What is Poetry?

: "What a wonderful book, I'm so glad I started reading it!" : "Wait (...) what's that noise?" : "Zayd? What are you doing? (...) And why do you sound like that?" : "Cookies to SHARE (...) a breeze in the AIR (...) a picnic with a little bear!" : "Poet power? What IS that?" Zayd has had some poet power to drink and is now talking like a poet to write poetry! There's just one thing that Ari is wondering about... "what is poetry?" Have you ever heard someone say 'you’re a poet and you didn’t even know it!'" What is a poet? A poet is someone who writes poetry. Poetry is a type of writing, usually used to try to create a feeling or picture... and it can be fiction OR nonfiction. It often uses rhymes, which is when the ending sounds of two or more words are the same such as pot and hot or small and ball. Poems can have a sense of rhythm, or seem to follow a beat. Kind of like in a song! They can have patterns… and sometimes repeat. Let's take a look at some of the poems that Zayd is creating with his special poet potion! : "Small and WHITE (...) fluffy and BRIGHT (...) I love clouds with all my MIGHT!" What do you notice about Zayd's cloud poem? Zayd's poem is all about what clouds look like, and the words rhyme! Which words rhyme in Zayd's cloud poem? The words white, bright, and might all have the same ending sound and rhyme. Did you know that sometimes poets don't use rhyming in their poems? Instead they might use specific words to try to make their reader feel something. We call these types of words, feeling words. I wonder what kind of poem Zayd has come up with now! : "hot sun, cool waves, my best friends with me at the beach!" What do you notice about Zayd's beach poem? This poem does NOT have rhyming words in it! You might have also noticed certain words that made you feel something. For example, maybe when you hear the word 'friend' it made you feel happy, or excited. I wonder if Zayd has made any type of beat poems... remember that beat poems follow a certain rhythm like in songs! : "With wings to soar, I ask for no more, a bird in the sky, is my biggest wish!" What do you notice about Zayd's bird poem? You might have noticed that some of the words rhyme, like soar and more. OR maybe you noticed some special words that make you feel something, like wish. Sometimes those special words also make you picture something, like the word sky! Before we see what Ari thinks about poetry, let's review. Today we learned all about poetry! Poetry is a type of writing, often used to try to create a feeling or picture. We learned about rhymes, feeling words, and beats in poetry... and that sometimes they can have patterns or repeat! Now let's see what Ari thinks! Wait a second, Ari? It looks like Ari has found themself a bottle of poet power too! : "I am ME and I am FREE and that is all I want to BE!"