Have your students use rhythms to create poetry. Playing with parallel structure can create surprises in the cadence of a poem. For example, listen to the sound of grammatical repetitions in this poem by middle school student Gary Anderson:

If I Were A Cow in Bombay

If I were a cow in Bombay,
I'd laze. I'd loll. I'd loiter all day,
wandering the streets wagging my tail,
listening to all people tell me, "Hail, hail."

You know in India they worship a cow.
Whenever they see one, they take a bow,
Not to worry, not to care, not a fly in my hair.
No butchers, no hamburgers, no steaks anywhere.

Ah, if I were a cow born in Bombay,
I'd invite all my friends to come share my hay.
munching and crunching and swallowing seven times.
(Regurgitating is a very hard word to rhyme.)
We'd love our life in the streets of Bombay,
and feel sorry for the poor cows in the ole U.S.A.

          All techniques discussed in this chapter can be applied to writing poetry and song lyrics as well as fiction and nonfiction. With works that have a strong rhythm, audiotapes and oral readings can dramatize these qualities. To introduce grammatical rhythms, try reading or playing recordings of poems that beat rhythms of parallel structures. You might try Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," Poe's "The Raven," and Prelutsky's "Werewolf" for starters.