(jazzy music)
-: Hi, my name is Daemond Arrindell.
I am a writer and a teaching artist
and I have a lesson for you today in poetry.
The focus for today is list poems and we'll get into
what exactly list poems are in a moment,
but where we're gonna start is
with by making an actual list.
So I want you to think about a color that you either
like a lot or that you don't like a lot,
and I want you to make a list of 10 different things
that color makes you think of.
People, places, things, it could be anything,
and there's no right or wrong to this.
There's just what you decide.
So I'm going to go with the color red,
and a simple way to think about this is to just
draw a circle on your page for your color
and then think of it like as a wheel.
So for each thing that, that I think of
in connection to my color, I draw a line out to the side.
So some things that come to mind for me
when I think of the color of red,
I think of Valentine's Day.
I think of blood, I think of my mom.
I also think of war and I think of ice cream sundaes.
Now the things on this list don't have to
actually have the color.
For example, my mom isn't red
except when she gets sunburned,
so it's things that remind you of the color.
They could be people, places, things,
anything that comes to mind.
So 10 things that your color reminds you of,
and I'll give you a minute or so
to come up with those things
and I'm going to keep adding to my list
and it's okay if you pick a color
that is totally different from mine.
You can go with the red,
you can go with something totally different.
That's up to you,
and again, it doesn't have to make sense.
Could be things that have the color,
could be something that's totally different.
Take another 30 seconds and then I'm going to give you
some prompts to help you to come up with things
that you can add to your list.
Another 10 seconds.
Okay, so to add to your list, even if you didn't get to 10,
I want you to think of a couple things,
and there's no right or wrong to this.
There's just what you come up with,
and I really want you to tap into your imagination.
So often when we think of temperature,
especially like when you go to the sink,
there's a, what color is hot and what color is cold.
Often we think of red as hot and blue is cold.
Before this particular activity,
you get to decide what your color represents.
So if you decide that green is scalding hot
or that green is, is ice cold, you're right.
So make a decision.
What temperature is your color?
You decide.
Okay, now what season is your color?
Is it spring, is it summer?
Is it fall, is it winter?
Is it somewhere in between?
Is it more than one season?
Again, you get to decide, there's no right or wrong,
but make a decision.
Let's take it even further.
What time of day is your color, and you can be
as specific as 3:33 PM or it could be,
the time that I get out of school
or it could be when the sun goes down
or it could be, when my mom wakes me up for school.
You get to decide what time of day is your color.
Write it down
and now think of media and I'm, when I say media,
I mean music, what artist or what song
or what type of music comes to mind
when you think of your color,
but you can think beyond that.
It doesn't have to be music.
It could be a book, a character that you love
or a movie that you've watched
or it could be a video game that you've played.
What type of media comes to mind
when you think of your color?
Take a sec to write that down.
Okay, two more prompts.
What emotion is your color?
What feeling comes to mind?
Is your color angry?
Is it embarrassed?
Is it curious?
Is it silly?
Is it afraid?
You get to decide, and again, there's not,
there's not a knowing.
So if your brain goes, I don't know, it's not a knowing.
It's a decision that you get to make.
You decide if your color is embarrassed
or if your color is proud.
So make a decision, and again,
whatever comes to mind is the right answer,
and then the last one is going to be
a little bit weird, texture.
What does your color feel like, if you could touch it?
Is it soft, is it hard?
Is it smooth?
Is it furry?
Is it sharp, is it rough?
What texture is your color?
Make a decision.
So however many items are on your list,
you've just created a list of different things
that your color reminds you of,
and lists are good for all kinds of different things.
Lists are, things are good for things like groceries
and lists can help us remember things.
List poems follow a very specific formula.
They use a lot of repetition.
The beginning of every line is the same,
or the end of every line is the same,
and that same repetition allows us to look at things,
the same thing, over and over again in really different ways
in the same way that when we brainstorm together,
we get lots of different perspectives on the same topic.
So a list poem is actually very common
with any type of music that you listen to.
A lot of the songs that you grew up singing are list poems.
Just like I know that if I say Old MacDonald,
you know how now have that song stuck in your head,
this song that you haven't thought of in a very long time,
but because you repeated it over and over again,
because the lines repeat themselves over and over again,
you still have that song stuck in your head.
A lot of the choruses of the songs that you love
are still stuck in your head because of repetition.
So list poems, also known as anaphora poems,
and anaphora is just a fancy word in Greek,
which means list, so list poems use a lot of repetition.
Again, the beginning of every line is the same,
or the end of every line is the same,
and we're going to look at a poem, or rather a song,
and the hook of that song or the chorus,
of the song called Bruise Brothers by the Blue Scholars.
I'm going to show you these two amazing artists.
So on this side you have, you have Geologic the MC.
He is of Filipino descent and on this side
you have Sabzi the DJ, he is of Persian descent.
So a really interesting mixing of cultures here
and what I love about these two is that
it's old school hip hop in the sense of
it's just the MC and the DJ, but I love what they've created
in this particular song and I'm just going
to recite the lyrics for you and you'll be able
to follow along and you'll notice the beginning
of every line is the same.
"The blue is for the color of the collar of my mother
"And my father plus the scholars that we be
"The blue is for the nighttime mood-swinging tune
"Of every bluesman singing what it's like to not be free
"The blue is for the water and sky
"In the middle of the fire I burn
"to find the light in the darkness
"The blue is for the color of the bruise
"we use to be reminded
"That the body isn't made to be timeless"
Every single couplet here,
every single stanza is addressing a different meaning
for the color blue,
the color of the collar of my mother and my father.
