ARE YOU PART OF A LOST GENERATION, TOO?

ARE YOU PART OF A LOST GENERATION, TOO?

April is known as poetry month in the US and a lot of events are held in schools to celebrate this art. One of the favorite poems taught to American children is “Lost Generation”, by Jonathan Reed. Our students also read it and discovered a particular writing structure. Indeed, this poem is a “reverse poem”, which means, if you read from the top line to the bottom line, you might get quite hopeless given the desperate pessimistic tone of the author. But when you read from the bottom line to the top line, it reveals an opposite and optimistic meaning, actually proving faith in humankind.

Here is the original poem, read by our students in the regular way.

Audio Collective Lost Generation 1 :

Here is the same poem, read in the reverse way

Audio Collective Lost Generation Reverse :

Here is the complete poem:

video Lost Generation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRG4ySdi_aE

The structure of this poem is often used as a writing exercise. Here is for example, a poem about cancer (the author is anonymous). It uses the same structure: some sentences from Jonathan Reed’s poem appear.

Capucine, Cancer Poem :

Our students also created their own reverse poem and developed different themes. Let’s discover what they have to say! For each poem, remember to reverse the reading!