In September 2012, sixty-four 11th-grade students at High Tech High North County received commissions to be “Omni-temporal Poet Laureates” responsible for commemorating major events from America’s history, extending from the first contact between Native Americans and Europeans in 1492 to the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. In response, students researched the time periods for which they were responsible, chose an event to commemorate, studied poetic forms and rhetorical devices, and composed poems with “explanatory essays” to accompany them – on topics ranging from wars and natural disasters to movies, music, and cookies. This book is the result of their work.