Tarr's Toolbox (one of my favorite blogs) had a post recently on
writing dialogue poems to compare points of view.
He pointed to this poem, which, according to a lesson plan posted by the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, was written by working-class Chilean woman in 1973, shortly after Chile's socialist president,
Salvador Allende, was overthrown. A US missionary translated the work and brought it with her when she was
forced to leave Chile.
I'm copying the poem below--because it is only by reading it that it becomes clear how this works. As Russell Tarr explains, the format is great for comparing and contrasting "the perspectives of the same event or situation from the point of view of different parties involved. Students can read existing poems, or write their own, to examine the main controversies and viewpoints surrounding particular topics."
I can think of lots of Montana history topics that students could do this for. Can you? If you have your students write perspective poems, send me one of your favorites. I'd love to read it!
Here's the model, written about the 1973 Chilean coup:
I am a woman.
I am a woman.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man
owned a factory.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man laboured in a factory.
I am a woman whose man wore silk suits,
who constantly watched his weight.
I am a woman whose man wore tattered clothing, whose heart was
constantly strangled by hunger.
I am a woman who watched two babies grow
into beautiful children.
I am a woman who watched two babies die because there was no
milk.
I am a woman who watched twins grow into
popular college students with summers abroad.
I am a woman who watched three children grow, but with bellies
stretched from no food.
But then there was a man;
But then there was a man;
And he talked about the peasants getting
richer by my family getting poorer.
And he told me of days that would be better, and he made the
days better.
We had to eat rice.
We had rice.
We had to eat beans!
We had beans.
My children were no longer given summer
visas to Europe.
My children no longer cried themselves to sleep.
And I felt like a peasant.
And I felt like a woman.
A peasant with a dull, hard, unexciting
life.
Like a woman with a life that sometimes allowed a song.
And I saw a man.
And I saw a man.
And together we began to plot with the
hope of the return to freedom.
I saw his heart begin to beat with hope of freedom, at last.
Someday, the return to freedom.
Someday freedom.
And then,
But then,
One day,
One day,
There were planes overhead and guns
firing close by.
There were planes overhead and guns firing in the distance.
I gathered my children and went home.
I gathered my children and ran.
And the guns moved farther and farther
away.
But the guns moved closer and closer.
And then, they announced that freedom had
been restored!
And then they came, young boys really.
They came into my home along with my man.
They came and found my man.
Those men whose money was almost gone --
They found all of the men whose lives were almost their own.
And we all had drinks to celebrate.
And they shot them all.
The most wonderful martinis.
They shot my man.
And then they asked us to dance.
And then they came for me.
Me.
For me, the woman.
And my sisters.
For my sisters.
And then they took us,
Men they took us,
They took us to dinner at a small,
private club.
They stripped from us the dignity we had gained.
And they treated us to beef.
And then they raped us.
It was one course after another.
One after another they came after us.
We nearly burst we were so full.
Lunging, plunging - sisters bleeding, sisters dying.
It was magnificent to be free again!
It was hardly a relief to have survived.
The beans have almost disappeared now.
The beans have disappeared.
The rice - I've replaced it with chicken
or steak.
The rice, I cannot find it.
And the parties continue night after
night to make up for all the time wasted.
And my silent tears are joined once more by the midnight cries
of my children.
And I feel like a woman again.
They say, I am a woman.
