Date: Fri 22-May-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: MICHEL

Quick Words:

Hawley-poetry-in-motion

Full Text:

Poetry In Motion At Hawley

(with cuts)

BY MICHELE HOGAN

David Zucker stepped up in front of the packed auditorium at Hawley school,

face expressionless, and recited in monotone voice "If you like to dream and

wonder..." Then he stopped.

Murray, the brightly colored puppet on his hand, was staring straight at him.

Murray, the puppet, said "put feeling into your poems."

Mr Zucker took a deep breath and recited the poem much louder this time, only

to be interrupted mid-sentence by his wayward hand.

Murray said "louder doesn't mean more feeling. Use gestures, kid."

Mr Zucker started once again "If you like to dream, to wish, to wonder..."

Predictably, Murray interrupted, "if you like to eat polar bears on the

tundra! It rhymes."

Now it was Mr Zucker's turn to tell Murray that poems do not need to rhyme to

be good. They need something more.

He asked the kids "How many people have had a best friend, who did not know

that they were your best friend?" A few hands went up.

"How many didn't put your hand up because you were embarrassed?" A few more

hands went up, and little giggles erupted through the audience.

"How many didn't understand the question?" A few more hands went up, and Mr

Zucker said "that takes the most courage of all."

He told the children that poetry takes courage, and it doesn't have to rhyme.

He said that "Whenever I need to express my feelings, like all tough guys I go

to poetry."

Mr Zucker showed the children, again and again, how he could express poetry

with his whole being using voice and mime.

The children loved it when he took on the persona of a little boy in James

Whitcomb Riley's poem, The Raggedy Man .

They cringed when he recited "The Goblins will get you if you don't watch

out!" from the poem Little Orphan Annie, also by James Whitcomb Riley.

They chortled when he spoke the nonsense poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carol, and

they spontaneously called out humorous rhyming words to fit in his own

imaginative poetry.

In other poems he took the part of an alley cat, an elderly English gentleman

and a baseball player, expressing the essence of each poem he recited.

Mr Zucker told the children that "Poetry is music and music is poetry.

Whenever I perform I feel like I'm on vacation. And, it's way cheaper than a

plane ticket!"

He also said that when you are traveling back in time, "the plane won't make

it, but poetry will."

He told the children "I memorize poems. That way, you become a part of the

poem and it is part of you."

This entertaining and educational program was brought to Hawley by the school

Cultural Arts Committee.