How do you define "free verse"?

[AuntShecky]

What, exactly, do we mean when we call a piece of writing "free verse"? Robert Frost's famously disparaging quip defines free verse as "playing tennis without a net." Even so, perhaps we can start by considering what free verse is not.

It is not metrical verse, which in English means lines written in a regular pattern of a prescribed number of stressed and unstressed syllables. Under this broad definition, there are two main categories: narrative, such as epics and ballads; and lyrical, which encompasses scores of sub-genres, such as odes, sonnets,villanelles, et al.

It is not "blank verse," which specifically refers to lines of unrhymed metrical verse, almost invariably iambic pentameter. This is the form found in nearly all the dialogue of Shakespeare's 37 plays and most of the rest of Elizabethan drama.

Free verse, by contrast, is not constrained by meter. Lines of free verse are not all the same length; they may appear uneven, if not jagged, on the page. In place of meter, a poem composed in free verse nonetheless attempts to present a sense of rhythm: in lieu of a distinct pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, it sets up rising and falling cadences, often by the use of repetition.

Repetition, along with a comprehensive pallette of poetic tools --metaphor, simile, alliteration, allusions, etc.-- can be found in both metered and free verse. Anaphora and internal rhyme are not confined to metrical verse, but free verse usually does not feature end rhyme, which can only be effective when the final syllables of the rhyming lines are both stressed.

Not only can both metered and free verse use these poetic devices, so can prose, especially in writing aiming for rhetorical or aesthetic effect. There's the rub: what is the difference between a poem composed in free verse and a piece of prose merely broken up into short, irregular lines?

And for that matter, how do we distinguish between "free verse" and a "prose poem"?

If you see a posting on the "Personal Poetry" forum which appears to seem more like prose to you, what elements could be added to transform the piece into an authentic example of "free verse"?

Tell me, fellow LitNutters, in your own words, what is "free verse"?

[Delta40]

Uhm all that. I'm awful at discussing the technical side of poetry. It's rather like I shall know it when I read it but I express myself badly when it comes to these things. Free verse could be said to be poetry without boundaries. Rather than be restricted by rules and structure, one can go beyond and isn't it exciting that poetry can evolve rather than trapping us within prescribed guidelines? We have the amazing zoom camera lens because the man who developed the technology didn't know that it couldn't be done. He had no appreciation of the science in the first place. I see free verse poetry this way. Who knows what will come next.

[cafolini]

I tend to agree with Delta in this regard:
"We have the amazing zoom camera lens because the man who developed the technology didn't know that it couldn't be done."

[AuntShecky]

Yeah, but what does one do when she posts a piece which she believes lacks"boundaries" and is told that she has posted "prose"?

[Delta40]

Would you say that most of my poetry is free verse or prose Aunty? It's a tough one I agree and I'm a grassroots poet with six stitches in the back of my head! Seriously I feel something is prosey when somebody has written a paragraph and then broken it up line by line but even then it's fair to say it's not that simple because I've read some amazing lyrical literature that could pass for free verse if done like this but if it doesn't meet that criteria and this form has been applied as if it was some kind of flowing narrative then it doesn't strike me as free verse. I know I'm about to get a fail...

[Nick Capozzoli]

This is a good question. How about this definition: free verse is "poetry" (which we can take to mean writing that is not "prose") and that does not follow any accentual, accentual-syllabic, or syllabic pattern? That leaves open the question of what sorts of such writing constitute poetry.

[cacian]

there is no free verse what there is is free words . just an opinion :)
free verse is perhaps suggesting there is no format to follow ie as in numbered rhyme/cinquain/haiku and this sort of studied forms.
on writes following their instinct.
'''playing tennis without a net'' is perhaps suggesting that ones imagine the net rather then it being put in place and play the sport.
ie to write poetry and to imagine there is a form they consider a verse. experimentation comes to mind. one does not need to rely on conventions to write a piece.

[MorpheusSandman]

what is the difference between a poem composed in free verse and a piece of prose merely broken up into short, irregular lines?Prose broken up into short, irregular lines is not prose; it's free verse. The best distinction I've heard is from Terry Eagleton who said: "Poetry is the art-form in which the writer, rather than the printer or publisher, decides where the line ends." That's pretty much it; if the writer is deciding on the line breaks, then it's poetry/free-verse, if it's all in one chunk separated only by paragraphs, then it's prose.


