A carnival of children

People in the daytime streets

Ring-a-levio warriors

Stickball heroes

Hide-and-seek knights and ladies

Waiting to sing their own sweet songs

Living out their own slam-dunk dreams

Listening

For the coming of the blues

I chose a stanza from “ Harlem: A Poem” by Walter Dean Myers to write my final response of the semester on.  Walter Dean Myers’ purpose of this poem was to describe life in Harlem.   I feel like the stanza ( seen above ) describes a street in Brooklyn, even though this poem is about Harlem, and thats why I chose it.  In this stanza Walter Dean Myers talks about the different stories of different people on a street.  He also talks about kids dream chasing.
I first made a connection with a Brooklyn street and this stanza when it talked about “ Stickball heroes”.  My dad always tells about how when he was a kid, him and his friends used to play stickball.  All the boys on the block would come out, and play from sun up to sun down.  I also made a connection with the first two lines of the stanza, and a Brooklyn street.  The first two lines talk about streets filled with children and adults during the day.  In my neighborhood, streets and avenues are busy with people during the day.  All of the culture you find in these two stanzas, you can find on a Brooklyn street.
This stanza also talks about dream chasers.  These dream chasers happen to be kids looking for a way to get famous.  In Brooklyn lots of kids have big dreams they hope to acomplish.  The first line I saw this theme in was when he said, “ Living out their slam dunk dreams”.  In this line he’s talking about all the little boys who want to make it to the NBA and get rich.  He’s also talking about the boys, turned teen, turned me who are fulfilling this dream.  
I chose this poem because it was about something I could relate to, city life.  From dreamers to legends, these are some of the people you experience if you when you come to Brooklyn.  Everything about this poem tells me Brooklyn culture.