what is poetry...

[bojangle]

poetry is everything. poetry is expressing the beauty in whatever through whatever means. the definition of poetry itself is poetic. poetry is not one thing, is not that thing, poetry is all things. through this or that we attempt to capture the beauty, simplicity of what is. to express the grip whatever has on us through this or that. hardly can this beauty be captured, but we try, we always try and we never give up. we hint and we allow our mind to fill the gap. what is is not as powerful as what is not. that which goes said, done, is not as expressive as that which goes unsaid, undone. yours to behold.

[stlukesguild]

poetry is everything. poetry is not one thing, is not that thing, poetry is all things.

So my uncle Chuck sitting on the couch in his Speedos drinking a beer, eating Cheetos, and watching TV is poetry? And the Holocaust was poetry? The idea that poetry is everything or that art is everything is a tired cliche dating back to weak-thinking Romantic academics from the 1960s. If poetry were everything or art were everything we would not need the words "art" or "poetry" to differentiate these things from everything else. We could simply say "everything". Poetry... like art... may be difficult to define for the simple reason that artists and poets are forever pushing the limitations and boundaries, but exceptions to a rule do not invalidate the rule as a whole.

[Silas Thorne]

bojangle, your first statement, that poetry is everything, seems to be contradicted by your later statements about the way you think poetry is a means of expressing this everything, which you think of as some kind of beauty.
An incomplete tax return leaves things unsaid, so if I do not fill in this tax return, and lose it somewhere in the pile of papers on my desk, am I engaging in an act of poetry?

[bojangle]

Sorry, i don't have a philosophy degree. Everything i said makes perfect sense, just not to the intellectuals of the world. The students can say what they want, it will, like it always has, mean nothing. Intellectuals are masters of the classroom, but in real life they are just poor saps who can only point out what is technically wrong with a statement. They will forever live on a biscuit.

[bojangle]

what the ****... Emerson and Rilke, like many other greats, had it right. The greats never answered questions regarding their philosophies, nor ever explained themselves because this is exactly what would happen: people would call them on technicals; pathetic wannabe philosophers holding their Phds in one hand and their stupid ****ing grad. school thesis in the other. the fools of the world who need their hand held and their life guided because they do not possess the courage nor the intellect to be able to fill in the gaps or decipher anything that is not direct. "taxes" "my uncle" "the holocaust" ****ing screams of morons trying to be the smartest guys in the room. i never asked you to come and reply to what i said. don't point out what is "wrong" with my statement, just move along. your opinion means nothing.

[bojangle]

it seems like the people of today have completely gone over-board with education. it is not a beginning anymore, it is the beginning, the middle and the end: the whole damn path. most people are just about appearances, nothing more. they want to appear smart so they post their credentials for all to see, their age, what they have accomplished in school, their essays with their shiny grade. they have absolutely no real ambition, but to just appear. to get good grades so that mom and dad will give them a pat on the head every once and a while. all they do is observe and critique and never actually act or play any role that entails some risk. they will never put their reputations on the line because they are slaves to their ego. they are beasts, raw uncontrollable beasts who only pretend. the real world is too real for them and will - naturally - tear their false sense, their acts apart, which is what happens to all things that are not natural when they come against reality: they just fall from you. so these people hide in their homes behind their PHDs and their nothingness school grades calling themselves philosophers on forum-boards. they are exactly worthless. they contribute nothing. they create nothing. they will leave behind no legacy. their lives are most likely mismanaged and their children will inherit the same genes. they are a waste. they have so much potential to be them, as only they could be, but they choose instead to be one of them, acting, playing, smiling, doing nothing. they write to a meter, they sing to a key, they march to another's drum. they never deviate. to deviate is to be outside the norm, which will make them noticed. once they are noticed they have too many eyes on them and their false sense, pride is easily seen. they become uncomfortable and uneasy, their ego gets wounded, so they fade back in. they do not even try to become, so they fade away into the crowd. they go after nothing but make due with what is, accepting what was made for them by someone else. the world does not advance by just coping and making due; NO! the world advances through the minds of visionaries, of leaders. those who have goals, visions and plans. those who organize the resources (things and people) to make their goals reality. action is their philosophy, not sitting on a biscuit pointing out the flaws in another's statement or creation. they see opportunity and they take it. if they point out a flaw, they suggest a solution. FADE THE NOISE!