And for that matter, how do we distinguish between "free verse" and a "prose poem"?A prose poem is an oxymorn. They don't exist. It's like asking for a skinny fat man.


If you see a posting on the "Personal Poetry" forum which appears to seem more like prose to you, what elements could be added to transform the piece into an authentic example of "free verse"?To me, bad free-verse that reads no differently than most prose is still just bad-free verse and not ACTUAL prose. For that matter, there's a lot of prose that's more "poetic" (like Joyce) than most poetry. In general, I'd advise them to lean more on sound, imagery, figurative language, rhetorical forms, and strive to invent their own forms. A trend I've noticed a lot in current free verse poetry is that poets break their stanzas up into unrhymed couplets, tercets, and quatrains that are quite even length on the page. This creates its own kind of form that still isn't "restricted" by meter or rhyme. But, like anything else in poetry, the form should be used meaningfully.

[AuntShecky]

Would you say that most of my poetry is free verse or prose Aunty? It's a tough one I agree and I'm a grassroots poet


Without hesitation, I would say that your work is definitely poetry, Delta, the real thing. "Grassroots" is apt, especially applicable to one of your recent offerings (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?75726-One-of-Those-Days) That piece was so good it reminded me of Ginsberg, even Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman, you probably know, was the first "modernist," poets who broke the ground for free verse. But, according to my handbook, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, free verse is quite older than that--going as far back as some of the poems of Blake and Goethe, but get this-- "it has precedents in translations of the Biblical psalms."(!)

Free verse really didn't take hold until the late 19th, early 20th century. Whitman, as we established, was one of the pioneers. The French symbolists and the moderns started writing free verse as a conscious effort to break away from the traditionalists. But I'm not sure Whitman was so much concerned with making literary statements as he was with celebrating life.

[Paulclem]

Prose broken up into short, irregular lines is not prose; it's free verse. The best distinction I've heard is from Terry Eagleton who said: "Poetry is the art-form in which the writer, rather than the printer or publisher, decides where the line ends." That's pretty much it; if the writer is deciding on the line breaks, then it's poetry/free-verse, if it's all in one chunk separated only by paragraphs, then it's prose.



Was that in his "How to read a poem"? I remember a similar conclusion to that where he asks what a poem is.

I agree with what you say. Any phrase, sign, piece of writing could be used poetically by a poet, and is thus designated as a poem. One poem I read was a series of problems from a maths textbook. It doesn't sound very promising, but the gist of the poem was to illustrate an attitude to war and casualties. It was very effective. (Just did a quick search, but couldn't find it).

[MorpheusSandman]

Yep, that's where I got it from. Furniss/Bath made a similar point in their excellent Reading Poetry (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0582894204/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=) textbook (right now an Amazon seller has a new copy for $11; I'd advise everyone to jump on it at that price!), essentially saying that prose poems were an oxymoron and don't exist.

[MorpheusSandman]

Walt Whitman, you probably know, was the first "modernist," poets who broke the ground for free verse. But, according to my handbook, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, free verse is quite older than that--going as far back as some of the poems of Blake and Goethe, but get this-- "it has precedents in translations of the Biblical psalms."(!)In fact, Whitman took his inspiration for free verse from The Bible, hence his heavy use of anaphora, which is a staple in Biblical poetry. A lot of Blakes prophetic works come quite close to free-verse, but he generally maintains a 14-syllable line, which was still quite radical back then.


But I'm not sure Whitman was so much concerned with making literary statements as he was with celebrating life.Whitman flat-out said that he felt America needed to break the grip of "old world" poetry in order to create a poetry of its own. This equating of formal traditions with nationalism (or gender, race, or anything else, really) is not exactly new in the arts, but I've always thought it was ill-conceived and often little more than a shield against having to live up to certain standards. Patrick Gillespie made an excellent point about this in an article on Poemshape (http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/why-dont-poets-write-in-rhyme/) on why so many poets don't write in rhyme anymore, and he uses Whitman, Pound, and Eliot as examples.

[AuntShecky]

.

Whitman flat-out said that he felt America needed to break the grip of "old world" poetry in order to create a poetry of its own. This equating of formal traditions with nationalism (or gender, race, or anything else, really) is not exactly new in the arts, but I've always thought it was ill-conceived and often little more than a shield against having to live up to certain standards.



