Define+It

So... while we were discussing the different aspects of Reginald Shepherd's essay, we came across the question of the day which seemed to be "What is the difference between poetry and prose?" After that hour-long analysis, I came to a conclusion of my own with the following views.

A written work is what the author says it is. If they want it to be poetry, it's poetry. That is one of the ideas we should accept about writer. Although the piece may not physically look like whatever they're saying it is, we still need to respect their piece and read it the way we would read the appropriate form. I think that we've been trained to recognize poems as one style and prose as another since kindergarten. We haven't been exposed to the various formats of writing styles past the basic forms of poetry, and possibly more "poetic" prose. Who knows? The journalist could have ran out of room on one side of the paper, so his or her paragraphs first appear as stanzas. We must be open.

Not only does the physical format count as a variable, but also the content. For example, The Colonel by Carolyn Forché is written in paragraph form, which, at first, confused many readers. The content also seemed nothing more than a simple journal entry, which we had learned, was how it started out. As we read deeper into the poem, certain lines popped out at us with a more "unusual" writing style than what we assumed to have been in the piece. "The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house." Not only was this sentence unexpected, but it also related to something that we didn't see when we first read it. It puzzled our minds. The content of the poem was unlike so many others. It didn't rhyme or have a beat to it. This is, I think, one of the other things that must be strictly from the mouth of the writer. At this point, content doesn't matter. As long as the writer says it's prose or poetry... that's what it is!

Because of these factors, I really wanted to make a clear definition of poetry in my head - one that had to be different than the definition of prose. I wanted a clear line separating the two. Finally, I think I grasped something that made it a little easier. No matter what the piece consisted of, gave the impression of, or looked like, it always returns back to the original source. I finally realized that both poetry and prose had similar definitions, and both these definitions always depended on the writer's point of view. 1203990804

Not to shoot down your entire thought process but the definition, in my mind, of poetry is not only irrelevant, but also non-existent. There is already one point in your statement that I could argue: you said that The Colonel by Forche had no rhythm or beat to it, but when I heard it read out loud there was a definite beat to it. Each sentence was short and staccato, providing a very choppy beat to the entire poem. So I do not think you can really come up with a "definition" of what is poetry and prose; sure you can have certain criteria and factors that you believe make up a poem or novel, yet there is something more intangible to it that cannot merely be defined or boxed up nice and neatly.1203998642

I'm not quite sure that we can base our definition of poetry on the point of view of the writer because, as Br. Tom said in class, the writer of The Colonel did not intentionally write it as a poem: someone else told her that it was a poem, so they published it as a poem. I think the most important part of a piece of writing that makes it poetry is its depth. Sure something can be well-written, but does it have a deeper meaning, a profound kind of statement in it that separates it from the mundane prose? I know I am definitely not a poet because I do not have a gift for expressing profound ideas, but any writer with that gift could be a poet, even if they didn't know it.... (sorry for the childish rhyme, but I couldn't stop myself...) 1203999951

There was a Simpsons episode that came to mind when Br. Tom mentioned that The Colonel was found in a notebook. Quick tangent: Moe the bartender has a bunch of phrases posted on his wall on little different sheets of paper. Lisa Simpsons comes in thinks each quote is so poetic and meshes them all together in one poem. The funny part of this was that Moe kind of stood to the side and said, "wow! I'm a poet!" Not his actual words, but close enough. He just wrote random phrases and somebody else turned them into pure poetry. It is kind of strange to think that someone else has to tell you what it is, even though you are the one that wrote it.

But back to the original idea of this topic. In my class, I got out the dicitonary and decided to define poem and poetry, I didn't quite get as far as prose. The interesting part of the definition of poetry was that they used the word prose. They described it as a type of prose with rhythmic qualities, etc. Actually, they defined a poem with almost every single adjective about writing. It seems as if the clever people writing the dictionary could not even think of a proper definition.

And that is very important when discussing this topic. Yes, someone could look at their notebook for class and say, "This is a poem!" And of course, some of us would believe it, others would not. I think that in order to really pass off your piece of writing as poetry you need the use the proper language in your poem. Of course if you have the rhyme scheme, etc it is considered poetry, but I believe that if it looks like prose but contains a certain type of language, it can be passed off as poetry. Sorry that this is a confusing response... it's such a confusing subject!! 1204085881

I don't think that it is at all possible to make clear definitions for poetry and prose. And because they are to closely related, and because they seem to intermingle in what everyone calls poetic prose, or prosy poetry it is impossible to make a distinction between them. If someone wants it to be poetry because they really find it poetric who has the authority to stop them. Is there some kind of poetry police that will hunt you down and tell you that you're wrong? I really don't think so, and there is not grand master of poetry that you could take your case to so I really don't think that the distinction matters at all.1204262226

Haha no jko, I don't believe that there is some kind of poetry police that will hunt you down if you write a poem that doesn't fit under any of the poem categories. It's all based on speculation from other writers, readers, students, professors, etc. A poem can be written in so many forms, but no matter what form it is, it is still a poem in some way, shape or form. Even if doesn't fit those definitions we put on certain types of poems, that doesn't mean we can declair it as not a phone. If the author wanted their writing to be a poem, then let it be a poem. No one can really stop them. We see all types of poetry out there. Why not let someone throw their idea of a poem in the mix as well.1205470739