Oak Forest HS Students Create Literary Calavera Poems

Oak Forest High School Spanish III students expressed their creativity in clever ways this year in a literary Calavera poem project. This project, usually completed as a Day of the Dead tradition in Mexico, was a fun way for students to practice their Spanish language skills and clever twists of phrase. Spanish teacher John Stevens said, “These Calavera poems are written in the style of obituaries to famous people who are in that year's public consciousness. They were asked to create skeletons that tied into the topics of their poems.” Calavera is the Spanish word for skull, which led to Mr. Stevens having the students create an entire skeleton based on the person for which they wrote the poem. Junior Flynn Hartigan completed her literary Calavera project about Bruno Mars. She said, “He’s been one of my favorite artists. When I was in a sad time of my life, I would listen to his music and it would make me feel better. I created the Bruno Mars Calavera as if Bruno Mars died of vanity. He was looking at himself in the mirror as if he was better than everyone else. I gave [my skeleton] sunglasses and the red hat and jumpsuit that I took inspiration from his album 24K Magic.” Hartigan said the project was fun because she was supposed to act as if a famous person had died so you would immortalize what people viewed him as. Sophomore Michael Marcheschi, designed his literary Calavera about Kim Jong-un. He said, “I think at the time we were talking about the threat of Korea and tensions were high between President Trump and Kim Jong-un.” He designed the literary Calavera with hair, he said, “because that’s how he appears always, and the uniform because he always wears it. I put the flag on his jacket because he thinks highly of himself.”