This dissertation concerns itself with the experiences of a six-year long poetry class at a South Bronx community center's teen program. In it I will be interweaving our writings, my teaching beliefs, South Bronx history, teenage code—dress and speech as well as poetry-specific written/performed code, and my own particular historical narrative as poet/scholar in comparison to my students' in an attempt to decipher and represent access, or lack thereof, to poet/scholar identity. This is my attempt, actually, to analyze what it means and what it takes to define oneself as a poet for young Bronx minority public school students. This will serve to exemplify the role poetics (can) play in developing and expanding the critical consciousness proponents of composition and education believe formal schooling is responsible for and does when even a cursory look at racial and ethnic backgrounds of college graduates and high school dropouts obviously proves how rarely minority students survive formal education and how infrequently they take up a place in the halls of the academy's ivory tower.