You're right-- he did want to create poetry that was uniquely American, but he also was overflowing with desire to write about Walt Whitman.


Patrick Gillespie made an excellent point about this in an article on Poemshape (http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/why-dont-poets-write-in-rhyme/) on why so many poets don't write in rhyme anymore, and he uses Whitman, Pound, and Eliot as examples.

That's true. About twenty some years ago I read an article by Miller Williams stating that he had attended a high-level poetry conference in which poets who attempted to present any works that had the slightest whiff of meter or rhyme were all-but-laughed off the stage.

But guess what-- though rhyme may have been verboten, modern poets have meter never really abandoned meter. Quick-- who's the most iconoclastic poet you can think of. e.e. cummings? Ole Mister Lose-the-caps, mess- with-the- punctuation himself, right? Check out these lines:


now air is air and thing is thing: no bliss
of heavenly earth, beguiles our spirits, whose
miraculously disenchanted eyes

and watch this:
now AIR is AIR and THING is THING: no BLISS
of HEAVenly EARTH, beGUILES our SPIRits, WHOSE
mirACuLOUSly DIS enCHANTed EYES

Sure looks like old-fashioned iambic pentameter to me.

And what about Ezra Pound's protegé, T.S. Eliot. In his signature poemthere are several passage with lines ending by using the device the dreaded r-word:


On Margate Sands,
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Prose broken up into short, irregular lines is not prose; it's free verse. The best distinction I've heard is from Terry Eagleton who said: "Poetry is the art-form in which the writer, rather than the printer or publisher, decides where the line ends." That's pretty much it; if the writer is deciding on the line breaks, then it's poetry/free-verse, if it's all in one chunk separated only by paragraphs, then it's prose.

Eagleton's definition of poetry, which I didn't know about before, is beguiling in its simplicity, but I don't buy it. It implies, as you say, that prose broken up into short, irregular lines is not prose; it's free verse. If that's true, then any prosaic writing can be transformed into poetry by breaking it up into short irregular lines (just so long as the author rather than an editor/publisher decides how to lay out the lines on a page).

I guess that this definition could be used to distinguish between prose (where line breaks and page layout are not critically important) and "verse," where they are essential. That still begs the question of what constitutes "poetry" as opposed to "prose." WCW's Red Wheelbarrow is a great example where the author's chosen line breaks are essential. I think we agree that the Red Wheelbarrow is poetry, and a good poem at that. But it is not poetry just because it is a single sentence broken down into shorter lines. We can take any prosaic statement such as: My dog, Rex, loves to run on the beach fetching tennis balls! and write it out as follows:

My dog,
Rex,
loves
to run on the
beach
fetching
tennis
balls!

Is that "verse?" rather than "prose?" I guess so. Is it "poetry?"

You
decide!

[AuntShecky]

Eagleton's definition of poetry, which I didn't know about before, is beguiling in its simplicity, but I don't buy it. It implies, as you say, that prose broken up into short, irregular lines is not prose; it's free verse. If that's true, then any prosaic writing can be transformed into poetry by breaking it up into short irregular lines (just so long as the author rather than an editor/publisher decides how to lay out the lines on a page).

I guess that this definition could be used to distinguish between prose (where line breaks and page layout are not critically important) and "verse," where they are essential. That still begs the question of what constitutes "poetry" as opposed to "prose." WCW's Red Wheelbarrow is a great example where the author's chosen line breaks are essential. I think we agree that the Red Wheelbarrow is poetry, and a good poem at that. But it is not poetry just because it is a single sentence broken down into shorter lines. We can take any prosaic statement such as: My dog, Rex, loves to run on the beach fetching tennis balls! and write it out as follows:

My dog,
Rex,
loves
to run on the
beach
fetching
tennis
balls!

Is that "verse?" rather than "prose?" I guess so. Is it "poetry?"

You
decide!

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary during the time of 9/11 was famous for his convoluted diction,("Known unknowns") so a couple of guys published some of his press conferences and said it was "poetry," not unlike, this editing duo remarked, the works of Wallace Stevens.

Similarly (I don't know if it was from the same guys) there was a book of "poems" by the late NY Yankees former shortstop and longtime announcer Phil Rizzutto. Phil's commentary was great: along with the occasional comment on the game being played, he provided long rambling discourses about a restaurant in Cleveland which he once visited in 1947, as well as sharing his concerns about driving home as soon as the last out was recorded.

