Edison Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Linda...

Edison Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Linda Gosney wanted

her students to “dab” into the poetry of Harlem Renaissance writer

Langston Hughes and the Long Island-born poet Walt Whitman. Gosney

and more than 20 of her Gifted and Talented Education students have

been working on a literature project called “Poetry of the City.”

Students have read poems like “I Do Not Like My Father Much” and

“Jazz Makes Me Sing” by Hughes and “O Captain! My Captain!” by

Whitman. Students have been meeting once a week to read poems and

make paintings and posters of cityscapes. Gosney and her students

walked down Brand Boulevard on Monday to look for inspiration in

writing their own “poetry of the city.” “Poetry can turn things

around,” Gosney said. “I told them, ‘Even if you don’t like it now,

you will run into these names again.’”