English - Poetry Resources

Poetry remains one of the most poignant and refreshing ways for a writer to express themselves. In my class, we will follow the logic of Robin Williams' character, the English teacher John Keating, from the film Dead Poet's Society (1989): "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

How we encounter, and write, and analyze the poetry of our favorite authors depends on the formatting and arrangement of that poetry. Conceptual and abstract pieces of the poems (like themes, tropes, imagery, etc.) is sometimes just as important as the more concrete pieces of the poems (like scansion, rhyme scheme, enjambment, and assonance/consonance).