Your AP Lit students know about U.S. imperialism. They've never read the poet who said it directly to Roosevelt's face — in verse, in 1904, without asking permission. "A Roosevelt" is not a protest poem. It's a rhetorical trap: Darío opens by conceding — calling Roosevelt cultured, powerful, capable — and then uses every one of those concessions to dismantle him. The move from admiration to condemnation is the entire lesson in AP rhetoric. This scaffolded resource divides the poem into two parts