Poetry

I feel like I might be in the slight minority after having read others' posts, I have always liked poetry, and this has always seemed like the easiest thing for me to teach students. When I was teaching overseas the idea of grouping together similar sounding words, which is probably the simpilist form of poetry, encourages children because they are able to compose something which actually sounds good quite easily.
On the other hand, some of the ideas presented in this book made absolutely no sense and I am looking forward to class to gain clarification. What is an I Am poem? Which songs that are popular today have lyrics which would even roughly be considered as good poetry? I know that songs do exist, and some rap is amazingly lyrical, but these songs are simply not on the radio and if they are I have never heard them.
I feel that poetry is a good way of expressing a variety of senses in a short composition. A good poem should not only tell you something, but it should make you feel something and think. I tried teaching poetry the first time after reading "Never More-by Edgar Allen Poe" this was such a bad idea! The kids did not understand the poem, and they didn't have a clue what to write when I asked them to get out their pens and paper. The second time I taught them to write Buddha Death Poems, they are simple and profound and more than that they are easy to understand, well superficially at least. This was a much better lesson and I was thinking about different things which I might take from this reading to adapt my style of teaching poetry from now on and I am at a loss. Maybe it will just take me a while to turn over the thoughts and adapt them with my own experiences, but once again, I am really looking forward to class today.

What's your favorite poem and why? Mine is Life Story by Tennesse Williams, because it makes me laugh everytime I read it.