1. Where Poetry Hides (Free Verse Poetry)

2. Poetry is not only about…
Love
Nature
Cute topics
Death
Anger
Hate

3. What Poetry Can Do… Be about anything
Surprise us
Tap our senses - make us see, feel, hear, and taste in our imaginations
Make us laugh
Make us think
Express anger and help make sense of troubling experiences
Define feelings and craft them as art
Tell stories that point to a theme
Make us look at everyday life through new eyes
Make us think about the kind of lives we want to live
Use people, objects, actions, and places as symbols to show something about a life or an experience
Help capture stages in life: who we were and who we are becoming

4. Poetry…
Reveals the beauty in everyday existence; opens our eyes to the poems that hide around us.
“”Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” ~ T. S. Eliot

5. You Can't Write a Poem about McDonald's
Noon. Hunger is the only thing singing in my belly.
I walk through the blossoming cherry trees on the library mall,
past the young couples coupling, by the crazy fanatic
screaming doom and salvation at a sensation-hungry crowd,
to the Lake Street McDonald's. It is crowded, the lines long and sluggish.
I wait in the greasy air. All around me people are eating —
the sizzle of conversation, the salty odor of sweat,
the warm flesh pressing out of hip huggers and halter tops.
When I finally reach the cash register, the counter girl is crisp as a pickle,
her fingers thin as french fries, her face brown as a bun.
Suddenly I understand cannibalism. As I reach for her,
she breaks into pieces wrapped neat and packaged for take-out.
I'm thinking, how amazing it is to live in this country, how easy it is to be filled.
We leave together, her warm aroma close at my side.
I walk back.. through the cherry trees blossoming up into pies,
the young couple frying in the hot, oily sun,
the crowd eating up the fanatic, singing, my ear, my eye, my tongue
fat with the wonder of this hungry world.
-Ronald Wallace

6. You Can’t Write a Poem about...
Mrs. Derrig’s list:
My coffee cup
My many pet peeves
The smell of an old book
The weird animals my uncle always had in Poland
Traffic
Google
The Kardashians
My classroom
Chocolate chip waffles
My hair

7. Your list…
Take 5 minutes to create your own list of 10 weird/rare/difficult things you don’t think you can write a poem about.
Pick the one that you like the most to write a poem about. Your poem should be at least 20 lines long.