What is Poetry?
Etymology The term poetry was first used in 1380 to mean any creative literature Before that, Poet was used as a surname for one who was an author Originally borrowed from the Greek poiein, which meant to make or compose
A textbook definition Poetry is one of the three major types of literature, the others being prose and drama. Poems are often divided into lines and stanzas and often employ regular rhythmical patterns or meters. Most poems make use of highly concise, musical, and emotionally charged language. Many poems also make use of imagery, figurative language, and special devices such as rhyme.
Some famous poets define poetry Dante: Poems are things that are true expressed in words that are beautiful. William Wordsworth: I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry is the best words in the best order. Thomas Carlyle: Poetry is musical thought. Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty. Emily Dickinson: If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold, no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that it is poetry. W. B. Yeats: We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
Some famous poets define poetry E. A. Robinson: Poetry has two outstanding characteristics. One is that it is undefinable. The other is that is eventually unmistakable. Robert Frost: Poetry is the kind of thing that poets write. 2. A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. 3. A poem is an idea caught in the act of drawing. 4. A way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget. Elizabeth Bishop: Poetry is hundreds of things coming together at the right moment. W. H. Auden: Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings. Wallace Stevens Poetry is a search for the inexplicable. and A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman. Charles Simic: All lyric poems are narcissistic. They are the earliest form of the personal ad. They ve been saying for more than a thousand years, I m a sensitive, vulnerable, misunderstood, barely solvent, lovable little fellow who would like to meet a person of exquisite taste who is not averse to an occasional roll in the hay.
Poetry can be serious Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so, For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me. from John Donne s Holy Sonnet 10
or silly I don't mind eels Except as meals. And the way they feels. Ogden Nash, The Eel
Poetry can be about traditional subjects How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace from Elizabeth Barrett Browning s Sonnet 43
or about unusual subjects The broad-backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us He is merely flesh and blood from T. S. Eliot s The Hippopotamus
Poetry can be complex Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. from W. B. Yeats s The Second Coming
or simple The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. Carl Sandburg, Fog
Poetry can rhyme Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream from Edgar Allan Poe s A Dream Within a Dream
or not To live each day as if it might be the last Is an injunction that Marcus Aurelius Inscribes in his journal to remind himself That he, too, however privileged, is mortal, That whatever bounty is destined to reach him Has reached him already, many times. from Carl Dennis s A Maxim
Poetry can have a steady meter It's tricky to rock a rhyme To rock a rhyme that's right on time It's tricky (How is it D?) tricky tricky tricky tricky It's tricky to rock a rhyme To rock a rhyme that's right on time It's tricky tricky tricky tricky tricky tricky In New York the people talk and try to make us rhyme They really hawk, but we just walk, because we have no time And in the city it's a pity, 'cause we just can't hide Tinted windows don't mean nothing, they know who's inside - from Run D.M.C. s It s Tricky
or be written in free verse I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. from Walt Whitman s Song of Myself
Poetry can make perfect sense The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house All that cold, cold, wet day. I sat there with Sally. We sat there, we two. And I said, "How I wish We had something to do! from Dr. Seuss s The Cat in the Hat
or be nonsense Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. from Lewis Carroll s Jabberwocky
Poetry can look normal Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. from Robert Frost s Stopping by the Wood on a Snowy Evening
or not normal. At all. e e cummings
Poetry can make you cry W. H. Auden s Stop All the Clocks from Four Weddings and a Funeral
or make you cringe. My Mother by Jack Burns, from Meet the Parents