On Thunderstorms & Reading By Lightening Flash
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 at 3:00AM | by Otter 
Poetry is hard to read for those who have never done it. So we did it the easy way: I had them underline the nouns and circle the verbs. As we made our way through the poem, they connected concepts like “voice” and “thunders” and “shakes.” They made the connection themselves. We commented on how different the quality of daylight had been in New Orleans after the storm, partly because the whirling voice of the storm had stripped the trees bare of their leaves.
Lisa, perhaps encouraged by the smallness of the group and the recentness of the flood that the storm had unleashed on New Orleans, broke out, “I have read this psalm my whole life. I never knew it was about a storm or about a flood.” She was angry. “That would have been too simple,” she said. She was angry.
