Partly Cloudy: Poems of Love and Longing

Gary Soto

Gary Soto brilliantly captures the voices of adolescents in verse experiencing many firsts: first love, first kiss, first loss, etc. This collection is broken into two parts with the first from the point of view of girls and the second from boys. Each poem is a single page, which makes it easy to spread practicing poetry analysis skills throughout an entire semester or year rather than cramming it into one unit. This collection offers a modern perspective on poetry that students can relate to rather than poetry of “dead white guys” (aka Shakespeare, Milton, etc.).