♪♪ >> What's up, everybody?

My name's Tony Jackson.

I am a teacher.

I've been teaching for about 14 years now, going on 15, and I teach fourth grade at Nellie K. Parker School in Hackensack, New Jersey.

I love, love, love teaching because I love learning.

And every day that I go into the classroom is an opportunity for me to learn something new.

Poetry is another one of my passions.

I love teaching, I love poetry.

So why not combine them?

Every time I step in, every time I get a chance to do a lesson, I'm thinking of ways that I can bring my full self into how I teach my students.

And poetry is one of those things that I use constantly.

That means across disciplines, whatever the subject -- math, language arts, social studies, science -- there's going to be an element of poetry showing up there because it's one of the things that I love and that really is a part of who I am.

So we need a couple of things before we get started.

I'm gonna be using a whiteboard and a composition pad, one of my books of poetry that I wrote.

And I also have one of my notebooks.

I love my notebooks.

I have about three or four going at one time.

And sometimes I don't know what to write in which notebook.

But it helps me to get my thoughts down whenever I have them.

And that's something that I try to tell my students.

The biggest thing when you're starting out and you're trying to write poetry or come up with ideas is write it all down.

You may think that it's a silly idea.

You may think that's it's an idea that's not gonna go anywhere, but that's okay.

My notebook is loaded with ideas that I didn't turn into an actual poem, but I might have started something and then looked back at it and said, "Hey.

You know what?

I like the way that those two words work together," or, "That was a really interesting concept or a really cool theme.

Now let me start and try something else with it."

When you're trying to write poetry, sometimes you're gonna be just playing around with different poetic forms and different devices, which we'll talk about, and sometimes it might just be the first thing that comes to your mind.

We're going to look at all of that today.

So make sure that you have your tools.

You need something to write with and something to write on.

Go grab those now.

We'll give you a minute.

I end mental sentences with periods of sporadic commas that calm my karma when beginnings of thoughts run distances and can only be redirected because streams of consciousness cannot be stopped like unconscious wishes or clocks made of fire that burn time and turn rhymes into endless rhythm riders riding on the rhythm of emotion manifested.

I inhale thoughts, so my words get congested and split syntax until sentences get dissected.

Then I end them.

So, in the poem I started with there, it was called "Mental Sentence," and I wrote that piece because I came to that last -- the very last page of one of my notebooks.

And I was flipping through... I got to the last page, and it was completely blank, obviously.

And I said, "You know what?

I feel like I need something here to bring an ending to this book."

Now, it wasn't a story.

The cool thing about poetry, though, is I can tell a story with a poem, but my notebook was random thoughts, different ideas, lots of poems, drawings, pictures.

It didn't have one storyline taking it all the way through.

But I felt like I needed something to end it with.

And so that piece, "Mental Sentence," was kind of like a period.

It was the closing of all of the thoughts that I had together, and that was the very last one.

So that's what that meant to me.

Now, somebody else hearing it, you might hear it and not have that same connection as an ending piece, but that's what it meant.

And one of the great things about poetry is that, no matter what somebody tells you a poem means, there are many different ways that we can often interpret what a poem means.

It may mean something different for me based on my experience, and it may mean something different for you based on what you've been through.

Content of our poetry is whatever we're choosing to write about, and that could literally be anything.

Some people are scared away from poetry because they feel like it has to sound a certain way, it has to be about a certain topic.

A lot of people feel like it has to be really serious all the time because those are a lot of the things that we are shown.

Those are the stereotypes about poetry.

But it doesn't have to be.

Poetry can literally be about anything that you want.

It could be silly, it can be funny, it can be sad, it can be angry -- whatever you're feeling at that time.

Anything that you want to express, you can put it down on paper or say it out loud.

Remember that, with poetry, you make the rules.

So, sometimes I know exactly what I want to write about, and sometimes I rack my brain trying to think of something.

Me.

Even though I am a poet, even though I've written books, even though I write poetry constantly, even I have trouble sometimes coming up with what it is that I want to say or what is it that I want to write about.

So, for me, sometimes I will plan it out, and I'll write down things in my notebook.

I make a lot of lists.

I'll make lists that sometimes I'll just write whatever comes to mind.

