There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;” Emily Dickenson said, “If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;” and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: “Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing.”
T.S. Eliot wrote that
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
Ultimately poetry refuses to be defined. Poems can be written in blank verse or free verse. They may rhyme, or not. They can be as long as the epic poems of a certain blind poet or as short as a haiku:
alone in a boat
in the middle of the sea
my boat has a leak
Rather than attempting to define poetry, perhaps it is easier to ask:
What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
Tags: Poetry
October 7th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Interesting to come across such a post on p.g.o. I find that there are two essential features that distinguish poetry from prose. The first is terseness. In poetry the density of thought is much higher than in prose, great poetry pushes the capacity of language not just to it’s limits but beyond them, capturing in a word that ‘normal’ language would need sentences or pages for.
The second feature common to all poetry is parallelism, by which I mean the techniques used by the poet to create links, to hold the language pushed beyond it’s normal uses and limits together; these techniques vary from language to language and from culture to culture, but the concept is essential to all poetry: it makes it clear to the reader that there is more to the words than at first meets the eye/ear, it allows the words to stimulate our imagination, it forces us to seek meaning even in combinations of words that at first seem to lack meaning.
But I would not want to claim this to be a definition of poetry, definitions assume that the object can be subject to rules, and the ability to ‘abuse’ language in this way well evades all attempts to codify it. Some have it, they are born with it, others strive, but without success; one of life’s great mysteries.
October 7th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
A Belgian poet, Herman De Coninck, wrote (in Dutch):
Poëzie
Zoals je tegen een ziek dochtertje zegt:
mijn miniatuurmensje, mijn zelfgemaakt
verdrietje, en het helpt niet;
zoals je een hand op haar hete voorhoofdje
legt, zo dun als sneeuw gaat liggen,
en het helpt niet:
zo helpt poëzie.
This is my quick translation… don’t blame the poet for what I wrote!
Poetry
The way you say to a daughter who’s ill:
my minature girl, my self made
sorrow, and it doesn’t help;
the way you put a hand on her feverish forehead,
lying thin as snow,
and it doesn’t help:
it’s how poetry helps.
October 13th, 2005 at 10:11 am
What Is Poetry ? My soul on canvas!
December 30th, 2005 at 3:08 am
Help, please, the question is, the name given when a poet names an inanimate object and animate description. We’re stumped. Thanks, Beth
December 30th, 2005 at 9:17 am
Are you refering to anthropomorphization?