Listen to Etheridge Knight read his poem “The Idea of Ancestry.” Write a poem about your relationship to your own family. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbUOIByUfmg
Read the poem at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15410
Read “A Poem for Malcolm, a Year Later.” Write poem addressed to a civil rights leader who sacrificed or died for what h/she believed in. If you choose to use rhyme, pay close attention to how Knight uses it for effect in this poem. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181867
Read “The Warden Said to Me the Other Day.” Write a poem that asks and answers a question.
http://kitkat211.blogspot.com/2008/03/warden-said-to-me-by-etheridge-knight.html
Read “Cell Song.” Write a poem about a place in which you feel trapped and lost.
http://www.ctadams.com/etheridgeknight4.html
Read, “He Sees through Stone.” Write a poem about someone who’s nothing like you, but to whom you feel some kind of connection. www.nathanielturner.com/etheridgeknightpoems
Read “A Poem for Myself.” Write the story of your life in a poem.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/etheridge_knight/poems/17877
Read “On the Yard.” Write a poem about a time someone challenged you with a question and how you answered it. http://www.dreamwv.com/muse/muses/man.html
Read “No Moon Floods the Memory of that Night.” Write a poem that tells the story of a difficult moment in your life. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=180241
Read “Haiku.” Write a series of haiku expressing the complexity of a grim place.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177057
Watch this site for additional suggestions.
Poems From Prison (1968)
Black Voices From Prison (1970)
Belly Songs and Other Poems (1973)
Born of a Woman (1980)
Essential Etheridge Knight (1986)
http://www.worldcat.org/wcidentities/lccn-n80-10004
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81870
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/knight/knight.htm
http://www.aalbc.com/authors/etheridg.htm
http:/www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/poetry/knight.htm
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/GLD/.
http://www.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/quashie/chapter45/.
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=159.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 41: Afro-American Poets Since 1955, Gale, 1985, pp. 202-211.
Discovering Authors, Gale, 1999.
The Essential Etheridge Knight, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986.
New Bones: Contemporary Black Writers in America, Prentice Hall, 1995, Chapter 45.
Poems from Prison, Broadside Press, 1968, preface and p. 11.
Black American Literature Forum, Summer 1981, pp. 77-79.
Etheridge Knight, The Academy of American Poets, 1997.
Etheridge Knight, The Academy of American Poets, Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998.
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