So I guess poetry is whatever someone says it is. But I'll bet you the rent (well, figuratively) that they next time I post some free verse in my poetry thread, some LitNutter will say it's "prose"!

[MorpheusSandman]

Eagleton's definition of poetry, which I didn't know about before, is beguiling in its simplicity, but I don't buy it. It implies, as you say, that prose broken up into short, irregular lines is not prose; it's free verse. If that's true, then any prosaic writing can be transformed into poetry by breaking it up into short irregular lines (just so long as the author rather than an editor/publisher decides how to lay out the lines on a page).I think the problem with these disputes over the "meaning" of poetry is that one person talks of denotations and another is talking connotations; perhaps, more specifically, one person is talking extensions (objective qualities for classification) and another intensions (subjective qualities for classification). The reason you, eg, probably don't want to call "lineated prose" "poetry" is because, to you, poetry is more of a qualitative term (ie, speaking to the quality usage of lineated writing) rather than a descriptive term. The problem with all qualitative, connotative, intensionative definitions is that they are much too subjective; they rely on each individual's standards for what constitutes poetry. Whenever you read, eg, famous poets "defining" poetry, they always speak of very subjective qualities (eg, Dickinson's (paraphrased) "I know it's poetry when it blows my head off"). However, if you really get down to denotative, extensional qualities, the only definition that can account for every work we've called poetry since the beginning of the art is Eagleton's.

Personally, I see no reason to be exclusive with the "what is poetry?" question. If someone randomly lineates prose, why can't we just call it "bad free verse poetry" instead of "not poetry" at all? To me, that's why we have qualitative adjectives. I'd much rather keep the "poetry" term descriptive and just apply the relevant negative adjectives when necessary.

As for "verse" VS "poetry," I tend to think "verse" is just metrical poetry. I see no reason to use it for anything else.

[MorpheusSandman]

About twenty some years ago I read an article by Miller Williams stating that he had attended a high-level poetry conference in which poets who attempted to present any works that had the slightest whiff of meter or rhyme were all-but-laughed off the stage.

But guess what-- though rhyme may have been verboten, modern poets have meter never really abandoned meter. Quick-- who's the most iconoclastic poet you can think of. e.e. cummings? Ole Mister Lose-the-caps, mess- with-the- punctuation himself, right? Check out these lines:Classic forms, even rhyme, has never really gone away. It may not be dominant as it once was, and it may have its share of dismissive critics, but I'd guess at least 50% of the century's best poets were primarily metrical/formal poets (Auden, Merrill, Yeats, Wilbur, Stevens, Frost, Lowell, Heaney, and Larkin to name several) and even the "iconoclasts" as you call them tended to use meter and rhyme on occasion. Even Eliot wrote a section for The Waste Land in rhymed couplets and only abandoned it because, as Pound said and Patrick pointed out in that article, it was vastly inferior to Pope.

[Nick Capozzoli]

...However, if you really get down to denotative, extensional qualities, the only definition that can account for every work we've called poetry since the beginning of the art is Eagleton's.

Personally, I see no reason to be exclusive with the "what is poetry?" question. If someone randomly lineates prose, why can't we just call it "bad free verse poetry" instead of "not poetry" at all? ...As for "verse" VS "poetry," I tend to think "verse" is just metrical poetry. I see no reason to use it for anything else.

Your comment that I bold-faced makes sense but begs the question.

Your statement: As for "verse" VS "poetry," I tend to think "verse" is just metrical poetry doesn't jibe with Eagleton's definition, where "verse" clearly refers to the arbitrary lineation without regard for any sort of poetic meter. OK, we can accept a definition of "verse" as writing with arbitrary authorially-selected lineation as "verse" as distinguished from "prose." And you can go on to classify such "verse" as "poetry" if you so desire.

I don't think this brings us any closer to being able to an understanding of what differentiates "poetry" from other forms of language. And while we are on the subject of language statements, we need to remember that we are not just dealing with written language, but orally spoken and heard language. It is almost certain that humans communicated with voiced language before we learned to read and write.

