Poetry and poetic form
This afternoon, as I was editing some poetry that will be posted on the college's website, I got to thinking about the discussion on poetic form that has been going on over at Laura Salas's site ( http://laurasalas.livejournal.com/43070.html ). As you'll be able to tell, that made me hurry on over to post some comments, but I'm still thinking about it.
I think we all agree, poetry is more than prose broken into short lines. But if it doesn't have to rhyme and it doesn't have to have meter to be recognized as poetry, what does make it poetry? Take Whitman, Dickinson, and ee cummings, three very different poets. How do we recognize what they write as poetry? Is it the cadence, the rhythm of the language, is it the contained imagery, is it word play, is it heightened emotion?
For me, I think poetry is all those things, plus, even more so than with prose, attention has to be paid to Every Single Word and to its placement, and then to the relationship of each line to the others, and their placement on the page.
Having said that, here's a haiku for today, having to do with the storm New England is having today:
snow and sleet falling
freeze on trees, cling to branches
like a chalk outline.
(Time to get the shovel out.)
Kathy
I think we all agree, poetry is more than prose broken into short lines. But if it doesn't have to rhyme and it doesn't have to have meter to be recognized as poetry, what does make it poetry? Take Whitman, Dickinson, and ee cummings, three very different poets. How do we recognize what they write as poetry? Is it the cadence, the rhythm of the language, is it the contained imagery, is it word play, is it heightened emotion?
For me, I think poetry is all those things, plus, even more so than with prose, attention has to be paid to Every Single Word and to its placement, and then to the relationship of each line to the others, and their placement on the page.
Having said that, here's a haiku for today, having to do with the storm New England is having today:
snow and sleet falling
freeze on trees, cling to branches
like a chalk outline.
(Time to get the shovel out.)
Kathy