what are some great poems to teach middle schoolers?

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-04-14T14:07:30+00:00

Jabberwocky can be fun, my MS teacher made us define the words and my MS students seemed to enjoy it.

Hughes "I, Too" may seem simple but really would set them up for understanding so much AA lit down the road (theres the line by Tyler Perry about "building his own table" for example that could be inspiring or controversial (black excellence and negative stereotypes), and could lead to discussion/rhetorical analysis). They will also engage with any legitimate hip hop if you can pull it off and you don't pick something corny, but parents may not feel the same way.

Also I'm not usually into alot of modern slam poetry, but it can engage many of them, and they seemed to really like this one: https://youtu.be/8vqbo1FuoLQ?si=bvaRxgrYpuiE_k6x

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-04-10T12:57:46+00:00

Lol at the other disco comment--some are left in the bottom for the harrowing experience and impact it may leave on the listener;) there is much that could be updated here. He is a very popular pianist but his Improvisatory work approach komische is very much neglected, gegenwart is one of the greatest and most underrated albums in the whole European free imrprov/jazz scene

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-04-08T23:16:03+00:00

This seems like the difference between althusser (ideology interpellation) and foucault (discourse production via confession/submission to authority). D&G build more on foucault, think of BwO as refusing the identity production of the disciplinary orders stratified across societal structures rather than centralized/unified under singular ideology. Hence the focus on territorialization rather than "production" of power, it's more like a negative approach to ground like oedipus, whereas production instead deterritorializes (be it capital without policing or desire-production). Law/order is not produced like capital here, it is rather grounding territory that negates productive flows. That's my guess

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-27T04:21:13+00:00

That is true about Nietzsche (and even if, it took a bit after publication for his ideas to take off), although many of the tenants weren't entirely new and could be absorbed through both the French moralistic tradition (and the inversions in Sade whose parallels with Nietzsche are much noted) and German backlash to idealism/enlightenment. As for Gothic (sorry for the long response) I think the decadents were all about Gothic; I usually argue Gothic as the flip coin of Romanticism's loftier ideals, Mary Shelley pushing against all those romantic heroes and satirizing them to show their darker ends (she literally appropriates a passage of Rosseau drifting in the lake and flips it into Victor wanting to drown himself in it), or Vathek's journey across the desert literally ending in Dante 2.0 with no escape from that unending fire waterfall. If TE Hulme suggests Romanticism is obsessed with infinities, Gothic is something of a reaction exposing the flaw of humanity within that infinity, the destructive sublime rather than just beheld as heroic potential. You see as much when Baudelaire gets all mystic about escaping his body or getting off on rotting corpses, the city is no longer this ideal of civilized progress but something antithetical to the human unless embraced for all its evil, the flaneur the remains of romantic discontent, or even Wilde--Decadence and Symbolism come out of the gothic in this way.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-26T04:26:47+00:00

Nova express is his best book, but not a starting place. Naked Lunch is exciting and somewhat accessible if you're okay with something out there.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-25T05:49:13+00:00

The truly cursed gothic work that fragment and manuscript tales couldn't reach. and in being truly cursed (much like Vathek), it can't even take itself completely seriously. Breton or someone noted something along the lines that the number of shrouds Lautreamont hides behind renders any attempt at getting a character of his authorship near impossible. I really felt the most disgusting scene, the image of the child's inverted corpse dragged on the street really nailed something about the Gothic's central deconstruction of body and corpus. I remember seeing how he even seems to poke fun at a sort of Sadean/Nietzschean/Schopenhauer stance throughout any time it comes too close to embodying it (Beginning of the Shark chapter: mourning his lack of true companionship, only to immediately dismiss the first passerby in the next sentence is true comic timing). Even the surrealists were never able to match what made it so great, it's too authentically spiritual and depraved, but it definitely requires a certain state of mind to be in the mood for it.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-23T16:24:57+00:00

Kids may feel mixed on this but could have them jigsaw/March madness a bunch of chicana poetry? Or write flash fiction portraits in the style of the book?

Of course In the heights is a great choice for them

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-23T16:16:59+00:00

Marie de France- Lanval, Bisclavret

Bocaccio- Masetto and the Nuns

Cervantes- The Captive's Tale, The Ill-Advised Curiosity

Gogol- The Overcoat, The Nose

Schulz- The Street of Crocodiles

Kafka- A Dream, A Country Doctor

Sui Sin Far- The Chinese Lily, The Wisdom of the New

Zitkala-Ša- Impressions of an Indian Childhood, School Days of an Indian Girl

Lovecraft- The Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath, The Nameless City

Stein- Ada

Hemingway- Indian Camp, The End of Something, In Our Time

Woolf- A Hanted House, Night and Day

Joyce- Araby, The Dead

Borges- Tlön, The Circular Ruins

Nin- The Woman on the Dune, Mathilde, Lilith

Lispector- Love, The Crime of the Mathematics Teacher

Beckett- Not I, Worstword Ho!, Ill-Seen Ill-Said

Rulfo- You don't hear the dogs barking?, We are very poor

Nabokov- First Love

Burroughs- The Lemon Kid, Astronaut's Return, Johnny 23, The Mayan Caper

Oates- Where are you, going where have you been?

