Teaching Jack of all Frost by Reya Senthil Kumar

Winter and summer, teenage love and longing, the sweetness of youth and the bitter reality of the world. Hey! You'd think this went with our Bittersweet theme for Issue 3. Actually published in our Volume XIV Issue 1: Folklore and Fairy Tales theme, Jack of all Frost by Reya Senthil Kumar is a prose poem built on allusions, evocative imagery, and flights of imagination. Read on for analysis, pair texts, lesson plans and writing prompts.

Jump to Section:

1. Analysis of Story
2. Paired Texts and Further Reading
3. Lesson Plan
4. Writing Prompts

So many poems about being a teenager, about being young and bored and in love are written by adults as exercises in nostalgia. There's also lots of saccharine teenage poetry out there too; sappy, overly dramatic tripe best left in diaries or on the cutting room floor of high school lit mag editorial staff meetings. In the lesson shared below, one that I've successfully used many times in the past, I invite students to turn a critical eye on the writing of their peers and have some fun writing satire before they return to attempting poetry written in earnest. But first, let me tell you why Jack of all Frost is the exception to the rule and rose to the top of the staff's slush pile.