Poetry is Alive

I often ask my students at the beginning of this unit, "What is Poetry?". I get several different answers, but usually along the lines of "It has to rhyme", "Words that are boring", "Stories about butterflies". Yes, poetry CAN be these things, but poetry can be so much more. As the students created their Poetry Anthologies, they learned a little more about themselves, each other, and caught glimpses of nature and the world around them.

I decided to take a look and see what others considered poetry-- and in the words of so many famous ones---

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

~Kahlil Gibran

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes. ~Carl Sandburg

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~Plato, Ion

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ~Robert Frost

Poetry is not always words. ~Audrey Foris

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~Thomas Gray

Breathe-in experience,breathe-out poetry.~Muriel Rukeyser

My fifth graders had plenty of thoughts to breathe and words that burned and we took those thoughts and words outside to display the experiences and creativity that came alive through their poetry! Walt Whitman said, "To have great poets there must be great audiences too". April IS National Poetry Month, so why not let our young poets share their works of art with the entire CCES community?

Spring has sprung and Poetry is certainly alive on our Middle School campus!