Lesson Topic 1: How to Read and Write a Poem

How Can I Get the Most Out of a Poem?

It is important to make connections with the poems that you read.

To get the most out of poetry, we must make an effort to relate what we have read to what we already know, our personal experiences, and to our thoughts and feelings.

What Should I Write About?

An illustration of a girl sitting on a large pencil, like a log, pondering what to write her poem about. Above her head is a cartoon thought bubble with a question mark. The girl has light skin and medium hair. She is wearing a red long-sleeved dress with a blue sash and blue trim on the skirt. Sometimes, when we write poetry, we may get bogged down in a mistaken belief that poems should define big emotions or ideas, like love, despair, liberty, or courage. Concepts like these may take a lifetime to understand. When we try to force words into verse about such ideas, the poems we write may not evoke the real sensations, feelings, and connections that we are after. However, when we focus our big feelings and ideas on small moments from our experiences in real life, we generally find that we can write real poems for ourselves and the people we want to read them to. Noticing the small moments is the tricky part of the process; being alert is the key. People, things, times, and places we know have the potential to become poems that communicate the ideas we want to share with others.

To be alert to ideas, we need to start thinking about what really matters to us; we need to think about specific objects, places, and moments where our poems might be hiding. In many ways, it is like a treasure hunt. We have, through our experiences, plucked so many jewels that we often do not know where to start. If we are patient, though, and reflect upon the life we have experienced so far, we begin to see that the big topics of one's life--family, love, triumphs, failures, lessons learned, food, favorite pastimes, arrivals, departures, and embarrassing moments can be explored and revealed as wonderfully descriptive poems about small moments.

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