony at the end of the poem and have students explain how it contributes to theme.
With Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” have students focus on imagery, simile, and metaphor. For example, she uses images of wealth to describe her self-esteem. She explains how she walks “like I’ve got oil wells / Pumping in my living room” and how she dances “like I’ve got diamonds / at the meeting of my thighs.” Not only are these images ironically and poignantly connected to what is usually attributed to white man’s success, but it celebrates her sexuality as an uncontrollable force that seems to slap patriarchy in the face. She ends the poem with a chant-like “I Rise / I Rise / I Rise,” allowing readers to get a true sense of the power and confidence of a strong black woman.
When exploring Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” the teacher should ask who “Daddy” represents. Various answers could be her dad, her husband, the devil, Nazis, but eventually, your class should see that Plath intends for her audience to see “Daddy” as all men, clearly revolting against patriarchy. In this poem, it would be important to track the different types of imagery used and look at how they contribute to the overall theme. For example, students can track foot imagery or Nazi imagery and their specific impact on the poem’s meaning. Other areas of potential interest when teaching this poem would be to concentrate on the repetitive rhyme and how every line ends on a strong note, creating the sensation of strong, compellingly hypnotic chant, just as in “Still I Rise.”
Ultimately, the study of this section’s poems should challenge my students to meditate on the idea that Carolyn Sorisio mentions in her book Fleshing Out America: Race, Gender, and the Politics of the Body in American Literature when she discusses Whitman’s tendency to “merge” and “subsume” the identity of women, African Americans, and Native Americans “into the category of ‘American,’ a category that was implicitly white and male.”28 What she argues here is that although Whitman, with his heart in the right place, is trying to equalize and include all that make up our country into something that is uniquely American, that within this “merger” the marginalized lose what is unique and important to their struggle and fight for equality. You cannot sweep injustices and intolerance under the rug just by saying we are all the same. This idea of being American as part of a culture and community is important, but it also (as we discussed in the previous section) ignores many different perspectives of those too often marginalized in America. For example, students could take this idea and relate it to the Black Lives Matter movement to be contrasted with the All Lives Matter. “We are all equal and the same now” undermines the blatant racism and sexism we see in society. By using poetry, we can look beyond the single story of the American experience. In Of Poetry and Protest, poet Reginald Harris says, “For me, poetry bridges the gap between individuals by helping us to live inside the skin of others, and to recognize what we share with each other.”29
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