Where do we find poetry?

For our first day with Ms. Wilson’s 4th-grade class at Dulles Elementary, we asked ourselves, what is poetry? And where is it? and when what and why? These 4th graders had lots of insightful questions sparked by our reading of Elizabeth Alexander’s Ars Poetica #100: I Believe. Now, as I reassured the students, ars poetica is simply a fancy term for poems about poetry. We learned a little bit about what goes into a poem: I showed them lines and stanzas, and they told me that rhyming and descriptive words also played a part. Pretty soon we were ready to write our own poems about poetry! Here they are:

Ms. Wilson 4th Grade

Poetry can be found Taraji

Poetry can be found in books
Poetry looks like famous art
Poetry sound like hip hop to me
Poetry tastes like sweetness
Poetry smells like unique style
Poetry inspirations feels like comfortable
Poetry takes time to know
everything about poems and writing
learning and brainstorming.
Poetry feels like home to me
in my bed I like to read Poetry
because it makes me feel glad.

Untitled Aubree

Poetry to me is like you can find
poetry in people in sound like rhyming
poetry feel like safe in poetry
tastes like sweet sugar

Poetry Raven

Poetry is like you the way the sun
reflects off your eyes and the way
the breeze is in your hair.

Poetry to Me Deziyah

Poetry to me is you can find it
in people in me
it taste like some sweet like cake
feel good in your mouth
and you can feel poetry like
most stuff it feels good
on your hand. You can feel
something soft that is
Poetry to me. <3 <3 <3

Poem Michael

The rain sounds nice it is loud but peaceful
the rain makes me fall fast asleep everynight.
It is calm. Really.

Untitled Adore

I see something on the stove
it’s a hot pot. I see a dog
It’s a round hound. I had to sniffle
it made a little tickle. it rains
but it drains. It’s a busy bee he
lives under a tree.