I think that WCW's Red Wheelbarrow is a fine example to consider in this discussion. It is "free verse" by any measure. It is also "poetry" and good poetry at that. It could be written as "prose" [without line breaks on the page as a single sentence] and still be "good poetry." It could be spoken and heard by an audience and be perceived as good poetry.

[MorpheusSandman]

Your statement: As for "verse" VS "poetry," I tend to think "verse" is just metrical poetry doesn't jibe with Eagleton's definition, where "verse" clearly refers to the arbitrary lineation without regard for any sort of poetic meter.I think you're confused: Eagleton's definition dealt only with the difference between poetry and prose, not poetry and verse or prose and verse. Verse traditionally WAS metrical poetry, and I see no reason to change its meaning now.


I don't think this brings us any closer to being able to an understanding of what differentiates "poetry" from other forms of language.Why does it not differentiate it from other forms of language? Even if we're dealing with pre-written, verbal poetry, the meter essentially determined where "lines" ended. It was a type of formal arrangement. EG, in Homer the Dactylic Hexameter line almost always ended with a dactyl/spondee combination on the final two feet to "signal" the end of the line. Rhyme and other devices can help signal the same thing in other forms of verbal poetry. So even there you have a means by which the author is determining where the lines in by their usage of formal signals.

It might also be useful to read through Yudkowsky's "A Human's Guide to Words" and, more specifically, this entry (http://lesswrong.com/lw/o0/where_to_draw_the_boundary/) where "art" can be substituted for "poetry". It's the same argument, though.


I think that WCW's Red Wheelbarrow is a fine example to consider in this discussion. It is "free verse" by any measure. It is also "poetry" and good poetry at that. It could be written as "prose" [without line breaks on the page as a single sentence] and still be "good poetry." It could be spoken and heard by an audience and be perceived as good poetry.If Red Wheelbarrow was written as prose it would not be "good poetry" or poetry at all. It might be "poetic," but not "poetry." One problem with reading free verse is that there really IS no way of distinguishing it from prose, unless one pauses significantly at the end of lines (which is my method).

[JCamilo]

You certainly do not define verse or free verse to then define poetry, it is certainly the other way around. If isnt poetry in first place, you do not even need to talk about verses.
Verse is a line in the poem. Free verse is when a ,poem verses do not keep a metrical pattern.
While 'prose poems" do not make sense unless under the context of XIX century, the idea that poetry can be used in prose makes a lot of sense, since poetry is also a reference to how the language is used and not just to one form (poems).

Poetry has everything to do with the proper choice of words, to create a rythim, harmony. You imagine that you can hear it. Prose goes to another direction, the rythim is different, the words are there for the presentation of the idea. And it is all a generalization. In art there is bound to happen overlaping areas, they do not destroy definitions, rather confirm it, many times expanding those same critery.

[MorpheusSandman]

...the idea that poetry can be used in prose makes a lot of sense, since poetry is also a reference to how the language is used and not just to one form (poems)... Poetry has everything to do with the proper choice of words, to create a rythim, harmony. You imagine that you can hear it. Prose goes to another direction, the rythim is different, the words are there for the presentation of the idea. All of this is nothing but those "connotative, intensionative, qualitative" definitions I was talking about earlier. It has nothing to do with objective, extensional qualities that are actually useful for categorization and definitions. Prose poem is an oxymoron, simple as that. No century can create a prose poem any more than a century can produce a thin fat man.

[Paulclem]

I think that WCW's Red Wheelbarrow is a fine example to consider in this discussion. It is "free verse" by any measure. It is also "poetry" and good poetry at that. It could be written as "prose" [without line breaks on the page as a single sentence] and still be "good poetry." It could be spoken and heard by an audience and be perceived as good poetry.

I'm with Morpheus on this. The fact is that The Red Wheel barrow was not presented as prose but as a poem. That was the author's intention, just as Laurie Lee's poetic prose in Cider with Rosie is presented as prose whereas his poems are presented as poems. There's no confusion.

[JCamilo]

All of this is nothing but those "connotative, intensionative, qualitative" definitions I was talking about earlier. It has nothing to do with objective, extensional qualities that are actually useful for categorization and definitions. Prose poem is an oxymoron, simple as that. No century can create a prose poem any more than a century can produce a thin fat man.

I wasn't replying to you at all (when i opened the reply window your previous post wasn't visible yet).

