Appreciating the Poetic Genre

April is National Poetry Month. The annual celebration 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, New York Times (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, New York Times (1957)

Students should select (or you assign) a type of poetic style from the listing below. Students should select a poet who uses this style, write a brief biography, select the most well-known poem, critique it, and then write an short original poem in that style. Reports should be at least 200 words (or a presentation of at least 7 slides).

Types of poetry that students can select from and study: Cinquain; Couplet; Epic; Epitaph; Fable; Haiku; Limerick; Quatrain; Sestina; or Sonnet (you can add or substitute other styles).

Type "(the name of the style) and Poetry" in the Search box.

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