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by Anonymous on January 8th, 2007

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In your opinion, what constitutes "a poem"? What criteria does a piece of writing have to fulfil in order to be considered poetry?

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  • by Carmella on January 8th, 2007

    Carmella

    Things that rhyme, thing that have a structure (ABAB,AABB).
    It doesn't have to, but it does need something that sets it apart from just a split up short story.

    To be honest, it's easier for me to think what doesn't constitute a poem than what does, and in my opinion continuous lines of

    'There was a tree
    It's branches waved
    The birds tweeted' -Well that isn't a poem, though many people say that sort of thing is. To me it's a story with short lines.

    (My brain's on biology right now, so I'm not very coherent in my use of English termininology, forgive my lack of sophistication!)

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  • by Firebrand on January 8th, 2007

    Firebrand

    A poem is emotion expressed verbally. It does not have to be rhyming or what everyone else would determine as a poem but what is felt and descriptive of something or somebody you see or feel

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  • by tripwire on January 8th, 2007

    tripwire

    I don't consider those rhyming rythmic verse type things, where the last word of one line rhymes with the last word of the next and so on, as poems. Well, not good ones anyway. I always think of them as poems for dummies, but that's just my opinion.

    Example: A dummy poem has to rhyme
    It also has to keep in time
    So, other dummies think it's great
    and are inspired to create
    more dummy poems of their own
    and round and round and round we goin!

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  • by blessings on January 8th, 2007

    blessings

    "Poem" is ANY composition in verse, and can even refer to something merely suggesting verse, as in, 'The old victorian Bed & Breakfast was itself a poem.'.

    A question was asked in AnswerBag about one's middle initials, and on the spur of the moment I did mine in verse. (I wish I could go back and 'tweak' it a bit in hindsight,<alas, alas>).
    If you are curious, it is at
    http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/106031/238434

    As to your second question, Webster's calls it first metrical writing (verse) and the production of a poet (regardless of whether published). The second and more in depth definition is '...writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.' The third says poetry can be something likened to poetry, especially in beauty of expression.

    I don't know about 'beauty of expression, in the example link I gave you. I was just trying to whip out a ditty on Hell in the constraining letter format of middle initials.

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  • by JustAnotherDeadPoet on January 8th, 2007

    JustAnotherDeadPoet

    A poem has to have rhyme, rhythm and structure. If it lacks one of these things, it remains as just a reflection or a beautiful thought. Which I like, but are not poems. In a good poem, rhyme and rhythm are important, 'cause it's not just what you say but how you say it.
    So, I find "free style" poems to be just lazyness of someone who wanted to write a poem but didn't take the time to think of two words that rhyme.
    I like to write poetry, 8 syllables, 7 verses (ABBACCA), but I like any poem, as long as it "sounds" beautiful.

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  • by Im Alec has abandoned this account on January 8th, 2007

    Im Alec has abandoned this account

    A work in which the creator has considered every word for its secondary meanings as well as its primary ones. In a prose work, lots of words could be replaced by synonyms and or synonyms and the work would be little impaired. In a poem, each word is the best possible, considered with all those around it, and if words could be replaced by better ones, the poet was not a good poet.

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  • by RFlagg on January 8th, 2007

    RFlagg

    In my experience, poetry is just whatever comes out when you open your mind a little and pick up a notebook.
    It can be any kind of verse, does'nt have to rhyme, or fit any kind of rythym. (After all, it's poetry, not music.)

    I write some poetry, but no one knows because I'm too scared to actualy put it out and present it as poetry, it just sort of finds it's way into my posts, or my profile at some point, or I blurt it out while I'm watching TV, making my dad assume I've gone crazy again.

    Shows you how loose and unstructured poetry can be, that it can actualy be mistaken for coherent though and human speach.

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  • by staffie on January 8th, 2007

    staffie

    well poetry can be a verse that doesnt rhyme or one that does. when i write poems they are always about my feelings at the time and i always make them rhyme. i like a good poem that rhymes

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  • by hijklmno on January 20th, 2007

    hijklmno

    "The best words in the best order" was said by Coleridge.

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  • by hijklmno on January 20th, 2007

    hijklmno

    Some answers to this by modern poets from The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations:

    Seamus Heaney - Poetry is language in orbit

    Leonard Cohen - Poetry is a verdict that others give to language that is charged with music and rhythm and authority.

    Les Murray - Poetry's a zoo in which you keep demons and angels.

    Charles Wright - Poetry is language that sounds better and means more...

    Don Paterson - A poem is a machine for remembering itself.

    There are lots more in the book (6 pages in fact).

    But for me a poem can rhyme or not, it can have metre or be formless. It doesn't matter what it looks like, what it sounds like is important to me. My definition would probably be: a poem is balanced language that conveys a layered message.

    Or maybe not... I'll have changed my mind by tomorrow. :)

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  • by uncleDale on April 10th, 2007

    uncleDale

    As an old fart once said,
    he couldnt recall
    what he had just read.
    so in thought he went to bed
    woke up next morning, dead.
    poetic license for his choosing
    didnt really die, was he boozing
    so death by bottle he tried
    to explain but only denied
    woke up beside his cat
    later in the day madam lechat
    no ryme no reason he didnt care
    as long as one person
    understood his ramblings there.

    this is a sample of the worst poem i ever wrote, but its poetry, because you just read it.
    I have always believed that as long as the poem reaches one listening ear, then its poetry. where in a poem no matter how great, unless shared is not poetry but feelings written down. words must be shared to be considered poetry. I may be wrong but i have become the old fart in the poem. Sorry if i offended any one it wsnt my intension.

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  • by Nulinvoid on January 11th, 2007

    Nulinvoid

    Poetry is about the artistic use of language. Poems do NOT have to have rhythm, or rhyme. Poetry doesn't even have to make sense. It can have both, but does not have to have either. Poetry is painting a mental picture with words. It doesn't have to be a visual picture either. The real art of poetry is using precise words, and as few as possible, to paint a vivid picture of a view, an idea, a concept, an ideal, a reality. A couple of good brief examples of rhyme, and no rhyme:

    Verse, with rhythm and rhyme:

    Any hound a porcupine nudges
    Can't be blamed for harboring grudges.
    I know one hound that laughed all winter
    At a porcupine that sat on a splinter.- Ogden Nash

    Total free form. No rhythm (okay there is rhythm there, but you have to find it), or rhyme:

    A Night-Piece

    ------The sky is overcast
    With a continuous cloud of texture close,
    Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
    Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
    A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
    So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
    Chequering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
    At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
    Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
    His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
    Bent earthwards; he looks up--the clouds are split
    Asunder,--and above his head he sees
    The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
    There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
    Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
    And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
    Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
    Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree,
    But they are silent;--still they roll along
    Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
    Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
    Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
    At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
    Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
    Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
    Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

    William Wordsworth

    What's the criteria?

    Somebody called it poetry.

    If enough people call it poetry, it is.

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