I could write a poem off the top of my head, yeah.

Anything that comes to me is just what I said.

I got a really simple beat, just my hand on the table.

I'mma come up with a couple of rhymes, if I'm able.

I may not be in, and it may sound bad.

I'm sorry, I hope that isn't too bad.

I hope you're not sad, I hope that you like it.

And I hope that you dig it, I hope that it's fun.

Sorry.

Okay.

Now we've just begun.

I got a couple more rhymes in my head right now.

I've got a microphone sittin' in front of me, wow.

One great way to come up with ideas for your writing is to make lists.

So when we're talking about content, what we're gonna write about, making a list can give you ideas for what that may be.

So let's start making a list right now.

That list can be about anything.

It can be a list of things that you love, a list of things that make you happy, a list of things that you can't stand, a list of things that scare you.

It could be any list of things that you choose that you might want to put down in a poem.

And so I'm gonna take emotions.

Writing that on my whiteboard here.

Okay.

So here's the start of my list.

Let's think of -- I want you to do this one with me, okay?

So we'll do -- our practice list will be emotions.

I want you to think of at least five emotions that you felt in the past week or two weeks.

There've been a lot.

I know, this is kind of a crazy time, so try to think of a bunch of emotions that you felt, and we're going to list them.

I'm going to start with sad.

Now, don't think that you're copying me just because you have the same thing.

If you've felt sad, put it down there.

Right?

Whatever you do with that emotion or whatever you write from that is still not going to be the same thing as what I write.

We're just talking about listing different ways that we felt, and lots of people can share sadness.

So, I felt sad because it's a scary time that we're in right now, and I haven't had a chance to connect with people that I really love the way I would want to.

I haven't been able to see my students face-to-face.

I miss them so much.

It's not the same doing it through a camera, you know?

Right?

But I've also felt inspired.

I felt inspired by the healthcare workers who are on the front line, who are risking their own safety and their health to help other people, to help us figure out this craziness that we're in right now.

And so that really inspires me.

Also, a lot of my teacher colleagues who are at home right now but are still planning lessons and thinking of ways to make things new and interesting and exciting and helping to teach their kids, even if they're far away.

So I'm inspired by that and lots of other things, as well, but right now, I've got two emotions down.

I felt sad, I felt inspired.

I've also felt...bored.

I have definitely felt bored.

Can anybody relate?

Yeah?

Okay.

I've definitely felt bored at times.

Sometimes I have a ton of work to do, and the work is boring.

Sometimes I'm finished with the work, and I'm bored because I just don't know what to do in that moment.

Sometimes I may have finished a big project, and so I have downtime, but I'm not able to talk to the people that I normally would or see my friends as much.

So a lot of that can make somebody bored.

That's one, two, three.

I got three emotions down now.

Let's see.

I have also felt worried... or scared... because it's a really uncertain time right now.

There's a lot of things that are scary right now in the news.

We're hearing things that we're kind of confused about.

And, yeah, I worry about my own safety, the safety of the people that I love.

So worry is something that is real, and it's okay.

It's okay.

Just because I'm writing it down doesn't mean that I have to stay in that one emotion and not be able to go anywhere else and feel better.

And lastly, I'll put down something that I think we've all felt.

My fifth one is hungry.

I have definitely felt hungry.

So, you know, I don't know if hungry is an emotion, but it's something that I have felt, so I'm going to leave it there.

And remember, we choose the rules that we want to follow in poetry, so I'm going to allow that.

Okay?

So now I've got my list of emotions.

I hope you've got your list, too.

And now we're going to choose one to focus on.

So, I have sad, inspired, bored, worried, and hungry.

And I'm going to choose to focus on... boredom.

So I'm going to focus on the emotion of being bored.

What does that mean?

That means that now I can still think about being sad, inspired, worried, or hungry another time.

Maybe I want to write poems about those feelings a little later.

But for right now, focus in on whichever emotion you choose, one that's speaking to you.

And the one that's speaking to me right now is boredom.

So, I'm going to make another list, okay?

So I'm going to clear this.

[ Birds squawking in distance ] And now I'm going to write "bored" at the top.

So, you can do this on another sheet if you want.

If you have space on the sheet where you are, it's up to you.

