Complicated but simple,
Black and white.
Not guilty, I have nothing;
A man’s life at stake.
Guilt never in my heart;
The victim of cruel Tom Robinson,
A strong young Negro man,
Beaten savagely.
Broken, hounded;
Unfit to live with,
The victim, hiding, put away;
Removed from this world.
Respectable, white.
The circumstances warrant no doubt,
Tom Robinson possesses temerity.
A Negro unmitigated against a white woman.
Destroy a human being,
Put away a Negro.
White, our society is unspeakable.
A black man came crashing down.
I need not remind you:
All Negroes lie,
All Negroes are immoral,
All Negro men are not to be trusted.
Black and white.
Not guilty, I have nothing;
A man’s life at stake.
Guilt never in my heart;
The victim of cruel Tom Robinson,
A strong young Negro man,
Beaten savagely.
Broken, hounded;
Unfit to live with,
The victim, hiding, put away;
Removed from this world.
Respectable, white.
The circumstances warrant no doubt,
Tom Robinson possesses temerity.
A Negro unmitigated against a white woman.
Destroy a human being,
Put away a Negro.
White, our society is unspeakable.
A black man came crashing down.
I need not remind you:
All Negroes lie,
All Negroes are immoral,
All Negro men are not to be trusted.
For this genre, I took a page from the trial scene in To Kill a Mockingbird and composed a poem by singling out specific words on the page that seemed significant to the overall theme of the novel. Using these words, I arranged a poem to portray the two opposing voices of Tom Robinson and Mayella Ewell. This method of creating "blackout poetry" can be a useful exercise because it allows students to see poetic capacity within the texts they explore both in and out of the classroom. This also exposes students to poetry in a creative way, helping to inspire students who may not be confident enough in their writing but have the creativity and desire to produce something meaningful and original.