"One Book, One Philadelphia"

"One Book, One Philadelphia" Persona Poem Place yourself in the shoes of a person who lived in a different time period and write a poem about it. You can go back in time one generation or many if you wish. Picture the person you are writing about based on what you already know about him or her. You can also do research to find out more information on that particular person. What type of clothing does this person wear? What does he or she look like? How does he or she feel? Does this person eat mushy cereal or high class steaks? Write your poem from the point of view of the person you've become. Try writing your poem in the first person -- use "I." Think of this piece as an experiment and be as creative as possible. Here are some examples. You may use them or come up with your own. Anne Frank http://www.annefrank.com An American missionary living in Nepal Osiris letting soldiers in to the Afterlife http://www.belinus.co.uk/mythology/Osiris.htm Hatshepsut walking in her garden http://www.bediz.com/hatshep/index.html Khufu ordering workers to build a pyramid http://www.guardians.net/egypt/khufu.htm Ra http://www.fruitofthenile.com/ra.htm Anubis http://members.aol.com/egyptart/anubis.html King Tut http://www.sis.gov.eg/tut/html/tut04.htm A grandmother living in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge http://www.holocaustechoes.com/5savin.html An eighteen year-old student protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/05/04/kent.state.02/ A seventy-year-old passenger on a highjacked airplane en route to Cuba http://www.staugustine/gallery/hijacked_plane_from_cuba/1.shtml/ A passenger on one of the 9/11 planes http://www.worldnetdaily.com/article.asp?ARTICLE_IS=26676 A Zapatista guerilla soldier in the Sierra Madre Mountains in the South of Mexico http://flag.bla ckened.net/revolt/zapatista.html Rosa Parks http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1 Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/whm/bio/king_c_s.htm Janis Joplin http://www.officialjanis.com Jimi Hendrix http:/ /www.musicfanclubs.org/jimihendrix/home.htm A Zapotec Indian being converted to Christianity by Spanish Conquistadores http://www.mu.edu/library/collections/archives/indians.html A seventeen year old boy about to leave home to fight in the streets of Paris during the French Revolution http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/french/french.html A fifteen year old girl looking up at the sky the day the bomb falls in the city of Hiroshima http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/English/S tage1/S1-1E.html A middle school student whose grandparents died in the Holocaust visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem www.yad-vashem.org.il A 60-year-old father visiting his son's memorial at the VietNam War Memorial in Washington DC http://thewall-usa.com/ A 45-year-old woman visiting her mother in East Berlin for the first time after decades when the Berlin War was taken down http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/ A 10-year-old boy whose journalist-father is killed by Stalin during the "Night of the Murdered Poets" http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/081202MurderedPoets.shtml The Iraqi lawyer who rescued Jessica Lynch http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/04/sprj.irq.pow.informer/index.html A buddhist monk arrested in Tibet http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1995/2/28-3_1.html A twelve-year-old boy or girl who works with their family as a rug weaver during the war in Afghanistan who thinks a package being dropped from an airplane is food but it's really a bomb. http://www.soawne.org/CollateralDamage.html