Celebrated poet and critic Michael Rosen takes readers on a whirlwind tour exploring what poems are, what they can do, and the joys of reading and writing them.For thousands of years, people have been writing poetry. But what is poetry? Award-winning wordsmith Michael Rosen has spent decades thinking about that question, and in this helpful guide he shares his insights with humor, knowledge, and appreciation — appreciation for poetry and appreciation for twenty-first-century