Poetry Power

April 2011 marks the fifteenth anniversary of National Poetry Month. The Academy of American Poets (AAP) established this month-long celebration of the literary art of poetry in 1996.

The goal of the AAP was to increase the attention students, adults, and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our poetic heritage, and to poetry books and magazines. The AAP chose April after getting advice from booksellers, librarians, poets, and teachers.

April was a month during the school year in which schools and students could participate fully because many other months in the school year were already dedicated to significant themes—February (Black History Month) and March (Women's History Month).

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

• PAUL ENGLE: "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."
  
  
• WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: "All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."
  
  
• SAMUEL JOHNSON: "The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing."
  
  
• KAHIL GIBRAN: "Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary."
  
  
• OGDEN NASH: "Poets aren't very useful; Because they aren't 'consumeful' or very 'produceful'."
  
  
• THOMAS HARDY: "Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art."
  
  
• ROBERT FROST: "I have never started a poem whose end I knew. Writing the poem is discovering."

ProQuest has created several BookCart learning activities for both middle school and high school students to learn more about poetry and poets:

• Writing Poetry for Fun and Expression (MS)
  
  
• Poetry Power (MS)
  
  
• Song Lyrics as Poetry (HS)

Each of these BookCarts is a complete one-stop ProQuest learning activity that you can customize for your students. This saves classroom and library time for more teaching and learning because traditional Internet surfing wastes time in locating K-12 relevant information and then evaluating its credibility.

Each Cart includes examples of essential questions that help students to develop 21st Century critical thinking skills rather than just a focus on facts. It also includes students' directions for the learning activity—all of these assignment essentials in one place. Contrast this to traditional research assignments where students have to collect and assemble instructions and resources from multiple sources, wasting valuable learning time.

The learning activities for this month are just one of hundreds of BookCarts (PDF listing) that teachers and librarians can copy into their local collection and use right away. Here's how to do it:

• Logon to our eLibrary TEACHER EDITION.
• Click the BOOKCART ADMIN tab at the top of the Teacher Edition.
• Click the PROQUEST CARTS tab.
• Type Poetry in the SEARCH box.
• Click the COPY icon (middle one) in the ACTIONS column to the right of the title of choice.
• Click RETURN TO MY LOCAL CARTS.

Librarians or teachers can edit this BookCart to customize it for their students:

• Click the new BookCart TITLE with the prefix COPY OF.
• Delete "Copy of" and then type your name in the AUTHOR boxes and your initials in the EMAIL box (required info).
• Option: Edit any ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS for your students in the DESCRIPTION box.
• Option: Edit the existing STUDENT DIRECTIONS in the Description box.
• Scroll down and click SAVE.
• Click RETURN TO MY LOCAL CARTS.

Or, you can use this resource page to learn more about creating, copying, and editing BookCart learning activities or see a short video.

Assign students to select a poetry style and then write an original poem of at least 100 words in that style. Student should also describe what is unique about that poetic form, give an example of a poet who uses this form, and provide an excerpt of one of the poet's best known works.

Pathfinder 1: Click the Topics search tab > English Language Arts > Poetic Forms

Pathfinder 2: Click the Topics search tab > English Language Arts > Writing Poetry