This is referencing blue collar workers.
A lot of the people that we are calling
essential workers right now, people that work
with their hands, blue collar work or folks that do
what is often referred to as manual labor.
Manual, meaning mano, remember the word
in Spanish, which means hand.
I lift things, I build things, I move things, I fix things.
This is talking about the hard work that manual laborers do.
The color of the collar of my mother and my father,
plus the scholars that we be.
He's talking about the sacrifices and hard work
his mother and father had to do so that
he'd have the opportunity to go to college.
Just that from the color blue.
Another potential meaning from the color blue,
the nighttime mood-swinging tune of every blues man
singing what it's like to not be free.
Often we think of blue as a sad color.
Well, where did that come from?
The music form that we know of or genre
that we know of as the blues.
Well, think about, what's one of the saddest things
that has ever happened in our country?
Slavery.
The songs that enslaved Africans sang
while working in the fields were called Negro spirituals.
They were about hardship and suffering.
Those songs evolved into the blues,
one of our oldest original art forms,
and those songs have evolved into lots of different styles,
but the blues is the heart and soul of American music.
So another thing that a lot of people don't know
in regards to the blues is when they were singing
those songs, it wasn't just look up at the moon.
It wasn't just this sadness.
It was also a way to pass on information
that was vital for the Underground Railroad.
So then when they would say things like,
look at the moon, when it's in this part of the sky,
it was about giving directions on how to get free.
So this music has a tremendous amount of history to it.
Again, a lot of meaning behind the color blue.
A separate meaning, for fire and water.
Think about where have you seen,
where have you seen blue fire before?
Probably on a gas stove because fire or the flame
changes color depending on what you're using to fuel it,
and then my favorite line, the color of the bruise
we use to be reminded that the body
isn't made to be timeless.
What do bruises teach us?
They remind us that we're not going to be here forever,
that we only have but so much time,
that we can get hurt, that we're not invincible.
So we have four different messages here,
four different possible meanings from the color blue
and we could go in lots of different directions.
So what I'm going to have you do is make use of your list
and the style that the Blue Scholars have come up with
to create our own poem, our own list poem.
So I encourage you to stick with the color
that you picked and you're going to use
a similar structure that the Blue Scholars used,
but instead of the blue is for,
you're going to say my blue is for,
or whatever color you've picked.
My yellow is for, my red is for, my green is for,
you're going to follow this similar structure.
So the first line is, my name is and you plop in your name.
So in my case, my name is Daemond.
The second line, my blank is blank,
and then those blanks you put in my color is,
and then you need a descriptive word
or phrase to describe your color.
Maybe your blue is sad,
maybe your green is powerful,
maybe your white is illuminated,
maybe your yellow is a lightning strike.
Maybe your purple is a baby's cry.
It could be anything that you want,
and here's another thing,
If you get stuck on that line, skip it and come back to it.
The last thing that I want is for you to be sitting there,
I'm not sure what the right thing to write is.
The way that I think about it, if you're writing,
you're doing it right.
So feel free to skip lines and come back to it.
Don't let yourself get stuck.
So from there you're going to use that similar repetition.
I picked the color purple, so mine goes like this.
My name is Daemond.
My purple is playful.
My purple is for the sunsets I reached for
when I climbed trees.
My purple is for the paints on the walls in the halls
I've walked past while kids laugh and tell stories.
My purple is for royalty and riches where kings and queens
and the treasures I will never have,
and your color can also express whatever it is
that you're feeling right now in the moment,
something that isn't on your list.
Maybe you drew a blank as soon as I said,
what is your color representing?
Maybe your color is, my purple is for the blank stare
on my face when my mind goes blank because my stomach
is empty and all I want is to stuff my face.
It could be about anything you want it to be
and it can go in lots of different directions.
So I'm going to give you all about 10 minutes
to write your own, and again, first line, my name is blank,
second line, my color, whatever color you pick,
my yellow, my green, my purple, my blue is,
and then a descriptive word or phrase
to describe that color, and then that following repetition,
my purple is for, my purple is for, my purple is for.
What I encourage you to do
is to not write one word responses to be descriptive.
So notice I didn't just say my purple is for sunsets,
my purple is for royalty.
I elaborated on those things.
Go back to your list, use it as much
or as little as you like, and that is going to help you
to create your own list poem.
So take a few minutes, dive on in, and again,
as far as I'm concerned, if you're writing,
you're doing it right.
So if you slide into a different direction
than the template or the structure that I've given you
and you're still writing, that's fantastic.
Why, because you're still creating.
You're still being expressive and you're still
coming up with something, so whatever direction
you want to take this in is the right thing.
Okay, so take a few minutes.
I'm going to do a little bit of writing myself
and we'll see what we come up with.
(upbeat music)
And again, feel free to make use of that list
that you came up with at the beginning.
Use it as much or as little as you like,
and the point of all this, it's just describing
how you feel, describing what you're thinking about.
Don't worry about whether it makes sense or not.
it's just an opportunity for you to say what you're thinking
and what you're feeling in some different ways.
(upbeat music)
Okay, and I'm going to stop here.
I'm going to share a little bit of what I came up with
and hopefully you'll take some time to share
with someone around you, whether it's right now,
later tonight or tomorrow.
My blue is for silence that feels like too much.
My blue is for a world that is too much and not enough.
My blue is for bright lights and warm eyes.
My blue is for a blank piece of paper
that stares back at me.
My blue is for the faces on the other side of the world.
My blue is for the darkness that I don't get to see.
My blue is for running out of time.
Thank you for writing with me.
I appreciate it and hope you have a great day.
(jazzy music)