Poetry is saying the true thing in fewer words than you thought possible.

Poems work by compression. A good one takes something you could explain in a paragraph and finds the three words that do it better, which means most of the writing is cutting rather than adding. The surprise is that the shorter version is more accurate and not less, because every word left in had to earn the space.

Take something you have written, a caption or a note or a message you never sent, and cut it in half without losing the meaning. Read both versions out loud. Whether or not you ever read poetry, that habit improves everything you write.