Poetry has a bad rep.

Over the last decades, its popularity has steadily declined. When I was young, poetry memorization was required; I heard it at public gatherings, at family and special events. At holiday gatherings my cousins might all join in loudly rehearsing a quirky Shel Silverstein poem—and laugh and laugh.

Now say the words, “poetry assignment,” to your student. What’s the reaction? A rolling of the eyes? An audible moan? A sneer? From your student—or was that from you? (Check the end of this article for a Rainbow Resource free, non-eye-rolling poetry activity to try.)

I get it. Honestly, who has time to teach one more thing?

Yet, I propose that including even a single poem weekly in your homeschool routine will reap abundant benefits.

Poetry Generates Wonder

Poetry is a verbal picture puzzle, something to figure out. Poems force us to ponder and consider. They slow us down. We get to appreciate and notice. What are you saying, author? What is your experience? Does this mean the same to me?

As we work to understand the message, we’re supposed to wrestle with it: chewing and savoring on it as though it’s a favorite, rare fruit. Appreciate the beauty and form of language, its multiple layers, the surprise. We begin to recognize the value of delayed gratification, of wrestling with something not easily explained, the multiple meanings. We consider, apply ideas, and determine our response.

Take the few lines from an Emily Dickinson poem:

“Hope is the thing with feathers/ that perches in the soul/
and sings the tune without the words/ and never stops at all.”

How is Hope like a bird? What an odd thought. Poetry engages that curiosity and provokes that deep need to interpret and explain our experience.

Poetry Nurtures Communicators

Poetry makes us better speakers and listeners. Meant to be oral, poetry allows you to experience the beauty of words. If there is rhythm and rhyme or repetition, you start to anticipate and engage in the cadence. Consider Robert Louis Stevenson’s, The Swing:

“How do you like to go up in a swing? /Up in the air so blue?/
Oh I do think it the pleasantest thing /Ever a child can _____.”

Could you fill in that blank? Did you start swaying to the rhythm? The meter exactly matches the pendulum swing of a child’s legs stretching out and falling away. And suddenly, in our imagination, we are swinging, engaged in the carefully chosen, yet simply expressed.

Poetry makes us better readers and writers. Forcing language into a structured pattern and rhyme requires a certain command of language, a controlled precision. We must understand how language works to manipulate it, and even more so to prompt a desired reader response. Poetic devices force us to express an idea that may very well be difficult to express in uncommon rhythm or structure, yet with exact vocabulary. Finding “the exact word” engages the thesaurus in our brain. How do I truly convey my thought so you can truly see it?

Although now commonplace poem, Carl Sandburg’s word choice deftly and succinctly describes a Fog:

“The fog comes on little cat feet./
It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches, and then moves on.”

Can you see it? How might you describe fog?

Rainbow Resource hid something on the back of their 2022 Curriculum catalog. Did you spy the poem? Try your hand at this non-eye-rolling poetry activity and rewrite Poet Laureate John Masefield’s Poem Sea-Fever.

More Poetry Resources: