The Poetry of Hope

The Guest by Sara Holbrook

Visiting family in Virginia and the lead story on the D.C. noon news is that 8 people die per day in OH from opioid overdoses, more than 3000 this year. Watched my home state fall in line with other troubled places in the world, Italy, Syria, Nigeria, and . . . Ohio. Just finished reading Hillbilly Elegy (highly recommended), set in Middletown, OH. Having spent so many wonderful heart-filled days with students in OH schools over the years, I know and love these Ohio kids. Love them. I know they need what all kids need — a steady message of hope. We need to write about it. Talk about it. Remind kids that hope can be invited into any situation.

Here are a couple of slides from By Definition, Poems of Feelings to help start the discussion. It is from my book, By Definition (originally published by Boyds Mills), now out-of-print in hard copy. So I converted the whole thing to power point slides for little classroom discussion starters, two slides for each poem. One for the poem and one with a place to start a discussion. Middle grade.

Discussion starter for The Guest

By Definition: Table of Contents