Back in the days of typewriters and pay phones, I took a literature class in which we wrestled with the notion that “poetry is equal parts passion and precision.” This idea of poetry stayed with me, and I made use of it when creating a poetry unit this April.

Although there is an emphasis in education now on informational texts, I wanted a space for poetry. Poetry allows both thought and silence on the page and has myriad forms. Especially for students who are not always eager readers, the range of poetry presents a compelling entry point.

In writing the unit, I wanted to move through the steps of engagement, imitation, analysis, revision and performance. This progression would allow space for a range of texts and emphasize literary and creative responses.

We started with a “pulse check.” Students were asked to end the phrase “poetry is …” in at least 10 ways. We whipped answers around: Poetry is rhyming, short, your heart on a page, full of feelings, a vital truth, boring. By having students register their prior impressions of poetry, we could start together at the same place.

I put the phrase about passion and precision on the board, and we pulled it apart. When does one need to be precise? The answers flew: during heart surgery, a break-up, a contract. What is passion, and when does one have it? Being in love, finding something that matters, caring beyond any fear of rejection. Then, I asked students to brainstorm: What would a process that required equal parts passion and precision look like? What would a writer have to do, or know how to do, in order to channel these two forces?

After they gathered their thinking, we filed out to the hallway. In long lines on both walls, I had taped 40 poems: everything from haiku to slam to sonnets. I wanted to show the range of work that the term “poetry” contains. I asked students to walk and read and to see which poems reached out to them. Except for the occasional pointing out of a line, it was silent.

After 15 minutes, each student selected a poem. We returned to class, and I asked students to free-write about why they had chosen their particular poems, and how were precision and passion in evidence in the poems? I also asked them to read their poems again and consider: How did the poem travel? What was changed or revealed by the end? How did the poet accomplish this? For homework, students were asked to write an imitation of the poem. They could choose a word or line, or use their own reaction to the poem as a way to start.

In this exercise, I wanted to stress to students that poetry, like all literature, is a space for dialogue and a conversation that they have a place in. The next day, they reflected on stepping into another’s words, what had been difficult about that and what easy. Students were invited to share their work, and our study began.

As part of the unit, I chose 10 challenging poems for close analysis. While we read, we also worked: Every class began with a writing experiment to open up a specific genre of poetry. I gleaned many ideas for this from Kenneth Koch’s “Sleeping on the Wing.” The goal was for students to read and write poetry concurrently, having one practice constantly informing the other. For the final assessments, students wrote in-class essays using their annotated copies of the 10 poems and a chapbook of their own work.

I brought in literary criticism to augment the students’ analyses, and students worked with their peer editors, revising their poems. They sweated over the in-class essay exams and brought in chapbooks in every shape and size, including two bottles filled with poems, a flowerpot in which every piece and petal was a poem, and a sword covered in words. The unit culminated in a poetry reading with students taking turns at the podium to share their words. On the last day, class-nominated readers read in front of the entire grade. Afterward, a student put a note in my box: “Thank you for bringing out the best in us. I was shocked by the talent in this class.”

I look forward to walking back into poetry next year. I hope that my students, having now made the trip, feel like they can return to poetry anytime they like.