So now I went from one list, and I'm going to start another list.

So, this list is going to be times when I am bored.

"I am bored when..." Okay?

For you, whichever emotion you chose, start to think about this, okay?

Start to think about times that you feel that way.

So, I'm going to start here.

"I am bored when..." I am bored when I'm stuck in a house.

[ Birds squawking in distance ] Okay?

Other times I am bored.

I am bored when... I can't hang out with my friends.

[ Birds squawking in distance ] I am bored when... I have nothing to do.

I am bored when... my teacher gives me a boring assignment.

Okay.

So, now I've got 1, 2, 3, 4 times that I am bored.

Okay?

Here's mine.

Now, you may not have jotted down four.

You might have more than me, maybe, but I'm just going to read through what I have so far.

Okay.

So you heard me as I was thinking and putting it down, but this is what I have.

"I am bored when I'm stuck in the house.

I am bored when I can't hang out with my friends.

I am bored when I have nothing to do.

I am bored when my teacher gives me a boring assignment."

So now, when I read it that way, it's actually starting to sound a little poetic, I think.

So if I were to just take the word "bored" or "I am bored when...," I can use that as my first line, I can use that as my title, and then I'm going to put it again at the end of the poem, "I am bored," and that's going to be my poem.

That's gonna be it.

Okay.

So you ready to hear it?

Okay.

It sounds like this.

I am bored.

I am bored when I'm stuck in the house.

I am bored when I can't hang out with my friends.

I am bored when I have nothing to do.

I am bored when my teacher gives me a boring assignment.

I am bored."

So now we've just written a poem!

Well, I wrote a poem.

I mean, I hope that you wrote a poem at home.

See, the rhymes just come out of nowhere.

I hope that you wrote a poem yourself, but this is called a list poem, and list poems can be about, again, anything that you choose.

Right now, you have a bunch of other emotions that you felt that you could do the same thing with.

I'm sure that you could probably think of more times that you're bored and turn those into either another part of this poem or something else entirely.

So, this is one way that we can get ideas together and come up with content that we're going to write about.

So, the poems that you just wrote, the poem that I just wrote, is a form we call free verse.

That means that it doesn't need to have a specific style.

It doesn't need to have rhymes.

It doesn't need to have meter.

It doesn't need to have all of the different things that we think of when we think of poetry.

It can just be however it comes to you from your mind to the paper.

That's free verse.

Now, sometimes people will add in lots of different crafts moves -- craft moves into their free-verse poetry.

But again, you choose the rules that you want to follow to make the poetry yours.

Okay.

Now let's talk about a different form.

Let me get "free verse" out of there.

And we're going to talk about a form called... haiku.

Haiku is a form of poetry that started in Japan and was typically about nature.

But again, we choose the rules, right?

So we can take this form, the form of the haiku, and we're going to bend it to be about what we choose.

We're going to make the content ourselves, see?

We're still there with the content.

So now we've got a form called haiku, and it's written this way -- five, seven, five.

Say that with me.

Ready?

Five, seven, five.

What that means is that the first line has five syllables -- bup, bup, bup, bup, bup.

The second line has seven syllables -- bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup.

Not seven words, seven syllables.

The third line has five syllables again -- bup, bup, bup, bup, bup.

So, our haiku is going to be five, seven, five.

17 syllables in the whole poem.

Five, seven, five.

It's only three lines.

It's only 17 syllables.

So you can imagine this is gonna be a shorter poem than our free-verse poem was.

So now let's stick with the same topic 'cause we're talking about content here.

So I'm going to stay with the emotion that I chose, which was bored.

You stick with whichever emotion you chose, and we're going to come up with a haiku to express something about that feeling in a different way.

Got it?

So, I'll say, "Stuck inside all day."

"Stuck inside all day."

when I'm writing haikus, I'll usually repeat them to myself.

I'm saying everything out loud right now, but I do that even when I'm alone, because I want to make sure that I have the sounds right.

"Stuck inside all day."

One, two, three, four, five.

So that's perfect for my first line -- "Stuck inside all day."

Now, my second line is going to be how many syllables?

Seven.

Cool.

Okay.

"I wish I could... see my friends."

It's true.

"Stuck inside all day."