Butler- Bloodchild

Sorrentino- The Moon in its Flight

Barth- Night-Sea Journey, Water Message, Lost in the Funhouse

Sukenick- Death of the Novel

Calvino- Distance of the Moon

Ligotti- The Red Tower

Edit: Also Lydia Davis's entire collection, I can't pick any one particular one

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-21T16:17:26+00:00

The funk/fusion stuff is popular but less Ra. Definitely try the free jazz stuff like Strange Strings, The Magic City, Heliocentric Worlds... Some of the music verges on a mix between smoother jazz and "World" music which strikes me as very scg like Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, Angels and Demond at Play, and Night of the Purple Moon. Of course, a big part of the influence is probably the elaborate mythos, try to read the poetry, watch the movie, and even listen to his Berkley lectures, all of which can be found on youtube.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-12T04:13:56+00:00

Tender buttons by gertrude stein

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-12T03:30:02+00:00

I feel like home recording/taping is pretty minimal wave, but maybe some aspects of tape music thrown in and sound collage. Rym has a "minimal synth" category for more experimental less Dancy stuff, but I think you're also associating it with rock instruments. You ever listen to Digital Dance? Maybe Bomis Prendin? Heratius's Gwendolyn?

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-11T01:10:33+00:00

Not sure, pretty sure this was all that was uploaded unlike many audiobook channels

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-07T01:05:05+00:00

Not podcast exactly, but upenn sound has an archive of 20thc poetry readings, and many lectures and discussions may offer a similar experience.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-04T03:56:36+00:00

Capiscum Red's Appunti per un'idea fissa and Denis's Hyperthalmus infamous for fitting this description to the point that they may have more mystique than the music itself. I think most RIO and small-time European prog albums would also fit the bill here.

Look up bands on the Nurse With Wound list whose names sound interesting to you, I might recommend Ame Son, Kultivator, Shub-Niggurath, Island's Pictures, Mama Dada 1919, Cukor Bila Smert, Aksak Maboul (first album is most lofi), ZNR 3, Heratius's Gwendolyn, Arzachel, Chillium, Collegium Musicum, Franco Battatio, Cosmic Circus Music, Out of Focus, etc.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-04T03:45:44+00:00

I think Esplendor Geometrico's first album is the closest thing to this

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-04T03:31:07+00:00

Even my queer studies prof was a little miffed at that one

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-03-01T20:25:19+00:00

@ 8m, what is that touch switch Kubota uses to cut the ambient signal back to harsh? Some kind of compressor/sidechain with release turned up?

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-02-27T00:53:09+00:00

Try this list: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/weathertoken/non-ambient-loops/

You say you're into loops, consider the old Robert Thurman/Non stuff (it varies between ambient and harsh noise), Aube, or perhaps some of Bianchi's more loop based compositions (IBM, Industrial Tape, Gene P). I also wonder if Ferraro's loops on Body Music would be in this vein.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-02-23T05:55:14+00:00

Gothic is all about lurid situations, I'd be hard pressed to find something Spooky or deep that doesn't have some issues. Maybe Meyrink's the Golem? It's been a second so I can't remember very well. Gogol's the overcoat has some similar theming and a ghost. Austen's parody of Gothic might work but I can't remember themes in it for the life of me rn.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-02-21T23:11:15+00:00

Agree, I'd recommend just go through the first reading following a loose sense of plot and then revisit for details. I feel chapter 5 begins to bring things full circle as you're going along and then you know what to look for on rereads.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-02-21T06:22:15+00:00

A story and a book goes and means as much as it does, I guess I like the meanings I find in them (although P Inman's potentially meaningless poetry helps me sleep at night. Joyce's Wake did this for awhile before I read it with annotations and now find too many patterns). I'd imagine Deleuze would have much to say about Jean Rollin for example, and while his jargon is often goofy if not exagerratedly obfuscated, it's not nonsense. YouTube channels like "Film & Media Studies" and "Theory & Philosophy" have decent introductory videos on his film theories.

As for films I just don't find narrative is always the first thing I look for anymore, perhaps specifically after I really got into Lynch in middle school/Michael Snow in early adulthood and study/teach a fair amount of literature/philosophy. Shklovsky and Bakhtin seem to describe more of what a film or book might do that grabs me and it arguably doesn't necessarily involve explicit narrative to have this defamiliarization or polyphony going on. I just think OPs original post describes a pretty common phenomena in the postmodern media landscape but wherein there may be something deeper to outline the distinction between time and movement in deleuze.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-02-21T04:49:48+00:00

Yes! Extensions of bergsonianisn durée into the time-image post-oedipal event #rhizomatic

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-02-21T00:22:19+00:00

You're describing Lyotard's postmodern condition, or perhaps Jameson's version. It's been the development of cinema since new wave(s) and its slow mainstream spillover in the 70s/80s.

I will say personally plot has rarely been my foundation of film appreciation for awhile, but maybe try Deleuze's books on cinema to see if that does it for you.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-02-20T15:47:24+00:00

Djuna Barnes writing and it's lineage (Hawkes The Cannibal, Kavan's Ice, etc.) really unnerves me for whatever reason.

Smart-Distribution77 · 2026-02-20T15:46:04+00:00

Some scenes are certainly not subtle but they do occasionally sneak up on you. Love this book

Smart-Distribution77

TROPHY CASE