the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts.
Which is nothing if not flowery.
Wikipedia says poetry
is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning.
Which is nothing if not cold.
Your answer will lie, I think somewhere between these two definitions. Like any other art, any attempt to describe poetry is in the mind of the beholder. In other words, don't ask a poet to define her work.
Just as painting is more than pigment on canvas, poetry is more than words on paper. Certainly there are formal rules of poetry if you're reading sonnets or haiku, jintishi or villanelle. But there are equal numbers of poems without apparent form, or forms invented purely for that occasion.
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
Have you ever heard a kid learning to talk? Nonsense words, spoonerisms, madcap sentences, and attempts to recite the alphabet backwards? Any experimentation with language for the sheer joy of it; playing with sounds as well as meanings.
For me, that is poetry.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men
said, "Oh, not scrambled eggs for dinner again!"
No comments:
Post a Comment