Teaching poetic devices with pop songs can be a fun and engaging way to help students learn about poetry. It can also help them to appreciate the beauty and complexity of language.
Tone Tunes: Using Music to Teach Tone in Poetry
National Poetry Month: A WHOLE MONTH of Poetry Activities for Secondary ELA
Love it or hate it, poetry is unavoidable in the secondary ELA classroom. I, for one, am a HUGE lover of poetry but fully acknowledge that it can be annoyingly cryptic at times. Reading poetry reminds us that not all texts are meant to be beat "with a hose to find out what [they] really mean" like in the Billy Collins poem "Introduction to Poetry."