That is what Ursula Nouza of Syosset realized when she used young people’s poems as models for her own poems. For this she used children’s poems that Susan Astor, Poet-in-the-Schools, read when she was awarded the 2008 Long Island Poet of the Year Award by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, October 2. In turn students can use Ms. Nouza’s poems as models.

 

Ms. Nouza is a member of the Nassau County Poet Laureate Committee which with the Poet Laureate, Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr., is conducting The Nassau County Poet Laureate School Poetry Contest. She is an adjunct professor of foreign languages at Nassau Community College, C.W. Post and Chaminade High School.  Previously, she taught Spanish at the Syosset Middle Schools and directed a K-5 after-school multi-languages program for 11 years. 

 

Students can create poems with clever comparisons like the metaphor of climbing a giraffe’s neck in The Giraffe to climbing up those practice rock climbing walls in the big, roomy sports stores. Students have the ability to end poems icleverly with fun lines like that for the giraffe: “how the clouds tickle my hair.”

 

 

The Giraffe

(Giraffe camelopardalis)

 

Spots from hoof to head

the giraffe is my rock climbing wall

I scale up, up to the top

arms and legs round her treetrunklike neck

I nestle my chin in the velvety valley

between her long lash eyes

and share the canopy of her world

how the clouds tickle my hair!

 

 

Students are capable of turning their research of an animal’s life history into an interesting and delightful little narrative like the crocodile’s rolling behavior and the speaker-of-the-poem climbing on “her bean bag belly” and for the Kicker, having both person and animal do the same action – “we both smile.” 

 

The Crocodile

(Crocodylidae)

 

The crocodile is my rolling log

she spins and spins while I run

I keep my balance

when I tire after a mile

she rolls over on her back

I rest on her bean bag belly

and recline along her long jawline

we both smile

 

            Students can produce interesting similes which come near being metaphors as happens in The Boa.

 

The Boa

(Boa constrictor)

 

Looped like an Hawaiian lei

around my shoulders

my patterned boa

gives me squeezy hugs

in a playful mood

she forms a circle

and hula hoops

around my body

 

Students can create their own fables from those traditional little stories. And students are able to end with a fun allusion like that to the turtle beating the rabbit in the famous turtle and hare fable.

**********

 

 

The Turtle

(Testudines)

 

I pretend I am a turtle

safe, protected, sheltered in my helmet

slowly I propel myself forward

all the hares pass me by

rushing toward the finish

their velocity meaningless

I know how the story ends

 

**********