What is Poetry?

Walt Whitman at desk

Recently, the editor of our local newspaper mentionedthat, "It would be fun to publish locally-written poetry in our paper...I would gladly publish such items, if mailed to me."  As an example from the Pratt Tribune of 1997, she shared Elm Trees, by Reva Obrecht McAnarney, a clever little verse referring back to the well-known poem "Trees," by Joyce Kilmer.  However, in McAnarney's poem it is not the beauty of trees that is described but rather "...A plant as stubborn as a tree.  The elm tree is the tree I mean, It often makes me want to scream..."  When I think of poetry, what comes to mind is the use of language in a beautiful way, often rhymed.  However, it was apparent that McAnarney was intentionally humorous.  If our newspaper editor was actually inviting poetry for publication in the newspaper, what is poetry?

The first definition that I found was "Prose = words in the best order; Poetry = the best words in the best order."  I didn't disagree with that, but it was a disappointing finition.  What I discovered was that the definition of Poetry is complicated.

The next thing I found was the suggestion that "the greatest poetry in the world is in the King James Bible."  However, according to Christianity.com there are 450 different translations of the Bible in English today.  Wikipedia suggests a list of ten, identifying the New Revised Standard Version as being broadly used, but with the English Standard Version emerging as a primary text.  The intention to make the text of the Bible more understandable for modern readers is understandable, but the beauty of the King James Bible is difficult to match and the reference to it as the world's greatest poetry is difficult to refute.

Edgar AIlan Poe

However, there are many examples of beautiful poetry, so I continued searching for a definition.  In a letter written in 1818, John Keats said, "I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by Singularity--it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Rembrance."  I like that explanation, but that seems to exclude many types of poems, so I kept looking.

I hated turning to poets long dead for a definition, but modern poets seem to have largely abandoned specific rules, leaving me to turn once more to the past.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge was taught that Poetry "had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science, and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes.  In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word."

One author, in trying to express the difference between prose and poetry, searched for two definitions of old age, one taken from the book "The Biological Time Bomb," and the other quoted from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets.  It was a great example of the differences but omitted a specific explanation. 

Mary Oliver

I never found exactly what I was looking for, but poet Mary Oliver came the closest. "Everyone knows that Poets are born and not made in school.  This is true also of painters, sculptors, and musicians.  Something that is essential can't be taught; it can only be given or earned, or formulated in a manner too mysterious to be picked apart and redesigned for the next person."  She explains with this:  "The poem is an attitude, and a prayer; it sings on the page and it sings itself off the page; it lives through genius and  technique."  And in her closing words, "For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry." 

 So much for finding a definition.  All that I have found for certain is that there are many kinds, from Free Verse, rhymed and unrhymed, humorous, Epic, Ballad, Sonnet, Haiku, Cinquain, Accrostic, and many more.  If our local newspaaper editor was serious about publishing local poets, there just may be a closet poet, who has been quietly waiting for an invitation.  I'll be watching.