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-What is Poetry-
What is poetry?
There isn't really a single, satisfactory answer for this
question, since there is nothing more subjective than
poetic thought.
Poetry is not just a form, it is a way of reaching
something beyond the commonplace. Was there more
"poetry" in the music of Mozart than Salieri?
Almost certainly. More in the painter Velazquez than some
imitator? Yes. More in Fitzgerald than Howard Pyle?
Certainly the critics would say so. More in Bob Dylan
than Alanis Morrisette? Many adults who lived Dylan's
words would say so, but many teens and most
record-sellers wouldn't!
Actually there's poetry in all of the above examples,
greater and lesser. And what you think of all that has a
lot has to do with what art you've been exposed to, and
how much of it.
But what about taking written poetry down to a
definition. Can we? I'm not going to bother to go to
Webster's for this -- and maybe you have another
definition -- but here goes.
Written poetry is "a planned writing which reaches a
basic truth about or an essence of an object, idea, scene
or emotion it describes, both in the images it evokes and
in the sound of its reading, whether aloud or off the
printed page, and it is effective both in immediate
utterance of its lines and rests, and as an entire
construction, separate from other writing to which it may
or may not be considered attached."
Now, that may take in a Shakespeare solioquy (and many
dialogues), a psalm from the Bible, a paragraph of a
speech from Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, a Bob
Dylan song, a chapter of Fitzgerald, Wolfe or Kerouac, or
a semi-planned off-color anecdote by comedian Lenny
Bruce.
Of course, the idea that the piece has to be
self-contained means that arbitrary descriptive lines
(unless they work by themselves as a sort of epigram or
philosopical saying) probably don't cross the line from
rhetoric (descriptive, expository writing) to poetry --
an art as immediate and essential as painting, scupture,
music or dance.
So describing what literally constitutes written poetry
is a tough assignment. William Carlos Williams' famous
poem about a red wheelbarrow may not sound like poetry
when you hear it, but when you look at it on the page,
your doubts may disappear. He has taken the commonplace
and made it uncommon, first by isolating the images of
the wheel barrow, the rain and the white chickens as he
does, and by bathing these images on the page with white
space all 'round them. He makes them important,
essential.
In fixed forms, like sonnets, use of regular meter like
iambic pentameter or tetrameter and rhyme schemes may tip
you off that what you are reading is "poetry."
But it's actually first a literary exercise following
rules that may or may not become poetry based on the
skill of the writer, his knowledge of the poet's tools,
and just what he has to say about something.
That's why there's so much bad stuff out there that looks
like poetry, but ain't. That's the difference between
Polly in middle school and W.B. Yeats. Of course, with a
little work in those fixed forms, Polly might be the next
W.B. Yeats. And even if she isn't, she can at least be
Polly, a working poet reaching people who need and want
to be reached with her craft and creativity.
Likewise, just throwing words and phrases on paper
haphazardly, or taking pedestrian prose lines like
"My cat died today. I am really sad. " and
breaking that up over five or six lines (Williams-style
but not Williams' content!) doesn't cut it either.
Just like Picasso knew how to paint "straight,"
T.S. Eliot, known for his free-verse masterpieces, also
wrote marvelously in fixed forms when he cared to. Craft
(knowlege of metaphor, sound and rhythm, among other
things) still rules the day, and good free verse (without
the crutch of formal rules) may be the toughest thing to
write. But with real work, it can be something stupendous
and enduring.
Often, in trying to explain what poetry is, you end up
explaining what it isn't. But in the end, if you have the
INTENT to move a reader, something ORIGINAL to say, the
CRAFT to say it in a pared-down, essential way, and a
reader to say, "Hey, that moved me!" you
probably have poetry.
And with a little editing, you might even have good
poetry.