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Someone told about my poetry

"all this is stereotypical female rambling. Poetry is about structure and rythm."

Help me giving a good definition of what poetry is......

Dear Sandra,
My reply may, or may not, be helpful; but I read your post and gave it some thought.

* Pressed for a definition of poetry, Robert Frost replied, "Poetry is the kind of things poets write". I don't think he was trying to evade the question, but inviting the questioner to think for him/herself. The trouble with definitions is that they can preclude further thought; once informed there's no need for further wonder.

* Louis Armstrong was once asked, "What is jazz?" His reply was, "Man, if you gotta ask the question, then you'll never know the answer".

* Poetry is verse (though not all verse is poetry).Poetry uses the same techniques as verse, but transcends verse in a way that escapes definition. Like all art, it adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

There is more I could say, but reading poetry and the act of translating an idea onto a piece of paper can reveal much.

I hope this helps
Andrew.
P.S. "adds up to more than the sum of its parts": that's just one yardstick I use to decide if I've written a poem, verse, or chopped prose.

I have a book called, "Writers On Writing." One of the chapters is "poets and poetry."

I don't have any personal words of wisdom to define poetry, but thought some of these comments would be interesting…

The poet is like the prince of the clouds, who rides the tempest and scorns the archer. Exiled on the ground, amidst boos and insults, his giant's wings prevent his walking.
Charles Baudelaire

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Jean Cocteau

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W.H Auden

A poet, with the exception of mysterious water-fluent tea-drinking Auden, must be a highly-conscious technical expert.
Cyril Connolly

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.
Oscar Wilde

In the case of many poets, the most important thing for them to do…is to write as little as possible.
T.S. Eliot

The public has and unusual relation with the poet. It does not even know that he is there.
Randall Jarrell

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.
Christopher Morley

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
Thomas B. Macaulay

No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
T.S. Eliot

A poet should be treated with leniency and, even when damned, should be damned with respect.
Edgar Allan Poe

Poets aren't very useful.
Because they aren't consumeful or very produceful.
Ogden Nash

My quarrel with poets is not that they are unclear, but that they are too diligent.
E.B. White

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.
Dylan Thomas

When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
Stephen Spender

Poetry is the only art people haven't yet learned to consume like soup.
W.H. Auden

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
Emily Dickinson

I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, but not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.
John Keats

The blood jet is poetry
There is no stopping it.
Sylvia Plath

I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.
John Cage

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a religion without hope.
Jean Cocteau

Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.
Thomas Hardy

I have no fancy ideas about poetry. It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you work hard at.
Louis Bogan

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Stephen Spender

Ignorance is one of the sources of poetry.
Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.
John Steinbeck

Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.
John Wain

Poetry is mostly hunches.
John Ashbery

Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another.
Robert Frost

Poetry lies its way to the truth.
John Ciardi

Blank verse, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters-the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
Ambrose Bierce

Thank you Ändrew for your interesting answer......I am looking at your avatar and I remember an actor (can you guess?)

OOOOOOhhh Laurie what a great reply......I am amazed.....

Prose is use of language.

Good prose is great use of language.

Verse is good prose bound by structure and rhythm.

Poetry is good verse creating a universe.

Good poetry is poetry that makes the reader create a universe.

Great poetry is good poetry that does all this, and adds something that even good poetry won't be able to describe.

tom

You said :"Great poetry is good poetry that does all this, and adds something that even good poetry won't be able to describe. "

tom: that SOMETHING is the one I like

Dear Sandra,
Without wishing to detract from Tom's "definition" of poetry(which is good enough for me!), who is the actor you had in mind when you saw my avatar?
I can't guess, but can you guess whose picture it is?
I'll give you a clue: it isn't me! (The Gallery of Beautiful losers has a mugshot of me).
I'll give you another clue: a pair of brown eyes.
Andrew.

mmmmmm...yes Andrew I had seen your photo in the gallery and I found this pic rather different but thinking this was you when you were younger I dare to say it was you....and it remembered me James Dean...

brown eyes..... now is your turn to explain that to this ignorant woman.....

Dear Sandra,
The picture is that of, arguably, the finest singer/songwriter to come from Ireland in the last 30 years; and that includes the likes of Van Morrison, Christy Moore, Paul Hewson (aka Bono), Sinead O'Connor, et al.
He is Shane MacGowan.
Try searching http://www.shanemacgowan.com for further information.
Andrew.

Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:27 pm

"Poetry is the only democracy"

Thanks for your explanation Andrew....


"Poetry is the only democracy"

did you say that Byron?....

No, I heard it on a BBC Radio 4 discussion involving various writers, thinkers and poets. I didn't catch who actually said it, but the words hit me like a bolt from the blue.
The man who used the description said that we are all poets and no-one can take that from us. The way we think and the way we feel are all poetic impulses that colour our lives, whether it be in joy, sadness, spirituality, loss, longing.........when we feel the emotion and hear the words in our heads, we are poets at that time. Even if we do not hear the words, but only experience the feelings, we are experiencing true poetry.
It was just a few words in a short sentence, but they encapsulated poetry as it is, as it feels in the human condition, and shows us how it allows us all a measure of the beauty of poetry.
I hope this helps.

Byron.....that is very true indeed!