Context for response:

Students were given five-minutes to write an open response to the poem and why they thought it began the play. Mr. Poetry-Pro read the poem aloud to students twice before the response and projected the text on the overhead screen while students wrote.

Student Response 1:

Don't know what deferred means. Never heard it but it seems like the Harlem guys talkin bout how dreams are different for everybody. Sometimes dreams come, but usually not, dreams usually die. Most of my dreams and my family's dreams don't come true. So maybe he's speaking for people in America whose dreams don't come true. He's black, so maybe he's speaking for us.

Student Response 2:

This poem is really beautiful, I think. The images are really powerful. He seems to be trying to show, not tell, how dreams can do things to people that aren't always good. In our culture, it's preached to us that we must always have dreams and work hard to achieve them. However, I believe this poem is trying to show that such a belief can lead to unfortunate circumstances when the dream is not achieved. For example, if a dream "festers like a sore," the feeling I get is that it bothers you and is disgusting to you. He even says that a dream can "stink like rotten meat," which again, is not a pleasant image. Or it can be a "heavy load" on a person and even "explode," which makes me think of destruction. You know, the more I think about this poem and the fact that it begins a play, I feel like it's foreshadowing bad events to come. I'm excited to read the play.

Student 3 response:

I don't get poems, I usually can't read em. This one is about dreams and all this nasty stuff. There's sores and rotten meat in it. Funny to think about dreams and bad stuff all at the same time. These must be really bad dreams. Not sure why it starts a play and poems aren't usually in plays I don't think. Guess youll teach us what this is about.