Poetry: The Most Compact Form of Literature

Here's a must-have guide for instructors who use Robert Frost's poems in their classes. The 24-page guide focuses on poems included in Frost's first two volumes of poems, background information on the poet, and what Frost thought was an...

What? A long-lost poem from Robert Frost? Introduce your class to a poem recently found and published from Robert Frost's personal collection. The lesson includes background information on the author, the poem itself, and a list of...

Students research the evolution and cultural significance of the Arabic ghazal form of poetry. They, in groups, compose an original ghazal poem and read it aloud to the class.

A poem is compressed speech, like a can of frozen juice with all the water pressed out. An interactive teaches users how to reconstitute the language, the structure, and the literary devices to appreciate all the subtleties the poet...

Learners explore tanka, a form of Japanese poetry. They read and analyze tankas to determine the structure and intent, and compose a traditional and a non-traditional tanka.

Jane Hirshfield's poem "My Skeleton" asks readers to pause and think about the amazing, often taken-for-granted structure that protects and gives form to human bodies. After observing the human skeleton's image, class members read the...

Students examine World War I poetry for historical context, poetic devices, and participate in a class discussion. They write an analysis of the poetry's form and its content.

Explication may sound like a fancy word, but it's just a fancy way to say analysis. Using a handout on poetry explications, part of a larger series on specific writing assignments, writers learn how to break down and analyze a poem. The...

After investigating the Black Lives Matter movement, class members do a close read of Roger Reeves' "Black Laws." They write down words and phrases that rhyme, consider the kinds of rhymes used and their function in the poem. Scholars...

Lines from Shakespeare and from hip-hop artists provide learners with an opportunity to examine the literary devices these artists use to express their ideas about love. Groups use the provided lines to craft found poems, and then the...