What is Poetry?

[packbat]

What is poetry? What is it?
Is it words in lines the author chooses?
What makes poetry? What makes it?
What makes prose not poetry?

Ancient poems in verse were written
Rhyme and meter being sound and rhythm
Modern Muses cast off scansion
Writing, lacking meter, modern poems.

Is just imagery sufficient?
What do poets want to make in writing?
Is mere metaphor unfinished
When it lacks the form of ancient writing?

What is poetry? What is it?
How am I my poetry to write?

Comments

everybody's a critic

[(Anonymous)]

nice --- though if you're being self-referential you might perhaps want some imagery in the third stanza ... and I had expected the second line of the second stanza to be something like "Rhyme and meter, sound and rhythm" to (if for only a moment!) be rigidly metric (^_^) ... just my $0.02 ... ^z

Re: everybody's a critic

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I know what you mean about line 5 – that's what I had there initially, actually. As for the self-reference aspect, I hadn't really thought it through. To tell the truth, this is actually the first draft – quite literally the blog-entry-equivalent in poetry. The 2¢ are appreciated, though!