The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al A Teacher's Guide

By W.R. Rodriguez

This guide is designed to help teachers use The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al as a classroom text. W. R. Rodriguez, who is a poet and teacher, offers an author's introduction, a vocabulary list, and several pre-reading and post-reading questions and activities for each poem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.R. Rodriguez
• Release date: Nov 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310265044

W.R. Rodriguez

W.R. Rodriguez grew up in the Bronx where he worked as a bootblack in the family shoe shine parlor. He moved to Madison where he earned an M.A. in English and taught high school for over thirty years. The urban environment has been a major source of his writing: “Although I left The Bronx decades ago, it has not left me. To give ironic tribute to the Romantics, I regard the streets and tenements as worthy subjects of art. I enjoy creating poetry from my memories of people, places, and events, as well as from research and imagination. Also, I want my poems to work on the page and to have a strong voice if read aloud.”His poetry has appeared in magazines such as Abraxas and Epoch, and in anthologies such as The Party Train, Welcome to Your Life, and Editor’s Choice III. Articles about his family’s experience in The Bronx were published in The Bronx County Historical Society Journal.W.R. Rodriguez is the author of several books of poetry. His latest, from the banks of brook avenue, is an evolution of the work he began in the shoe shine parlor poems et al and developed in concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx.

Book preview

The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al

A Teacher’s Guide

W. R. Rodriguez

Copyright © 1986

Smashwords Edition prepared 2014

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2014 Edition

Preface to the 1986 Edition

Overview of the shoe shine parlor poems et al

Introduction to the Teacher’s Guide

A Note On Creative Writing

making it

the cop

the shoe shine poem

al’s pictures of old times

grandfather

coffee

blinky

the banana man

little spic & big man

the bust

jim

the long walk to bed

private rivers

the moon does not linger

Something Fishy

the miracle

the old woman

late one hot august

the day i threw thoreau off the roof

they disappear

of bootblacks

what i remember most about hughes avenue

the accordion player

butch

weeds

the bronx at the end of the mind

Follow Up Questions and Activities

Preface to the 2014 Edition

Technology in the classroom and electronic publishing now make it possible for books of poetry by an individual author to be available at little cost for classroom use. The 2014 edition of the Teacher’s Guide has been prepared to supplement the appearance of the shoe shine parlor poems et al as an e-publication.

Preface to the 1986 Edition

If students read poetry at all, it is usually the poetry found in anthologies or textbooks. While both of these are valuable teaching resources, they are subject to several limitations: first, the editors and publishers are not always knowledgeable of the little magazines and small presses, which publish more contemporary poetry than do the commercial presses whose name poets are so often the ones anthologized while new and exciting voices go unnoticed; second, the selection process for composing a textbook