Ask your students what they think poetry is. Have them spend five minutes freewriting their responses. Afterwards, spend 15 to 20 minutes discussing your students’ ideas. Ask them to consider song lyrics, and how they differ from normal speech. Discuss the elements of poetry that can be found in song lyrics, such as meter, rhyme and wordplay, and how these elements make lyrics a recognizably different sort of language than normal speech.
Pass out an example of a traditional poem to your students -- for example, one of Shakespeare’s sonnets -- and have one of your students read it aloud. Discuss with your students the elements of poetry found in the poem, such as line breaks, rhyme, meter and figurative language. Now pass out an example of a contemporary poem, such as James Tate’s “The Lost Pilot,” and have one of your students read it aloud. Discuss with your students which elements of poetry the contemporary poem shares with the traditional poem, such as line breaks and figurative language, and which it does not, such as regular rhyme and meter.
Pass out an example of prose writing, such as an article from a newspaper, and have one of your students read it aloud. Ask your students how this kind of writing is different from the poems they have seen, both traditional and contemporary. Now pass out to students an example of a prose poem, such as “I Am the Last…” by Charles Simic. Based on this example, ask your students what they think is meant by the term “prose poem” and whether they think a prose poem is closer to poetry or prose.
Split the class into two halves. Assign one half the task of “translating” an example of prose writing into poetry, and assign the other half the task of “translating” a poem into prose. Afterwards, have the students read their compositions aloud. Discuss with them how they went about “translating” their text, and what elements of poetry they chose to add or subtract. Ask which half of the class they believe had the easier task, and why.