Chapter 5

Poetry has always been difficult for me to engage in. It's not so easy to get into poetry, since some of the poetry is hard to understand. Poetry can be fun to read, but it can also be complicated. Poetry consists of five different elements; sound, rhyme, rhythm, and figurative language. The sound is a powerful tool that makes a poetry come alive, rhyme is a stanza or quadrant, rhythm is cadence, and figurative language is a simile or onomatopoeia. Poetry includes works from various cultures, it considers the interests of the children, and it uses different kinds of formats to make it more interesting. Poetry gets more responses from children, because it does not give children parameters. It makes for a good discussion and good writing. I remember when I was a kid reading poems from the book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein. I think everybody read this book. The book held many poems of many different types of subjects. Some of the poems were very easy, some were hard, some rhymed, and some didn't. Poems come in many ways.