What is Poetry?

1. What is Poetry? What some say… & what is problematic

2. Poetry (from the Greek "ποίησις”, a "making" or "creating") is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry ORIGINS

3. Composition in verse or language exhibiting conscious attention to patterns en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Poetry a form of literature that provides the best examples of the essential connection between form and content www.penmeapoem.com/glossary/glossary-i-p/ traditional poetry is language arranged in lines, with a regular rhythm and often a definite rhyme scheme. Nontraditional poetry does away with regular rhythm and rhyme, although is usually is set up in lines. library.thinkquest.org/23846/library/terms/index.html What some dictionaries/glossaries of literature say…

4. "Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials." • -Ezra Pound • “The obvious difference between poetry and prose is that prose is printed (or written) within the confines of margins, while poetry is written in lines that do not necessarily pay attention to the margins, especially the right margin.” • -Mary Oliver • “I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.” • -A.E. Housman What some poets say…

5. Excerpts from From Lawrence Ferlinghetti “What is Poetry: A Non-Lecture” • Poetry: the truth that reveals all lies. • Poetry, unlike armchair philosophy, does not leave the world unchanged. • Poetry is looking down both roads that diverge in a narrow wood. • It is a player-piano in an abandoned seaside casino, still playing. • Poetry is news from the growing edge on the far frontiers of consciousness. • Every bird a word, every word a bird, and birdsong is not made by machines. • It is a dragonfly catching fire. • Poetry is eternal graffiti in the heart of everyone. • It is a voice of dissent against the waste of words and the mad plethora of print. • It is all things born with wings that sing. • Poetry is the last refuge of humanity in dark times… • Let a new lyricism save the world from itself! What some poets say continued…

6. POETRY: I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT… Shakespeare’s Sonnet #18 – Assuredly a poem A picture of a Mallard Duckling NOT a poem • Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? • Thou art more lovely and more temperate: • Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, • And summer's lease hath all too short a date: • Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, • And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; • And every fair from fair sometime declines, • By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; • But thy eternal summer shall not fade • Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; • Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, • When in eternal lines to time thou growest: • So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, • So long lives this and this gives life to thee. Common Solutions & Problems in crafting a definition

7. But These are a Little “Greyer” • Do song lyrics like those of Bob • Dylan or other musicians qualify as • poetry even though their lyricism isn’t fully realized without performance/musical accompaniment? • Does it change anything that Dylan sees himself as a poet & has written several volumes of poetry outside of his musical career? • Idiot Wind~ excerpt from a song by Bob Dylan • Idiot wind blowing like a circle around my skull • From the Grand Coulee Dam to Capitol • Idiot wind blowing every time you move you teeth • You're an idiot babe. • It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe. • I can't feel you anymore, I can't even touch the books you've read • Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishing I was somebody else instead • Down the highway down the tracks down the road to ecstasy • I followed you beneath the stars hounded by your memory • And all you raging glory.

8. What about this 1965 “poem” by Aram Saroyan that began as a misspelled word on a typewriter? • lighght • The poem was published in the Chicago Review. It caused national controversy because the National Foundation for the Arts paid him $750 for its publication. • “Mailbags of letters from fuming taxpayers clogged the agency’s boxes, most of them variations on a theme: We can’t afford to lower taxes but we can pay some beatnik weirdo $500 to write one word…and not even spell it right?!” ~http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/179985 • “One day another of Saroyan’s friends, the poet Ted Berrigan, got a look at his latest one-word poem, eyeye, on a sheet of typewriter paper. “He said, ‘What the f*&%$ is this?’” Saroyan recalls, “which I thought was a promising response.”~ http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/179985 Does a poem have to have a beginning, middle and end? What is the minimum # of words that would qualify?

9. PROse Poetry: OXYMORON? • The red geraniums fluorescing on the terrace, the wind swaying the daisies, the baby's milk-fed eyes focusing for the first time on a double row of beloved teeth—what is there to report? Bloodlessness puts her to sleep. She perches on a rooftop, her brass wings folded, her head with its coiffure of literate serpents tucked beneath the left one, snoozing like a noon pigeon. There's nothing to do but her toenails. The sun oozes across the sky, the breezes undulate over her skin like warm stockings, her heart beats with systole and diastole of waves on the breakwater, boredom creeps over her like vines. • ~ Margret Atwood from Good Bones and Simple Murders Can a unit of text that isn’t organized into lines still be poetry if is short, imagistic language “pared down to its essentials”? … If it is poetic “with a little p”?

10. Hopefully you can see how arrogant it would be for me to define poetry for you. Sure, I have some ideas of my own which have evolved over time but they are not by any means authoritative. I simply ask for you to define the term as you now understand it for homework. After you have engaged in the process of writing poetry for a semester, you’ll have a chance to revisit your definitions.