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An interesting feature of this pattern is the use of the word
like in the middle which adds the dimension of creating
phrases that act as similes for the first word of the poem.
After modeling an example and, if deemed necessary since
this pattern can be a bit difficult, writing an example
together on a topic other than the Holocaust, the students
begin working with this pattern using the images discussed
in class or new ones that surface as they write.
The following poem was written by a student
who chose to work with images of cold and
the innocence of Rose:
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Rose Blanche
Rose Blanche
Killed by the frost
Of the night
And by her innocence
Like
A small bird in a blizzard,
An earthworm in a hen house,
Or a blind hawk inside his nest
Searching
Desperately for a way out.
Later, when working on a free verse poem for
Rose Blanche, this same student continued
with the images of winter.
Rose Blanche
At first, her childlike seed did sprout
Then did it start to grow,
But as the bud began to swell
The ground was touched with snow.
The little Rose sat pale and thin,
Laid coward ‘neath the trees,
The white ice turned her petals brown
And froze her dainty leaves.
The blizzard howled a mournful cry,
The Rose made not a sound,
Until her life was all but lost,
Beneath the icy ground.
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Continuing with the subject of resistance, I shared a list of
various ways that the victims of the Holocaust resisted that I
copied from the museum at the Ghetto Fighters’ House in
Israel to help students understand that armed resistance
was not the only kind of resistance that occurred and that
there were many examples of spiritual resistance. We also
read the poems “They Had a System” by Yala Korwin and
“There Were Those” by Susan Bambroff.
The Cinquain Poem Pattern was used for
writing about spiritual resistance, and the
following student chose to write about the
secret practice of Judaism:
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Sabbath
Holy, peaceful
Observed in secret
To remember their past
Resistance
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Another image for evoking poetic images evolved from our
reading excerpts from On Both Sides of the Wall by Vladka
Meed while we were discussing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
In her memoirs, Meed asked why the rest of the world was
so silent, and we started talking about the word silence with
all of its various meanings in the Holocaust. I shared the
poem “1945, The Silence” by Burton D. Wasserman which is
a powerful and painful expression of silence. Students also
began to find other examples in other poems that expanded
their ideas. Soon we were ready to begin writing. The
poem pattern used for this lesson was Haiku which seemed
to work very well for the abstractness of silence. The
following examples demonstrate the variety of directions in
which the students’ thoughts took them:
Children sit sadly
Silent in their mother’s arms
Awaiting the night
Jews who want to pray
But who have to sit silent
Long for the Torah
Silent survivor
Rocking every day and night
Not saying a word