What Is Poetry?

Anchoring this post in time and space:
"Safe at Home" response to Covid19 pandemic continues, and that means libraries are still closed. The hold list for my library account is nearly maxed out, I've been direct ordering some titles from local (and distant) independent bookstores, and I've re-sorted my own personal (quite large) collection of picture books. Future posts will feature some of the gems that surfaced in that latter process. For now, I find myself frustrated at not having stacks and stacks of picture books at my fingertips in my work space. 
I appreciate libraries now more than ever.
Since April is poetry month, I decided to take a different tack with this post. I'm hoping that, after reading here, some of you will participate in comments. 

What this quotation calls to mind, for me, is the complexity of reactions people have to the word/concept POETRY. Some imagine poetry as sing-songy nursery rhymes, while others flinch at schoolage memories of tasks that demanded analysis and rote memorization of poems that felt disconnected from personal experience. 

Such is not the stuff of poetry, to me.

Here's a list of qualities of poetry that some former eight-to-nine-year old third graders developed with me years ago, representing only a PARTIAL list for identifying and defining poetry: 

Poetry is literature with special feelings, word choices, forms, and patterns.

Poetry:

·      Needs to use words

·      Does not have to be written on paper

·      Should go through the writing process to polish it to a shine

·      Does not have to be in a book

·      May have things in it to figure out

·      Can rhyme, but doesn’t have to rhyme

·      Can be long or short

·      Can describe things or people

·      Can be about nature

·      Can be about anything

·      Can be funny, sad, or mad (the more emotions it makes you feel, the better)

·      Usually has a title (the title may be a line of the poem, or might be repeated in the patterns, but it doesn’t have to be)

·      Can have pictures (that might or might not help understand the meaning of the poem)

·      Needs an author (but some authors are anonymous)

·      Can be true or not

·      Can be real or not

·      Can have word patterns that make the ideas stronger

·      Can be silly, with mixed up ideas

·      Can use names, made-up words, or other word play

·      Can be a tongue-twister, or use special writing styles or forms

·      Needs a careful reader who rereads several times to “get it all", to find all that the author is saying

Millbrook Press, 2019. Editor Miranda Paul

What would you add to this list of traits? 

Are there picture books that spring to mind as you read these ideas about poetry? 

     During poetry month and beyond, give some thought to buying, reading, and being inspired to write poetry. An outstanding place to start is the poetry anthology, THANKU, an uplifting compilation of works by talented writers, edited by Miranda Paul. Among those poems you'll find many of the qualities my former students recognized, and more. You'll encounter works by Joseph Bruchac, Margarita Engle, Liz Garton Scanlon, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Naomi Shihab Nye, Charles Waters, and Jane Yolen, and more. (Click each name to check their websites for books you may already have at home!)

      

    There is no better time than now to turn to poetry. What do you recommend? How do you use poetry? What would you add to that descriptive list? Care to share some of your own work?

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