Five syllables.

"I wish I could see my friends."

Seven syllables.

So now my last line of this -- This poem is almost done.

My last line is going to have five syllables again.

So, "Stuck inside all day.

I wish I could see my friends.

I hope I can soon."

"I hope I can soon."

"I hope I can soon."

Got it?

Okay.

So now this is a poem.

Notice I didn't say the word "bored" anywhere in this poem.

I didn't say, "I am bored."

I didn't use the word "boredom" here.

However, it's the feeling.

It's that feeling.

So this is, again, what we mean when we're talking about writing from a feeling.

I don't have to actually say I'm angry and I'm sad.

I'm just talking about something that comes from that feeling.

And this is what came out.

"Stuck inside all day.

I wish I could see my friends.

I hope I can soon."

So now we just banged out two poems about one topic.

Got it?

And you still have a list of different topics that you can explore.

You've got two different forms here -- free verse where it's free.

Literally, you can choose however you want the poem to sound.

And haiku, where we have a structure of five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, five syllables in the third line.

Got it?

So now we're gonna take a little writing break, but I want you to think about how we can flip one of these.

What if we take the same emotion -- so, for me, that would be boredom -- but I chose "I'm not bored when..." "I'm not bored when..." I'm kind of excited to do this.

"I'm not bored when I can hang out with my friends."

"I'm not bored when... I get to write and create."

I'm not bored when... I use my time to do something good, for helping other people."

"I'm not bored when I decide how I want to spend my time."

"I'm not bored."

So that's one way.

When you take an emotion, then you flip it and you examine the other side, not only can you come up with some different -- with a different poem, but you can also come up with a different feeling.

And sometimes, it helps you to look at something in a new way.

So think about "I'm sad when..." When am I not sad?

And sometimes that can actually change the way that you feel in that moment.

So it's something to explore.

Let's do that now.

We're gonna take two minutes to write, and I want you to come up with a list of "I'm not blank when..." So it's gonna be the opposite of the list that we did before.

Got it?

If you chose the emotion of happy, then you would say, "I'm not happy when..." Okay?

Whatever you chose for that first one -- so I want to make sure we're clear -- you're going to say "I'm not blank when..." and then come up with about five different examples of times that you're not that feeling.

If you feel like you get those done pretty quickly and you want to jump into trying a haiku from the opposite view, then you could do that, too.

Take this two minutes and do what you can with it.

Okay?

Ready, set, write.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Okay.

So, how'd you do with your haikus or your list poems?

Or both?

I hope that you came up with something that was awesome.

And remember, it doesn't have to be a finished piece right now.

It's just something that you have.

You can keep it in your notebook.

You can revisit it.

If you ever want to think about exploring that emotion or if you want to turn it into a finished poem, then maybe you want to look at some of the craft moves we're going to talk about in this section and try and add those to that poem or create an entirely new piece that deals with it in a different way.

I don't know if you can hear them, but there are birds that are squawking out of control all around me right now.

And that is something that is inspiring me right now.

So I'm just going to write a little bit about these birds, how I'm feeling.

Let's just do a little free verse, okay?

"Birds!"

Exclamation mark.

"Please be quiet."

"Birds!

Please be quiet.

I can't focus... with all your squawking."

"Birds!

Please be quiet.

I can't focus with all your squawking.

Silence.

You should try it."

Okay.

So now let me just take you through it.

So I'm writing this down with a Sharpie in my composition pad, and as I'm thinking of it, I'm going from free verse, but I'm adding in.

I feel like there's some places for rhyme now.

So I said, "Birds!

Please be quiet.

I can't focus with all your squawking.

Silence.

You should try it."

So I'm rhyming "Be quiet" with "Try it," and I feel like now I have an idea for the last line.

"All your squawking."

Give me a word that rhymes with "squawking."

You're probably thinking the same thing as me -- "talking," right?

Okay.

So, "Silence.

You should try it.

Maybe... they wish... I'd stop talking."

Okay, okay.

So I think we got something here.

Here it is.

Thank you for being here at the creation of this.

"Birds!

Please be quiet.

I can't focus with all your squawking.

Silence.

You should try it.

Maybe they wish I'd stop talking."