[OrphanPip]

So, let me get this straight, you just post on forums for the purpose of people to agree with you?

Why bother to air an opinion on a discussion forum if you don't want people to criticize it, especially when you contradict yourself. It is not merely picking at a technicality if what you say is entirely self-contradictory.

Incoherent ramblings are not fruitful. It helps to avoid long meandering rants about PhDs, since no one who has posted in this thread is a PhD or even mentioned them. Who has called themselves a philosopher, you have been accused of nothing other than not making a clear argument in your opening post. You're creating your own enemies so that you may rail against them, rather than responding to the criticism or attempting to clarify what you were trying to say.

[Jassy Melson]

With the death of formal rules for poetry, poetry has moved closer and closer to rhythmic prose. I think that is as good a definiton of what poetry has become as any. Poetry is rhythmic prose.

[JCamilo]

I stick with a romantic definition which has nothing to do with the unpoetic ramblings against intelectuals which seems to forget that Poets are intelectuals, which was Coleridge's while saying the difference between prose and poetry... something like... prose the use of the right words at the right momment, poetry the best words at the best momment...

[stlukesguild]

Sorry, i don't have a philosophy degree. Everything i said makes perfect sense, just not to the intellectuals of the world. The students can say what they want, it will, like it always has, mean nothing. Intellectuals are masters of the classroom, but in real life they are just poor saps who can only point out what is technically wrong with a statement. They will forever live on a biscuit.

Interesting theory. Those who disagree with you or dare to question your thoughts are admittedly intellectuals (more intelligent than yourself?) but intellectuals are but poor saps doomed to failure.

Emerson and Rilke, like many other greats, had it right. The greats never answered questions regarding their philosophies...

1. Are you suggesting that you are one of these "greats" above answering questions?

2. Are you certain that the "greats" never answered questions about their philosophy? Many, including Emerson and Rilke seem to have made their philosophies quite clear in writing (be it in the form of essay, journal entries, poetry, etc...).

pathetic wannabe philosophers holding their Phds in one hand and their stupid ****ing grad. school thesis in the other. the fools of the world who need their hand held and their life guided because they do not possess the courage nor the intellect to be able to fill in the gaps or decipher anything that is not direct.

You seem to have some serious problems with anyone who doesn't agree with you.

"taxes" "my uncle" "the holocaust" ****ing screams of morons trying to be the smartest guys in the room...

Or some of us here might not need to try... they simply may already be the smartest guy in the room.:ciappa:

i never asked you to come and reply to what i said. don't point out what is "wrong" with my statement, just move along. your opinion means nothing.

So in other words you posted on a forum intending that all would simply nod in agreement and bow to your incredible wisdom?

So, let me get this straight, you just post on forums for the purpose of people to agree with you?

Why bother to air an opinion on a discussion forum if you don't want people to criticize it, especially when you contradict yourself. It is not merely picking at a technicality if what you say is entirely self-contradictory.

Incoherent ramblings are not fruitful. It helps to avoid long meandering rants about PhDs, since no one who has posted in this thread is a PhD or even mentioned them. Who has called themselves a philosopher, you have been accused of nothing other than not making a clear argument in your opening post. You're creating your own enemies so that you may rail against them, rather than responding to the criticism or attempting to clarify what you were trying to say.

Couldn't put it better.

[bojangle]

maybe you are partially right, maybe one of my problems is that i do want others to agree with me. when i think about it, it is actually a very useless flaw. why should i care what others say about what i say? i shouldn't, but i did, so i defended and attacked. i believe we all have our own way of communicating. i don't write to the appeal of anyone but myself. why should i care if there are people out there who do not understand? i should seek to not be understood, but to understand. i'm proud of the way i express things as it is my own way. it will never get me an A+ in a school, that is just something i will have to live with.

but now i ask you to try to understand. i did not contradict myself in anything i said. not a single thing i said was in contradiction to how i feel.