Anyways, Prose Poem is not an oxymoron. However, It is not about form, it is about something else. Just think, the real difficulty is not to tell the difference between a prose poem by baudelaire and a poem by the same author, it is to tell the difference between a prose poem by baudelaire and short story by someone else. Baudelaire, Mallarme and cia. may raise questions about what is Poetry. But they do not add anything about what is free verse, which are as you mention, 2 completely different questions.

[MorpheusSandman]

Anyways, Prose Poem is not an oxymoron. Yes it is. I've explained why. That some writers write highly poetic prose does not a prose poem make. I disagree that it's not about form; it's entirely about form. If you take away form as a means of classification the two terms become absolutely meaningless and useless.

[JCamilo]

No, it is not. Prose Poem was a reaction to the shift in the XIX century, when novels are getting popular althougth the quality of the text was not highly considered. Baudelaire was not trying to improve poems or present a new format, for example, he claims to be trying to give prose the miracle of a poetic prose. It is all about language we just need to compare it with Mallarme different works in prose and in that thing that had a lot of blank spaces in the page, which, by definition, sometimes had no verse, but was not prose and some people called Poetry. It is a different work from Whitman's free verse, Baudelaire rebelion is more spiritual.

It is an expression, anyone can understand perfectly what it means to the literary production and at least must know well that expression was not to mean a traditional poem, but rather the use of poetry devices even without verses. (And the dictomy prose-poetry or poems is not so clear as you claim to be. Several languages had no distinction between both or printing methods that didnt use verses as western world do and still have poetry. In the end, it is vague and must remain vague)

[MorpheusSandman]

Yes it is. I've explained why (is there an echo in here?). That Baudelaire or whomever decided to infuse prose with devices more commonly found in poetry does not magically transform prose into poetry. I'm sorry, it just doesn't. And I don't give two figs what Baudelaire "claims" to have done; if you believe everything poets claim then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. Joyce's prose is as "poetic" as any prose out there, but, again, poetic prose is still not poetry. We need something formal, objective, analytical to make for legitimate, meaningful classifications, and if you take away the thing that includes all poetry in existence (lineation) and begin including non-lineated paragraphs, then there's nothing to stop anyone from claiming any text is poetry. What I typed right now? It's poetry. I mean, why not?

If you want to say that "prose poem" is just an expression and not a classification then I might as well put it in the same category of Dickinson saying poetry is what blows her head off. It's fine on a subjective level, but absolutely meaningless in regards to understanding what poetry is, what prose is, and what the difference between them is. I don't even see the need for the term when we can simply say "poetic prose," since that implies that we're using the connotative rather than denotative aspects of poetry to begin with, the same way I might describe a filmmaker or composer as "poetic" without claiming they're actually writing "poetry." I can almost guarantee that those "several languages" you refer to had some formal element that, if printed out, would distinguish their poetry from typical spoken/written language.

[AuntShecky]

I'm still looking for a clear definition of "free verse," a workable guideline that will assure me whether lines I've written are in fact a poem and not disjointed prose.

It's fuzzy thinking, if not equivocation, to state that one can immediately distinguish free verse from prose, to announce-- like the Supreme Court Justice asked to define pornography-- "I know it when I see it." Dismissing the issue by stating that one's reaction to a piece of work is "subjective" is a cop-out, to yours fooly's way of thinking

The adjective "free" throws a monkey wrench into the process since the word often connotes "free wheeling," "no holds barred," "anything goes" -- not that such a liberating attitude is necessarily a bad thing. But when the definition is so loose that rambling commentary by Scooter Rizzuto or the exploded syntax of Rumsfeld can be deemed "poetry," (or "found poems") then any definition of free verse is meaningless.


Even so, we still need a term to characterize the literary works which began to arrive in the late 19th- early 20th centuries, since the technique and tangible appearance of modern poetry are so radically different from the metered verse of the past.

Perhaps the emergence of free verse is a cognate of the revolution in the arts which demanded a complete overhaul in form with technological advances. For instance, the birth and refinement of photography more or less marginalized the previous prominence of representational painting.

[JCamilo]

Yes it is. I've explained why (is there an echo in here?). That Baudelaire or whomever decided to infuse prose with devices more commonly found in poetry does not magically transform prose into poetry. I'm sorry, it just doesn't.

