As a teaching artist in public schools, the author is paired with classroom teachers to teach poetry and to give students an opportunity to experience their academic curriculum through the arts. At the beginning of the school year, she gave her students the on-going, yearlong assignment to watch the news, to pay attention. Knowing many of them were working with their classroom teachers on sharpening their skills for writing compare-and-contrast essays, the author asked them to apply what they were learning to their poetry class. She posed the question: How do race and class affect the aftermath and recovery from a natural disaster? In this article, students compare three natural disasters--Hurricane Katrina, the San Diego wildfires, and the recent earthquake in Haiti--and turn their grief and anger into poetry.