Poetry is release. It's letting all the words that have rolled around in your head gathering certainty fall out of your mouth or trickle from your fingertips.

Poetry is therapy. Sometimes thoughts and words are toxic and you just can't heal if they stay inside of you, and if you don't have anyone to help you remove the poison, you just have to let it out yourself.

Poetry is fuel. When you need to be creative and think in a different way, poetry is a great ignition switch. The twisting and turning of words and phrases can eventually make a rather interesting sculpture, or painting, or business card.

Poetry is emotion. Taking your feelings and comparing them to symbols that grant similar feelings to others is an incredible experience. Describing the emotions felt by someone else in order to invoke emotions in an audience is the closest thing to magic I've ever seen.

Poetry is expression. When you think you might be the only one who hates, fears, loves, cries, desires, requires, lives, dies, wants, needs, or doesn't know something, writing down these thoughts and expressing them to others will allow you to learn so much about the people around you.