I am sorry, but it does. Poetry is not just writting in verse or metric, or anything like this. One evidence is given by Baudelaire himself, when he proposed such experiments, obviously breaking down a difference between writting poems and wrtting poetry. You sticking to an english word limitation dated to the XVIII century does not mean anything.


And I don't give two figs what Baudelaire "claims" to have done; if you believe everything poets claim then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. Joyce's prose is as "poetic" as any prose out there, but, again, poetic prose is still not poetry.

Baudelaire (among many others, as he is not the only to do such thing) is an authority. Not you. It is Baudelaire who give a damn for what you think and there is more than one bridge made of people claims in a site. Your definition must deal with Baudelaire and all questions that his Prose poetry pointed, pretending you can dismiss it simply talks against you.


We need something formal, objective, analytical to make for legitimate, meaningful classifications, and if you take away the thing that includes all poetry in existence (lineation) and begin including non-lineated paragraphs, then there's nothing to stop anyone from claiming any text is poetry. What I typed right now? It's poetry. I mean, why not?

Because it is not poetic. If you are being analytical, your subject include all poetic texts, not just those with traditional western verses. I repeat, there is cultures that write with verses, in the traditional sense of breaking lines. There is all question raised by Baudelaire and many french authors: Poetry is quite more than writting poems.


If you want to say that "prose poem" is just an expression and not a classification then I might as well put it in the same category of Dickinson saying poetry is what blows her head off.

Seriously? How a metaphor "is the same" as textual style and even to say, an aesthetic experiement that produced several texts are the same thing?


It's fine on a subjective level, but absolutely meaningless in regards to understanding what poetry is, what prose is, and what the difference between them is.

Again, this is untrue. The proposition of "Prose poems" by baudelaire is exactly a way to expand the understanding what poetry is. He understood it so well that he was claiming the use of poetic language was possible in prose. And voillá, he proved his claims (and of Poe, Mallarmé, and many others) by producing several prose texts with clearly poetic devices. He just proved Poetry is certainly not just a poem or what is written in verses.


I don't even see the need for the term when we can simply say "poetic prose," since that implies that we're using the connotative rather than denotative aspects of poetry to begin with, the same way I might describe a filmmaker or composer as "poetic" without claiming they're actually writing "poetry." I can almost guarantee that those "several languages" you refer to had some formal element that, if printed out, would distinguish their poetry from typical spoken/written language.

Baudelaire uses poetic prose in the texts. Prose Poem is off course a propaganda term, but a stabilished propaganda term. Probally because Rousseau already used poetic prose before, so it was neede another one. It does not matter at all. Some people argue Edda means poetic, so how dumb would be prose and poetic edda latter names? Why to say lyrical or epic poetry at all?

Aunt:

The definition of of free verse is a poem made with their verses not following a metrical pattern. If you used verses without a metrical pattern then you are pretty much doing poems. Verse is the turn of line, nothing else than this. If your organize your poem with the line break, then you have it.

Plus, I think you can tell people to eat mushrooms however call your text disjointed prose.

[AuntShecky]

I forgot to say that, whether it is metric or free verse, the author's intentions are irrelevant.Such is the contention of Northrop Frye and the New (now old) Critics, and I agree with them.

Since intentions do not play a part, then "found poems" can be described as examples of free verse. Of course we'd be nitwits to assume that Sec. Rumsfeld and Scooter would have ever thought that their rambling discourse would ever be considered "poetry." Not in a million years.

But what about us would-be poets who have the effrontery to want to create such a thing in the worst way?

Although I am grateful to the responses in this thread, let's see if we can't come up with a workable definition of "free verse"

--Free verse is. . . .
A piece of creative writing consisting of a stated,compressed, or implied metaphor arranged in a form unrestricted by the usual conventions of prosody and open to a variety of aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional interpretations.

[Paulclem]

What about your definition with instead of arranged in a form but with line arrangements
inserted?

A piece of creative writing consisting of a stated,compressed, or implied metaphor, (arranged in a form), - with line arrangements unrestricted by the usual conventions of prosody and open to a variety of aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional interpretations.

I'm just thinking the word form is close to standard form.

[JCamilo]

A complicated way to say "verses organized without a metric pattern" will not help anyone. As soon, Jane Doe come, she will ask you what do you mean by lines? Or form? Or all other terms included. A workable definition is often generalisation, maybe you can get any particular poem and think why exactly that poem would not be a poem or would not be a free verse. Be socratic about this.

