Writing about Poetry

Have you ever watched a political speech and felt your heart beat a little faster, and your opinion either solidify or begin to slightly change? Rhetorical devices can be a strong tool in an effective and powerful speech. A short lesson...

Gain greater insight into poems using a poetry analysis instructional activity. Here, scholars follow steps and answer questions to dissect any poem. Topics include the poem's meaning, theme, technique, and structure, as well as...

Can beautiful words change the world? Literary scholars discover how to paint their visions of change using poetry in a series of three workshops. Each independent topic gives participants a chance to examine their feelings about...

A reading of Robert Frost’s "The Road Not Taken" launches an interdisciplinary study of the connection between the meters of a poem and a melody. After identifying the number of beats in each line of the poem, young musicians use...

Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death" provides high schoolers with an opportunity to practice their critical thinking skills. They examine the images, diction, rhythm, and rhyme scheme the poet uses and consider how...

Young poets are asked to craft a poem in the voice of a first person narrator, a dramatic monologue of sorts, that reveals not only a dramatic situation but something of the narrator's character as well.

It's hard to beat the beauty of John Steinbeck's prose, so borrow a little of it to form your own found poetry. After kids finish Chapter One of The Pearl, they select the most evocative and vivid words to create found poems.

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...

Numerous people from China immigrated to the US during the era of industrialization and expansion. Provide your class with a glimpse into the life of a Chinese immigrant through the poetry they left behind. They then compose a poem of...

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...