Copy and paste Willie Perdomo's poem "Funeral" into Microsoft Word.
You will then play with the line breaks, the stanzas, and the punctuation to create different versions of the same poem.
Version #1
Break the poem up into five stanzas.
You choose how long or short you want the lines to be.
Version #2
Break the poem up into one long stanza with short short lines (two or three words per line).
Remove all punctuation and capitalization
Version #3
Break the poem up into as many stanzas as you want using any combination of short and long lines.
Feel free to maintain punctuation or remove it.
Do not feel confined to the left margin, but do not center the poem.
Questions:
Which version (other than the original) best captures the spirit of the poem? Be prepared to defend your answer. Think about how the story unfolds and how the line breaks can work to make the reader stop on certain points or move quickly through a section.
It was the first time I saw Edwin wearing a suit. It was the first time I saw Chino cry. Set up by his right hand man, they found Ed in his Cherokee on a Washington, D.C. street, smoke coming out of every hole in his body. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I realized I went to more funerals than parties this summer. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw Edwin Jr. running around the lobby, asking us why we were looking at his father sleep. I think about El Barrio summers: Ed’s a cop and I’m a robber. Money was something you asked an old time hustler for so you could go to the movies on Sunday. It wasn’t suppose to kill you. We ran through the streets like there were no red lights. I asked God to look out for all of us—dead and alive. I walked home alone, refusing to get high, and I thought how if you looked close enough, you could see a hole on Ed’s forehead. I walked home alone, refusing to get high, thinking how my death will just be another reason why my boys will pour beer on the street before they drink.
It was the first time I saw Edwin
ReplyDeletewearing a suit.
It was the first time I saw Chino cry.
Set up by his right hand man, they found Ed in his Cherokee on a Washington, D.C. street, smoke coming out of every hole in his body.
I didn’t know
whether to laugh
or cry
when I realized I went to more funerals than parties this summer.
I didn’t know
whether to laugh
or cry
when I saw Edwin Jr. running around the lobby, asking us why we were looking at his father sleep.
I think about El Barrio summers: Ed’s a cop and I’m a robber.
Money was something you asked an old time hustler for so you could go to the movies on Sunday.
It wasn’t suppose to kill you.
We ran through the streets like there were no red lights. I asked God to look out for all of us—dead and alive.
I walked home alone, refusing to get high,
and I thought how if you looked close enough, you could see a hole on Ed’s forehead.
I walked home alone, refusing to get high, thinking how my death will just be another reason why my boys will pour beer on the street before they drink.