Getting Lively with Dead Poets
Poetry (Photo credit: Kimli)
Tuesday marked the start of our AP Poetry Unit. I am so excited we are finally onto poetry!! Poetry is the curry of prose. It’s the sprinkles found in exposition. It’s the center of the Tootsie Pop because it’s that delightful surprise unexpectedly found in the middle of the everyday.
Poetry is not just rhyme. It’s not just meter. It’s not slavering on about metaphor and simile. It’s bounce, giggles, shock, and awe. Poetry is the dance of words. Poetry is that note of praise found nestled in the staunch flow of sentences, paragraphs, and text.
It’s sing.
It’s song.
It’s the azure found in the sky.
It’s the You before I.
It’s older than the page before you.
It’s Homer before he became a Simpson.
And the Dead Poets are the best because their words formed the path for the rest.
Oh, hello Emily, Robert, William, Byron, Coleridge, Sylvia, Langston, Gwendolyn–I’d like you to meet my students. I’ve been telling them about you. I can’t wait for them to know you like I’ve gotten to know you. And I can’t wait to learn more about you as I learn from my students.
Poetry. Word colors of our world.
when I said “I ate all your tootsie pops” (Photo credit: hmmlargeart)
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- The Poetry of Life: How poetry makes things happen – or not (peaceandbread.com)
- The Poetry of Prose (speculativefictionwriting.wordpress.com)
Pam Webb 
I just started my poetry unit too! I am sure my 4th grade unit is slightly different than your AP class. I asked a student to describe purple to me today, and he said “night” because even though it is dark, it is never totally black. Love poetry.
So happy you are making poetry fun for them! Then when they get to high school they won’t roll their eyes and groan 🙂
Poetry also has a lot of that nifty rhyming!
Unless it doesn’t, of course.
It’s the sing in the song 🙂