Although Shirley Kaufman was born in Seattle (to Polish-Jews), she has lived in Jerusalem since the early 70s. Kaufmans's poetry collections, Ezekiel's Wheels and Threshold, contain poems that could be used in during any poetry unit, but it would be more powerful to thread some of these poems throughout units on war, terrorism, or the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Particularly relevant poems include "Cyclamen," which juxtaposes the cyclamen flowers with war planes and gas masks; "Anapolis," about the peace summits between Israel and Palestine (both found in Ezekiel's Wheels); "No Rain Yet," in which a bush full of twittering birds becomes a metaphor for an emergency cabinet meeting of politicians; "Rachel's Children are Playing," a commentary on the "innocent" war games of children; and "Jump," about living straddled across the two cultures of America and Israel (from Threshold).
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