Conversation through Poetry

Jirayna Singleton
English 367
Professor Lohre


The group of Chinese students that Nadira and I had for the discussion was wonderful. The group discussion went smoothly, and I learned a lot from the students. I was amazed to see how each of them knew the Chinese poems by heart and could recite it without making a mistake. The person that I got to know best was Jerry because he was the one that explained what the poems actually meant, and he was very patient with me and Nadira when we were trying to read the poem out loud in Chinese. The only difficult part about reading the Chinese poems was when we had to say them in Chinese because it was hard to pronounce some of the words. The real challenge came when we had to read the American poems, because reading them was easy, explaining them was another situation in itself. The poem that we read was The Blessing, and when the students asked me to explain certain lines, Nadira and I had a hard time explaining and breaking it down because we weren’t exactly sure as to what the poem was about. Despite that everything went well and we had a wonderful time, and I believe that the students had an excellent time.
I learned a lot from these students. I learned that we (Americans) are ignorant about people from China, and that we need to learn more before we pass judgment. I found these students to be excellent examples of China, as they were polite, intelligent, and just absolutely amazing. I wish that I had more time to speak to them because there is so much that I could learn about them and their culture.