It never fails. Every year as National Poetry Month comes around, I begin thinking of poetry's role across writing disciplines. All of my favorite fiction writers deploy poetic language and this is true regardless of genre: science fiction, fantasy, mystery, memoir, all of them really.
I love language. Always have. I love the ebb and flow of well-crafted sentences: the way the words chosen strike an emotional chord, the way the (vital) arrangement of those words conveys the meaning of a passage or of a single sentence (and how reordering the arrangement of those same words can change a sentence's meaning), and how the selection of one word over another of the same meaning instills nuance.
I read poetry to learn these (and other) techniques. Why do you read poetry?
I love language. Always have. I love the ebb and flow of well-crafted sentences: the way the words chosen strike an emotional chord, the way the (vital) arrangement of those words conveys the meaning of a passage or of a single sentence (and how reordering the arrangement of those same words can change a sentence's meaning), and how the selection of one word over another of the same meaning instills nuance.
I read poetry to learn these (and other) techniques. Why do you read poetry?