William Haskins said:discuss.
Nateskate said:Poetry is the artful means of consolidating powerful thoughts into vivid word pictures.
Nateskate said:A single word, well placed, can be poetic.
kdnxdr said:There is a scripture that says something like this:
A word aptly spoken is like an apple of gold in a setting of silver.
jen.nifer said:Today I will say, a rhythmic arrangement of words.
Tomorrow I may have a different definition.
sarah s said:Poetry is mental masturbation.
oneovu said:In most artful writing (screenplays, novels, etc) the whole package is the art, the movie, the story, the song. Maybe in poetry it’s ALL about the words.
a certain lifting of the reader that occurs when it's a poem.
Does that mean that an unaffecting [for lack of a better word-one that fits the exhaltation criteria hinted at] poem isn't really a poem, or just that it isn't poetic?William Haskins said:okay, now we're cooking with gas. exaltation of the spirit, or the heart, or the intellect.
i would agree that this is one major component of poetry.
mkcbunny said:Does that mean that an unaffecting [for lack of a better word-one that fits the exhaltation criteris hinted at] poem isn't really a poem, or just that it isn't poetic?
What about work that moves us negatively, as opposed to work that has no effect at all? Bad reaction vs. no reaction. [I'm going with "no" but putting that out there].William Haskins said:well, exaltation would certainly be in the eye of the beholder, but i think human reason offers us the capacity to see that a piece of work is capable of moving a reader, somewhere, even when it fails to move us personally.
rhymegirl said:But the thing that still bothers me is that there has to be some distinction between a poem and a few sentences strung together or even one sentence simply placed on different lines. You see what I mean? If all you do is put a few sentences together, I mean anybody can do that. What makes it stand out? What makes it poetic? What makes it meaningful?
I'm afraid I must disagree with this idea. I think this sentiment is part of the problem causing people to lament the state of poetry and it's alleged demise.mkcbunny said:I'm of the mind that what makes a poem a poem is the poet's declaration thereof. Which is not to say that other forms of writing cannot be poetic without such a declaration, but rather that our assessment of the meter, rhyme, meaning, metaphorical content, etc, is irrelevant to the poem's existence as such.
I might say this is a poem:
Night Wind
blow
Now, others might say that this is a lousy poem. But if I present it as a poem, then it is one. [And I'm not, btw. LOL.] Regarding the Williams examples discussed earlier, several folks didn't think they were very poetic—which is a reader's subjective interpretation. But the fact that it's presented as poetry makes it so. If I put my shoe on a pedestal and call it "art," it is. Doesn't mean it's good art, or that Duchamp didn't do the same thing more successfully with a urinal.