A purple pickle wearing a top hat

Poems about poems, and what even is poetry, anyway?

What exactly is poetry? This is one of those questions some people get pretty worked up about while the rest of humanity quietly does not care. Poetry isn’t the same as verse — not all poems rhyme, and not all rhyming lines have that special poetry shiver. It’s not non-narrative, or it doesn’t have to be. It’s not high flown and curliqued, or it doesn’t have to be. It’s not even necessarily short or broken into lines. It’s in fact very hard to draw a line around poetry.

My personal favorite definition is words that have music and magic.¹

Magicians? Musicians? Poets? Men in big hats? Do they know what poetry is, definitively? Doubtful, though I bet they have an opinion.

The kids weigh in

I turned the question over to my classes on our last day this spring, given that they at this point are pretty much poetry experts. We wrote group poems on the question, where everyone wrote a stanza and then I put them in an order I liked. We also gave outselves a couple of other rules, to help the poem hold together and because restrictions breed creativity.

From “the question that makes your socks itch” to “a blown scarf wrapped tightly around your neck,” “magic flowing out from a black hat” to “a pig with a suit, top hat and tie,” “a silk dress so silky you just have to touch it” to “little shoes running across paper,” the kids’ answers were vivid, original, playful, and themselves had music and magic. It was clearly satisfying to write about poetry directly, using the poetry tools we’ve been playing with all year. There were also some friend shout-outs, a lot of hats, and some sibling rivalry over greatness.

Here is my Wednesday Class’s poem in its entirety. Enjoy! And if you’d like to write your own take on this eternal question, consider starting with “poetry is” and see what happens. If you feel like it, give yourself a couple of other rules. (Can you spot what ours were?) Lean into the music and the magic, and let yourself be weird!

Poem about Poems

Poetry is the question that makes your socks itch.
Poetry is the great blue dome of sky
that challenges us with its chock-full emptiness.
Poetry is the whispers of an unnameable feeling.

Poetry socks you in the face
like the smell of dirty gym clothes in a small space.
It is the bright orange of traffic cones at a crash site
you just can't look away.

Poetry oh poetry
Poetry is like a black hat with a bunny in it
and it is popping out of the hat.

Poetry is like
magic flowing
out from a
Black Hat.

Poetry is like my fox hat. Fun and magnificent, never going to take it off, 
even the green mushroom named Liv and rainbow mushroom Cora like it. 
Poetry is like a silk dress so silky you just have to touch it.
Poetry is like finishing a good book and starting the second one.

Poetry is like a pig with a suit, top hat and tie. 
He will work and write poems at a building and maybe that pig is purple
and the tie must be red
and his assistant worker must be Sage
and Sage will be a green goblin

Poetry is like a conversation
happening in another room. I hear the sounds,
the feelings, murmuring through the empty room
like the swish of a pale blue gown.

Poetry is the definition 
of the rain pattering in your brain.
It is also a purple pickle 
wearing a top hat.

Poetry is beautiful.
It reminds me of my favorite color...pink!
Yes, pink. All my clothes are pink
from t-shirts to shoes, from cotton candy pink to the most brightest of all.

Poetry
Poetry is the color red, orange, the color of yellow.
Poetry comes in shapes, shapes like top hats, shirts, pants, and other shapes.
One thing that is better than poetry is "SPENCER GREATNESS"

Poetry is like a hat on your head and like an orange but flying through a cave
Poetry lives in a yellow house made of beautiful words and poetry wears a blue shirt.
Poetry is the word that defines "Victor is great" and is a grey shirt that warms  
                civilization.
Poetry feels like a blown scarf wrapped tightly around your neck.

Poetry is a green hat.
Poetry is like a frying pan.
Poetry is the world.
Poetry is life.

Poetry is a green hat.
You can never remove 
the green hat, its bliss infects your mind,
and it is the very definition of poetry itself.

Poetry is like little shoes running across paper
stamping out letters then words, then sentences.
Slowly making their way to stanzas.
Then to poems that change the world.

1. I don’t remember who said this, and neither apparently does Google. If you do, let me know!