Poetry

I was surprised at the poems my students wrote in class this week.

We've been studying Nikki Giovanni's "Knoxville, Tennessee" in my jail class. It was fun to introduce Southern cuisine and various gospel music songs (both country-gospel and black gospel) to a group of Spanish speakers who didn't know such things existed. After analyzing the poem almost to the point where it lost its feeling, I asked them to think of the place where they were the happiest. After doing some pre-writing, they all wrote a poem about their favorite place, following the same style as Giovanni's.

I was expecting a bundle of poems about Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Instead, what I got was a stack of poems about Raleigh, Benson, Wendell, and Zebulon, North Carolina! Sure, there were a few poems with titles like "Jalpán, Querétaro" or "Igualapa, Guerrero," but the vast majority of my class, apparently, has been happier in the U.S. than in their home countries.

The food they mentioned, too, surprised me. Not many students wrote about carne asada and tamales and sopes. Instead, they mentioned hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, hot wings, fries, turkey, barbecue, hush puppies, and any number of other typically "American" dishes.

What does this mean? If I were going to write a poem about the place I was the happiest, where would I write about? Takasaki, Gunma? Oaxaca, Oaxaca? Littleton, North Carolina? Greensboro? Raleigh? Where have I been the happiest . . . ?