So, in this poem, the content is just what was happening around me.

But I'm pretty happy with this.

I feel like it kind of captured the way that I was feeling in the moment and wanting them to be quiet, because I'm remembering that I'm speaking right now, and on my porch, you know, my voice travels through these thin little windows.

So maybe they're like, "Why is he talking so much?"

So, yeah, okay.

Bam, we got another poem.

Okay.

That was kind of fun.

Now I want to read a poem that I wrote before, and it's called "Thunderstorms."

Okay, here we go.

"Kaboom!

Kaboom!

Echoed the thunder.

Wham!

Slammed the screen door.

Clip-clop clip-clop went my sister's shoes across the floor.

Pitter patter drummed the rain against the roof and windows.

Splish splash went my mom's galoshes.

Pat pat went my tiptoes.

Krick kaboom!

The thunder shouted, shaking all the walls.

Crash!

I heard, as one framed picture smashed against the floor.

Crr, tap tap tap went the shutters on the windows above my head.

Skitter skitter went my dog's claws as he hid under the bed.

Crick scrush!

I heard some branches crashing to the ground.

My favorite part of thunderstorms is listening to the sounds."

So I feel like this is kind of fitting because we just wrote a poem.

I'm including you in that, but I just wrote a poem about the sounds of these birds outside, and that brought to mind this poem, "Thunderstorms," which is all about sounds.

And this poem brings to mind something else which we're gonna start talking about, which is craft.

So, we talked about the content of the work being what it is that we want to say.

What is it about?

Right?

What are we writing about?

The craft is the part where we start to use different skills and different techniques to bring those thoughts and bring the words to life.

With this poem, there's a literary device that you might be familiar with.

Your teacher might have spoken to you about it.

It's called onomatopoeia.

Onomatopoeia.

Onomatopoeia is a great word anyway.

Doesn't it sound good to say?

Onomatopoeia.

Onomatopoeia!

Onomatopoeia!

Just say it really -- Okay, I'm sorry.

I'm getting distracted.

I love that word.

Onomatopoeia is when you mimic a sound with your written word.

So, if you're writing a story about how somebody knocked on the door, you might write, "Knock knock knock," and have that stand in for the actual sound of knocking.

Something like "Kaboom, kaboom!"

is what I wrote, and I'll show it to you.

This is what it looks like on the page.

"Kaboom, kaboom" is what I wrote to mimic the sound of thunder.

So, onomatopoeia is you're writing sound words.

Okay?

Some more examples.

Clip-clop, clip-clop.

That's mimicking the sound of someone's shoes walking across the floor.

And in here, I talk about it being my little sister's shoes.

Now, I don't have a little sister.

My sister is actually older than me.

I don't have a dog, but there's a dog in the poem, too.

So this is another piece that we can use when we're writing poetry.

I want you to remember that sometimes poetry can be like a story.

You can tell stories through poems, as well, and stories have characters.

So, sometimes think about the point of view that you're writing from.

I may be writing about this from the perspective of someone who lives in a house that has a lot of creaky doors and windows, and there's trees all around.

But that's something that I'm deciding to explore from another perspective.

Now, I love thunderstorms.

That piece is my truth that I'm bringing to it, but all the rest of it, however I want to make the sounds live on the page, that's up to me.

Whatever I want to make happen in the poem, that's up to me.

Remember, plenty of rules in poetry, but you get to choose the ones that you want to follow.

Okay.

So, let's stop right there for a moment and try to practice this craft move -- onomatopoeia.

We're going to take two minutes.

I want you to think about sounds that you hear every day.

It could be the sounds in your home, they can be sounds outside of your home, maybe they're sounds that you hear or that you've heard in the past, but they stick with you.

What are some of the sounds that you hear regularly, and how would you turn them into writing on the page?

Think about that.

This is another place that you can make a list.

"Here are sounds that I often hear."

How can I translate that into a word on my page?

What does it sound like when someone slams the door?

What does it sound like when a window breaks?

What does it sound like when someone flushes a toilet?

It could be anything.

Okay?

So think about ideas for sounds that you hear, and then I want you to try and write some examples of onomatopoeia.

If they end up in a poem, awesome.

If they just end up as examples so you can use them in a poem later, that's cool, too.