[PrinceMyshkin]

maybe you are partially right, maybe one of my problems is that i do want others to agree with me. when i think about it, it is actually a very useless flaw. why should i care what others say about what i say? i shouldn't, but i did, so i defended and attacked. i believe we all have our own way of communicating. i don't write to the appeal of anyone but myself. why should i care if there are people out there who do not understand? i should seek to not be understood, but to understand. i'm proud of the way i express things as it is my own way. it will never get me an A+ in a school, that is just something i will have to live with.

Good for you for writing so honestly here - and yet, and yet we all write X% for the sake of our own soul and Y% to reach the hearts or souls of others. And the proportion will change from poet to poet and even, for each poet, from poem to poem.

[Alexander III]

I agree with either everything bojangle has said or absolutely nothing of what he has said; I just have to decide what he said now.

[hoope]

I believe that Poetry the language of heart of imagination .. and of emotions.
Who that doesn't have sense of poetry has no sense of life .


poetry is everything. poetry is not one thing, is not that thing, poetry is all things

Yea .. i guess coz its in the air.. in the wind breeze , in the flowers , in our smiles.. with every rainfall.. and when the fall comes.. When we look around we see poetry every where so .. it is everything.

[JCamilo]

well hoope,
sometimes I am a bit surprised when I see the importance of literature (and Poetry, which is either from oral or writen literature) over other art forms. Painting, music, dancing are all older than literature. Perhaps older than words. And I can not imagine humankind without any sense of life, moving on, to develop any art form, philosophy or science. I can imagine a person who is perfectly fine, maybe even a highly sensible person who does not like to read. They may dance or sing to satisfy their needs. And it is not hard, the western world only have more than half of his population alphabetized on the XX century, latin america only by now, several places still have a huge population who cannot read. Their forms of expression are another, they do not lack understandment or culture because they lack literature.

As Poetry being everything, this is contraditory by itself, isnt? The special form of language cannot be all forms of language. You may say, Poetry can talk about everything. It is true. But it is not everything. It is something special and I am well aware, I am not writting poetry when I talk to you. And neither is natural, but a product of human mind, some will product something different.

[Alexander III]

JC brings up an excellent point, that all forms of art are in most ways equally valid. However I do believe that the greatest poetry tries to replicate the transendal beauty of music; and great music in turn attempts to replicate and express the transendal beauty of silence.

However in turn it can be said that all art forms attempt to replicate the beauty of the other, a poet attempts to create a poem with the beauty of a symphony, the pianist wishes to compose a piece which replicates the story of a portrait, the painter attempts to manifest the tangible emotions of a poem trough form and color...ect

[JCamilo]

I think Borges nails it. A poem remembers that he once was music. As remembering he is not music, just like a painting is not nature itself.

[AuntShecky]

Poetry by its very nature tends to defy "definition," a word which means at the very root, "limit." What we can do with poetry, however, is describe it, or list the characteristics by which it differs from prose.

Several months ago our beloved LitNet member, Virgil, described poetry as "heightened language." I think that's an apt description.

Another distinction we can make is between "good" and "bad" poetry. One may ask, "What kind of poetry is 'good'?"

Again, there are no facile answers. But-- as a Supreme Court Justice once said (about pornography) -- "I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it!"

[JCamilo]

Poetry do not defy definition. What defies definition is when you try to write a dictionary using poetry...

[hoope]

well hoope,
sometimes I am a bit surprised when I see the importance of literature (and Poetry, which is either from oral or writen literature) over other art forms. Painting, music, dancing are all older than literature. Perhaps older than words. And I can not imagine humankind without any sense of life, moving on, to develop any art form, philosophy or science. I can imagine a person who is perfectly fine, maybe even a highly sensible person who does not like to read. They may dance or sing to satisfy their needs. And it is not hard, the western world only have more than half of his population alphabetized on the XX century, latin america only by now, several places still have a huge population who cannot read. Their forms of expression are another, they do not lack understandment or culture because they lack literature.

