...
The world has yet to define poetry in no uncertain terms. To each it is something different. To me, poetry is capturing a moment. It is an expression of the emotional energy and intensity of that moment. The organizing of words formed in the feelings, about life as I know it. My mind processes in images and colors, ideas and emotions. Words are only a way of sifting through the tangled web of my consciousness; and putting together the pieces.
Poetry. It is an internal language, one that you feel. If you can't feel it, you won't see or hear it. You either understand it, or you don't.
If you understand it you can appreciate it.
Understand...appreciate...to enjoy...to speak...and to become...
We are what we love. And what we love is who we are.
Here are some excerpts from an article I found:
There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;" Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;" and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing."
Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people. Perhaps the characteristic most central to the definition of poetry is its unwillingness to be defined, labeled, or nailed down.
Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paint-spattered canvas - but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the canvas is you.
One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page. The poet, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.
One may use prose to narrate, describe, argue, or define. There are equally numerous reasons for writing poetry. But poetry, unlike prose, often has an underlying and over-arching purpose that goes beyond the literal. Poetry is evocative. It typically evokes in the reader an intense emotion: joy, sorrow, anger, catharsis, love... Poetry is artistically rendering words in such a way as to evoke intense emotion or an Ah Ha! experience from the reader -- revelation, insight, further understanding of elemental truth and beauty.
Like Keats said:
"Beauty is truth. Truth, beauty.
That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know."
To borrow a phrase, poetry is a riddle wrapped in an enigma swathed in a cardigan sweater. It doesn't like your definitions and will shirk them at every turn. If you really want to know what poetry is, read it. Read it carefully. Pay attention. Read it out loud. Now read it again.
Defining poetry is like grasping at the wind - once you catch it, it's no longer wind.
(excerpts taken from this article)