Ready, set, write.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Okay.

How did that go?

Got some different examples of onomatopoeia?

I hope so.

Let's take a look at some more craft moves.

I have another one here that I wrote down.

It's one that I love, and it is alliteration.

So, when you're in the process of putting poetry on the page, you might -- mm.

See, that was it.

Alliteration's when you use the same beginning sound of multiple words very close to each other.

So, if you've ever heard a... If you've ever heard a tongue twister, then you're hearing alliteration.

She sells seashells by the seashore.

We hear the repeated "s" and "sh" over and over again.

It makes it fun to say.

It makes it fun to hear.

One of my favorites is Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, because if Peter Piper picked of peck of pickled peppers, how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

Right?

We're constantly hearing the "P-p-p-p-p-p-p-p!"

And it makes it fun.

It makes it fun.

I don't know what -- I'm -- I am -- I am a poet, and I teach poetry.

I don't know what the purpose of alliteration is.

Actually, I don't know if there's an actual purpose for it aside from it makes it sound really interesting when you're reading it.

It makes it sound really interesting when you're hearing it, when you're listening to it.

So I love to put it into my work when I can.

And here's an example.

This is a poem called "An Elephant('s) Not."

"An Elephant('s) Not."

Okay?

"Ellie thinks every elephant's gross.

But I said an elephant's not.

Till I squeezed on an elephant's trunk so he sneezed and got covered in elephant snot."

So there's a couple of things that are in that poem.

There's a couple of instances of wordplay, saying "elephant's not" versus "elephant snot."

I always find those things kind of fun to mess around and play with the word like that.

But the first line says, "Ellie thinks every elephant's gross."

And the alliteration there is with these short E sounds, right?

Ellie, every, elephant.

Now, I don't keep it going throughout the whole poem, but it's a device.

It's something that you can use to make something sound stronger, to make something sound more interesting.

So feel free to try that one, also.

Next on the list is something that I love, I use all the time.

I'm probably going to use it right now.

Rhyme is when we have the same vowel sound in the middle of the word and the same ending sound.

Think, stink.

Hear, clear.

Same vowel sound in the middle, and the ending sound is the same.

But there's also different variations of rhyme that we can use.

Sometimes we use things like slant rhyme or off rhyme or near rhyme where words sound close to the same even if they're not exact.

Rhyming is something that's a lot of fun.

Think of a word that doesn't rhyme with anything.

Take a minute.

Can you think of a word that doesn't have a rhyme?

There's a really famous one that I'm thinking of right now.

I wonder if anybody's thinking of it here at home.

Okay.

The word that I'm thinking of is orange.

And a lot of people will say that there's nothing that rhymes with orange.

Sure, there are no words.

There's no single word that has the exact same sounds and ending sound as the word orange, but I could put some words together and make them sound like orange.

Right?

I could say the part where the door meets the wall is the door hinge.

I just painted this door.

I'm painting it orange.

So you can make words rhyme sometimes.

That's part of the fun.

Again, there are rules, but you choose the rules that you want to follow.

Speaking of rhyme, there is something called a couplet.

Or, I should say a stanza first.

A stanza is a group of poetic lines that are put together.

Often they rhyme.

When they rhyme, we have something called a couplet, which is two lines where the last word of each has a rhyming word.

So if I said, "Poetry is fun to me, it's as easy as one, two, three," then "me" and "three" are rhyming.

That makes a couplet.

In a lot of my poetry, I use rhyming couplets because they're musical.

Sometimes it's fun to make rhythm that will land you at that rhyming word and use things like meter.

Meter, which is how you stress the syllables that you're saying.

So I'm going to say at poem right now.

It's called "Harriet Mariott."

I'm going to read it from my book, and I want you to listen for the rhyming couplets in it.

Listen for the way that I stress certain syllables, and listen for if you hear any rhythm or musicality in the poem.

Okay.

Ready?

Here's the illustration.

Here we go.

"Harriet carried her cellphone around, up and down the streets of every town, texting and talking while she was walking.

Harriet never, ever put it down.

She talked all day and night from one day to the next.

She only stopped to eat and sleep or take a pic and text.

Harriet waltzed around all alone, telling us all how much she loves her phone.

