Poets and Writing Methods: An Intro into the world of poets and composition (Memo 2)

I actually enjoy the humor that Billy Collins has with his poetry. However, this has to be one of my favorite poems I have heard from him that I was able to find on YouTube. He claims that the idea was sparked after reading a love poem in a magazine and made a "parody", so to speak, of it. The poem uses conventional rules of writing a western love poem while, at the same time, breaking the rules. His comparisons go into detail and mentions things she is not as well, "there is NO way you are the pine scented air...". At some points he also makes some literal comparisons instead of metaphorical.
 I actually think that this would make for an AMAZING assignment for students to find a poem and create their own version.

Whew... the controversy in her words. Nikki Giovanni is a very inspirational poet, especially here. I love finding eye opening poets like this who have strong voices. My favorite line is "it is not right" since I think it would be a good title for another poem. As said with Billy Collins, a great writing assignment to dive students into the world of poetry would be to introduce them to fantastic poets like these and use parts of their poems of themes and create their own.

To see how this would work, I took a stab at it myself. Though I have written poetry before, this was something new to me. Most ideas I generate from music and emotions, not necessarily the words of others. 

It is Not Right

It is not right to shame

To Call forth HATRED

Its monstrous steed...

Lit the fields burning

Like HELL on Earth

All man's work

It is not right...

While writing this, I was attempting to keep some of Giovanni's lines in mind. She talks about a corrupted government, the KKK, and many other intense topics. I wanted to take those emotions, a similar approach when I compose most of my poetry, and expand into unfamiliar territory, composing a poem based on words of others. I could explain to students, after showing them my poem, how I tried to work within my comfort zone while also trying to learn new techniques. I remained in my Zone of Proximal Development, something I could achieve without much help. If this was very unfamiliar to them, we could compose poems like this with me assisting them, ie: provide more poets they can relate to or give more examples until this becomes familiar and comfortable before exploring a new form. I think a project like this would work for Free verse, a type of poetry that does not need a specific form or rhyme.

EDIT:
So, I was going through a lesson plan I used in my SED 406 class and discovered that I used a Nikki Giovanni poem for the assignment. This is one of her lighter poems and a great example of how versatile she can be with her work.
 The assignment I created, when using this poem, introduced students to sonnet and free verse poetry. It was a compare and contrast assignment.

Free verse:

Winter Poem
Nikki Giovanni

once a snowflake fell

on my brow and I loved

it so much and I kissed

it and it was happy and called its cousins

⁵and brothers and a web

of snow engulfed me then

I reached to love them all

and I squeezed them and they became

a spring rain and I stood perfectly

¹⁰still and was a flower