Celebrating the Art of Poetic Expression

April is National Poetry Month. It was established by the Academy of American Poets as a month-long, national celebration of poetry. April of 1996 was the first of these annual celebrations of the creative literary mind. The concept was to increase the attention paid by individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our poetic heritage, and to poetry books and magazines.

April was chosen for National Poetry Month by the Academy with the input from booksellers, librarians, poets, and teachers. The Academy chose a month during the school year in which schools and students could participate fully because other months had already been chosen for significant themes such as February (Black History Month) and March (Women's History Month).

Here are the words of four famous poets reflecting on the motivation for, and the art of, composing poetry:

• "All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."—William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, preface (1801).
  
  
• "Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art."—Thomas Hardy, The Later Years of Thomas Hardy (1930).
  
  
• "I have never started a poem whose end I knew. Writing the poem is discovering."—Robert Frost, The New York Times (7 Nov. 1955)
  
  
• "Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.—Paul Engle, The New York Times (17 Feb. 1957)

ProQuest BookCarts are an excellent tool to guide your students to learn more about poets, poetry, and motivate them to write it as well.

ProQuest has created these models that you may want to copy and use with your students in the study of poetry:

• Homer's Epic Poetry (HS)
• Investigating Poetic Forms: Sonnets (HS)
• Power of Poetry (HS)
• Song Lyrics as Poetry (HS)
• Writing Poetry for Fun and Expression (MS)

Each of these BookCarts is a complete one-stop learning activity for your students. This saves time for more teaching and learning that is often consumed in non-productive searching and evaluating relevancy.

Each Cart has examples of essential questions that help students to develop critical thinking skills that are so necessary with the glut of dubious information posted on the Internet. Each also includes student directions, related print resource call numbers, an optional quiz, and an information literacy standard. Contrast this to students having to corral and organize all the separate instructions and resources that typify traditional search assignments.

You can copy, edit, and adapt these models to differentiate instruction for your students.

• Open your eLibrary Teacher Edition
• Click BookCart Admin link at the top right
• Click the ProQuest Carts tab (800 ProQuest models)
• Type "Poetry" in the Search box
• Click the Copy icon in the Actions column to the right of the Cart of interest
• Click the Back button of the browser if you want to copy another
• Click the My Local Carts tab to end the copying process

These BookCarts should be edited in My Local Carts to adapt them for your students:

• Click the BookCart Title that has "Copy of" as its prefix
• Delete "Copy of" in the Title
• Type your name in the Author boxes
• Type your email address in the email box
• Edit the essential questions and any other text in the Directions box
• Scroll down and click Save button at bottom
• Return to My Local Carts

Assign students to study two of the poetry types from the following: Ballad; Epic; Haiku; Lyric; Nursery Rhymes; Ode; and Sonnet. Student should describe what's unique about each poetic form, provide a poet who uses this form, and provide an excerpt of one of the poet's best known works.

Click Topics tab > Arts > Literature > Poetry

Use our custom ProQuest models for written and PowerPoint-style reports.