I said, 'Well, Harriet, why don't you marry it?'

Then she downloaded a wedding ring tone.

With cellphone glued to ear, she just ignores the world.

Everyone else disappears.

Friends and family, boys and girls.

Harriet married her cellphone.

She made a lifelong vow, and she only talks while on it.

In fact, she's on it now.

Harriet talks and she talks till she's through.

Don't interrupt her, whatever you do.

Don't make her stop it or, God forbid, drop it because Harriet won't ever talk to you."

So, hopefully you had fun hearing that poem.

I have a lot of fun reading that poem, and I had fun writing that poem, too.

Did you hear the couplets?

"Harriet carried her cellphone around.

Up and down the streets of every town."

So "around" and "town" are my rhyming words there.

But they have different ending sounds, right?

"Aroun-d," "tow-n."

But it's okay because that's the way that I like -- But it's okay because we can bend words to fit when we choose.

If you want to write a poem that specifically has exact rhyme every single time, do it.

It's a fun challenge.

So think about the content of that piece.

That piece, although it may be funny and silly, it's about something that was serious to me when I thought about it.

I felt like I'm seeing all of these people who are stuck on their phones.

And then I realized I'm the same way, too.

There's a lot of times that I get so caught up in what I'm doing on my phone that I'm ignoring the world around me.

So that poem was about me and everybody else who has an issue with staying too attached to their phone.

Sometimes you can take a serious issue and make fun of it in a silly way or make it fun in a silly way.

Either works.

Another craft move that I want to talk to you about is hyperbole, and hyperbole -- not only is it a fun word to say, but hyperbole is a really cool tool, because when you put it in your poetry or when you use it in your everyday language, it helps to get a point across.

But it is excessively exaggerated.

So when you are saying something that is hyperbolic, you're saying something that is really, really exaggerated, an exaggerated form of whatever it is that you mean.

So, sometimes my students will say, "Oh, Mr.

Jackson, I'm starving!"

And I'll say, "You know what?

That -- That sounds like hyperbole to me."

It might be that you're hungry, but starving would be a little exaggerated.

Another example would be if I were to say I feel like I've been stuck in this house for a thousand years.

Now, that's not true, but it gets the point across that I have been stuck in here and feeling like I can't escape.

Mm.

I feel like I'm starting to get an idea for another poem now.

I got to write this down.

"Stuck in... can't escape."

Okay, I might do something with that later.

This is why it's so great to have a notebook always ready so you can capture those thoughts.

That might turn into a huge poem.

If it is, I'll read it for you, too.

Got it?

Cool.

Okay.

I'm gonna -- I'm gonna just do something.

I'm just gonna flip through and pick a poem -- anywhere.

Tell me when to stop.

Ready?

Stop?

Okay, cool.

Ah, no, we read that one already.

Tell me where to stop again.

Cool?

Okay, okay.

Good.

So, this one is called "If."

If sharks had lungs and legs and lived on land, if lobsters were the size of kangaroos and crabs decided they should pinch our hands for cooking them in gumbos, soups, and stews, if tidal waves left cities smashed and flat, if jellyfish and octopuses chose to sting us when they'd see us, we'd react by falling over in pain.

I suppose if whales were hungry for the taste of us and lived, hunted, and dined above the ground, we'd all be safer if we didn't fuss, just hid away and didn't make a sound.

It's just the slightest possibility of this that makes me still avoid the sea."

And here's the illustration for that.

I'm so glad that we ended up flipping to that page and read that poem, because that gives me an idea for what we're going to start in our next two-minute writing break.

That poem was imagining a world that doesn't exist right now where lobsters are the size of kangaroos and whales are -- you know, could be eating people and could come above onto the ground and sharks could walk among us.

If that were to happen, it might be kind of scary.

But I thought it was a cool place to imagine and just explore and think about all of the kind of crazy things that might happen.

I want you now to think about if something were to happen.

This is cause and effect.

I'm sure you've talked about this in school.

The cause is the reason why something happens.

The effect is what happens.

So if all those sea creatures could come up on the land, imagine what could happen.

So think about something that might change, and if it did, what could happen?

I want you to jot down a couple ideas on that.

