Content relates to mood or feelings evoked by nature or the seasons. Asking students to write their own patterned poetry encourages word play and challenges them to create rhyme and rhythm in a structured format. Both the reading and the writing of patterned poetry demand discipline. Writing it requires searching for the perfect word to express the desired image. Reading it requires constructing inferences to recreate the poem's meaning.
Many students enjoy composing patterned poetry in pairs or teams.
The message of the poem is revealed through the choice and arrangement of words on the page. Reading and writing concrete poems can help students to appreciate the importance of putting meaning before structure and can aid visual imagery, encourage creative thinking, and make abstract ideas more immediate and tangible. This poetic form is also fun to create at the computer. B. Cullinan, Literature and the Child, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1981.