Poetry- your best (and worst) friend

When one hears ones English teacher say that the class is beginning a poetry unit, one tends to freak out. "Poetry?!" One thinks, "Oh, no! I can't write poetry!" or "Ugh. Poetry's so boring." Well, it doesn't have to be boring or hard at all. In fact, I quite enjoy poetry. Sort of. Okay, yeah, I do find some poems boring, as anyone does. But isn't it the same as stories? Some are boring, some are amazing. There's no comparison between Shakespeare’s works and JK Rowling's, is there? They're two different people, and write about completely different things. It's silly to group them together. Same goes for Poetry. Sometimes, you'll love a poem. It’ll really click, and you'll feel like, "Wow! That’s exactly how I feel!" You can relate to it. Other poems, however, aren't so great. It varies depending on the person, just as one's taste in stories varies. There are many different types of poems, too. Short witty limericks, such as Dr. Seuss poems, ballads, such as Paul Revere's Ride, epics, such as the Odyssey. Some rhyme, some don't. Some go by syllables, like haiku. Others are called free verse, where there doesn't have to be a rhyme, or a pattern, or any rules at all- those are entirely up to the writer! Which is why writing poems doesn't have to be hard, either. Different styles are preferred by different writers. And if you are stuck, just start writing free verse. Jot down a phrase per line, and BAM, you have a poem! It's true; I do get intimidated by poetry. I used to write some, but since I've stopped. I wouldn't write it at all, except for the fact that in Creative Writing we're doing poetry. But I do enjoy poems. My favorite types are the short, quirky limericks, and the longer ballads and epics. I like how they weave a poem and story together. Haiku, to me, is too short and restrained, so I don't like it much. I love rhymes and patterns, although I'm not too good at finding rhymes. I used to go through the alphabet trying to rhyme stuff with "orange," until I discovered there was no rhyme for it in English. But that's okay- one can always make up new words in poetry, after all! Did you know that some poems consist entirely of made-up words, or some poets just add a few bits of jumble to make rhymes because they can't think of a rhyming word? It’s true! Really anything goes in poetry. I've read lots of poems in the past. Besides the mandatory English ones, I have a few cousins and friends who write poetry. They each have extremely different styles, although most of it's free verse. Sometime's they're good, sometime's they're not. Oh, and no one can forget the poems of Dr. Seuss, the greatest children’s' author ever! Anyway, that's all I have on Poetry.