As Poetry being everything, this is contraditory by itself, isnt? The special form of language cannot be all forms of language. You may say, Poetry can talk about everything. It is true. But it is not everything. It is something special and I am well aware, I am not writting poetry when I talk to you. And neither is natural, but a product of human mind, some will product something different.

Since you mentioned that "several places still have a huge population who cannot read"
Well in the easterns countries ( i believe in the west too ) you get to see many old grandparents keep telling us poems in their language .. which is some has rhyming words and beautiful meaning .. and its POEMS .. Yet non knew how to read and write.. They say that they just learnt from their grand grand grand parents..
We have also met other that say peoms while they are sitting with you about any situation they just say a poem .

Ok that might be something you should think about.
Yes your point was kinda correct . But poetry existed and still exists in everything even though if we can't put it in words.

[JCamilo]

Poetry only exists with words. It is a form of literature.
And he oral tradition (which I have not forgotten, it is in first line of my post) is with words, written tradition as well.

[Michel_Sucre]

With the death of formal rules for poetry, poetry has moved closer and closer to rhythmic prose. I think that is as good a definiton of what poetry has become as any. Poetry is rhythmic prose.

I agree with you to say poetry is intimatly linked to the idea of rhythm. But say poetry is rhythmic prose, it's say, implicitly, they are no rhythmic prose... I don't think. All langage, all discourse is rhythmic, rhythm is a linguistic reality and not a poem's privilege. If we understand by rhythm the accentuation, the prosody.


Poetry only exists with words. It is a form of literature.
And he oral tradition (which I have not forgotten, it is in first line of my post) is with words, written tradition as well.

But why with words ? In my opinion, sentences is more exact that words, because a poem is a discourse and a discourse is made by sentences : the linguist Emile Benveniste shows that. And when a discurse is a only word, this only word is a sentence. This difference, I think it's very important, because implies that meaning isn't the sum of word's senses, but something that born in the sentence, the rhythm, the prosody - not a signification, but a significance. In others words : is not it, because the signification of a word in a dictionnary isn't its signification in a poem of Schakespeare, or in a text of Poe.

And I don't think is a form of literature. Sometimes, a roman, an essay, a work of history or philosophy is also a poem : Nietzsche, Michelet... Before Aristote and Plato, there is not limits between philosophy and poesis. Genders is an occidental invention but not a nature...

(I'm french, I beg your pardon about my bad english...)

[JCamilo]

I have no problem with the idea of sentences (which imply the use of words). Obviously, Poetry has meaning, it is not cacophony.

Anyways, it is literature, as literature is the written texts, included those philosophers you mention.

[Transmodernism]

With all due respect, Bojangle, definitions have to be both inclusive and exclusive; they must set boundaries for what is and what isn't x. For a definition to be meaningful, it is necessary that the definition exclude a, b, c, and d from being part of category x. If all things are a part of x, there is no need for definitions. If poetry is everything then the word "poetry" is redundant; "everything" should suffice.

In an art class this semester we were defining art. A guy said: "Art is all creativity." The problem with that definition is that it begs the question, "If all art is all creativity, why have the word 'art.'" The word art becomes redundant; creativity should suffice. Art must include and exclude some items that fall within the realm of creativity, otherwise there is no reason for such a word.

[Jassy Melson]

I still think my definition of what poetry has become is valid: it has become rhythmic prose. All language and discourse is not rhythmic. Just check out a newspaper story.

[inbetween]

poetry is putting a message or feeling (or anything) in a melody without using anything but words.

[Lynne50]

W.H.Auden was asked "What is the usefulness of poetry?" Poetry makes nothing happen. And his reply.."That uselessness is precisely what distinquishes poetry (and other art forms) from the world of practical discourse, whose aims are grossly apparent, ie. the stump speech, a business meeting, etc.

Purpose...probably to engage our verbal intelligence and uplift the human spirit.

[Delta40]

Sorry, i don't have a philosophy degree... Intellectuals are masters of the classroom, but in real life they are just poor saps who can only point out what is technically wrong with a statement. They will forever live on a biscuit

Now that is poetic!