Now, you don't have to use any craft moves with this, but you can if you'd like.

Just try and explore that idea of if something were to happen.

What's your if?

Ready, set, write.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Okay, we're back.

Did you get your ideas down?

Did you come up with a cool if?

Okay.

I hope that you'll explore that idea later once we're all completely done.

Jump back into that, and I'd love to see what you've come up with.

Sonnets have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.

But I love that we can listen to a sonnet, look at the rules of it, and see connections to music today, in poetry today.

There are connections between the way that a sonnet is written and the way that a hip-hop verse is written.

A sonnet has 14 lines, and you can have rhyming couplets throughout.

So you can have the first line rhyme with the second line.

Then the third could rhyme with the fourth, and the fifth could rhyme with the sixth, and you can continue that way.

The end is always a rhyming couplet by itself.

So in the poem that I wrote, every other line rhymed.

There are other rules with a sonnet like iambic pentameter.

Iambic pentameter means there are exactly 10 syllables in every single line.

"If sharks had lungs and legs and lived on land."

Every single line has to have 10 syllables.

Now, that is a challenge, but that's one of the reasons why I love the sonnet form.

Every time I jump into one, I feel like I'm doing a puzzle or I'm trying to solve something.

There are lots of different forms.

We've talked about free verse.

We've talked about rhyming couplets.

We've talked about sonnets now.

We've talked about haiku.

But there are any number of ways that you can share that writing with somebody else.

One of the ways that I love is called spoken word.

Spoken word poetry means that the poetry is meant to be read for someone else to listen to.

"I had a dream I was in a three-man tag match, and it was me, Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr., and John Cena versus hate, anger, and racism, who looked meaner than I'd ever seen him.

And I said, 'Dr.

King, I wouldn't have expected to see you in a wrestling match.'

And he said, 'Well, you must know that fighting is not part of the plan.

We're going to defeat these three across the ring without ever laying a hand.'

And when the bell sounded, we knew they were up to no good.

They were flying off of the top ropes, raining down on my neighborhood."

That was just a piece of a longer poem that I wrote in a style called spoken word.

Spoken word poetry is meant to be read aloud, and it's meant to be heard by an audience.

So I have a lot of fun with that because I love playing around with the meanings of words.

So when you have a word like dreams, which means something that we have going on in our minds when we're asleep, but also something that's a goal we want to accomplish.

I like playing with those two parts of it and making it really feel like a dream.

But also, the content of that poem was pretty serious, right?

I'm talking about Dr.

King, but I'm also talking about battling against hate, anger, and racism.

So what I have there is a technique called personification.

That's when you give human qualities to something that is not human.

So, those are things that I would want to battle.

I would want to battle and take out hate, anger, and racism, and so that piece was a way for me to explore what Dr.

King might say and the methods that he might use that I could put in place myself.

So, hope that you enjoyed that one.

And I really hope that you can see, also, that that piece is an example of everything we talked about before.

There's a lot of content there, and there's also a lot of craft moves to make it carefully worded and hopefully get the point across in a fun way.

'Cause even though it's a serious topic, sometimes we want to make sure that what we're saying gets delivered to our audiences in the right way.

How do you communicate it?

How do you convey it?

Is it something that's going to be a serious-sounding poem, or is it going to be something that you give a little bit more life, and you want it to be lighter so that people hear it and have fun with it?

And I hope that I got a balance of it in that poem.

So, I want you to walk away with a couple of things.

Please know that poetry is about self-expression.

If there's something that you have inside that you struggle to understand or you're dying to get out, try throwing it in a poem.

See if it helps you to understand it or maybe just feels good to put it down on paper.

Don't worry about having the best-sounding poem.

Don't worry about it being perfect, because the next step for any of us would be to go back into our notebooks and say, "Hmm.

Does that say what I want it to say in the way that I want to say it?"

And if not, guess what -- you change it, revise it, edit it, play with it, share it with somebody else.

There are many rules to poetry, but you choose which ones you want to follow.

If you take nothing else away, take that.

Okay?

Take that.

All right.

So, I'm hoping that you got something from it.

I am Tony Jackson, and it's been a pleasure sharing with you.

All right, everybody.

Go out and write some poems.

Let's go.

Peace.