Anyone can make poetry and most people
do, at least sometime in their lives. Where there are people, there is speech;
and where there is speech, there is poetry.
Your ability to understand these words means you have a highly developed capacity
for poetry. Many students ask me if they have a talent for poetry. Without
reading their work, I can answer they do. Talent is mostly motivation, interest,
determination, application. When you ask, “Do I have talent?”
you can answer yourself with another question: “Am I willing to try?”
If you were a potter, clay would
be your tool. You would know the many varieties of clay, what stresses and
strains they can take, what happens to them under various conditions and temperatures.
Similarly, your work as a poet requires you to understand how language works,
and particularly to know the tools that poets use to make poetry.
In no way are all of the poetic devices
or forms of poetry listed in this packet. But these are some of the devices
that we will be talking about in this unit of poetry. You will want to refer
to this packet from throughout our study of poetry, in order to enhance your
own understanding of the poems we read in class, as well as to illuminate
the poems you create.
At the end of this unit of study you will publish a collection of your poems.