It must be breakthru, but to the entire world, Frye is just a footnote in the history of literature but I doubt the irrelevancy of the author was directed about the devices he used in the text, rather in the impact of the text on culture, which is beyond the author. About this, I will quote Eliot who said he always thougth Yeats metrics were wrong until the day he listed the guy in irland and discovered, he Eliot, was the wrong one.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm still looking for a clear definition of "free verse," a workable guideline that will assure me whether lines I've written are in fact a poem and not disjointed prose.You will not find it if you continue to think that lineated "prose" is actually prose.


It's fuzzy thinking, if not equivocation, to state that one can immediately distinguish free verse from prose, to announce-- like the Supreme Court Justice asked to define pornography-- "I know it when I see it." Dismissing the issue by stating that one's reaction to a piece of work is "subjective" is a cop-out, to yours fooly's way of thinking I've stated very clearly that one's subjective reactions are not useful for meaningful classifications that are acceptable to a society trying to communicate via a shared language. The Supreme Court Justice's statement about pornography is proof positive of that, since there would be nothing to stop him from labeling any work that features sex as pornographic, including films like Irreversible, In the Realm of the Senses, or books like Lady Chatterley's Lover and Ulysses? However, one CAN immediately distinguish free-verse from prose if one merely concentrates on the formal, extensional, objective elements and, I repeat, these are the only useful methods for classification.


Perhaps the emergence of free verse is a cognate of the revolution in the arts which demanded a complete overhaul in form with technological advances. For instance, the birth and refinement of photography more or less marginalized the previous prominence of representational painting.The emergence of any new art-form, aesthetic, style, form, etc. is often a reaction to changes in socio-cultural contexts, but they can also simply be reactions to (and against) the art of the past. Sometimes, it's easier to start a new tradition than it is to live up to those of the past. Bloom has eloquently described the process by which poets begin by imitating their predecessors and then develop by misreading/rejecting them.


Although I am grateful to the responses in this thread, let's see if we can't come up with a workable definition of "free verse" We already have workable definitions:

free verse
noun Prosody
verse that does not follow a fixed metrical pattern.(Dictionary.com)

free verse
noun
verse whose meter is irregular in some respect or whose rhythm is not metrical (Merriam-Webster)

To further understand the term, it's helpful to have definitions of verse:

1. a line of metrical writing
2. a : metrical language c : a body of metrical writing (as of a period or country)

(Merriam-Webster)

verse
[vurs] Show IPA noun, adjective, verb, versed, vers·ing.
noun
2. a succession of metrical feet written, printed, or orally composed as one line; one of the lines of a poem.
3. a particular type of metrical line: a hexameter verse.
5. metrical composition; poetry, especially as involving metrical form.

(Dictionary.com)

So, let's take verse as "metrical line" and free-verse as "non-metrical line." What does that leave for free-verse? The line. Any attempt to redefine free-verse as anything other than lineated literature without meter is an attempt to reinvent the wheel. It's not complicated. Those in this thread who disagree are getting caught up in personal, subjective, intensional, connotative associations with what poetry is and all it serves is to dump mud in a clear stream. Stop it.

[MorpheusSandman]

A complicated way to say "verses organized without a metric pattern" will not help anyone. As soon, Jane Doe come, she will ask you what do you mean by lines? Or form? Or all other terms included. What will help them is to say "verses organized without a metrical pattern" and then point to examples of what terms like "line," "meter," "form," etc. is. If they ask what a "line" is, I'll point to many lines of poetry and say "line," and many prose paragraphs and say "not line," until they get it. Form is a generalized abstraction of varied content. I can use metrical examples (ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM is a "form" of meter called "iambic pentameter), or a rhyme scheme that goes ABBA is a form of rhyme, or a 14-line poem with certain rhyme schemes is a fixed-form called a sonnet, and the type of formal rhyme scheme determines what kind of sonnet it is, etc.


Frye is just a footnote in the history of literature but I doubt the irrelevancy of the author was directed about the devices he used in the text, rather in the impact of the text on culture, Firstly, Frye was not really one of the "new critics." His pioneering work on Blake (Fearful Symmetry) clearly discusses what "beliefs" Blake is expressing allegorically in his works. The Intentional Fallacy was coined by Wimstatt and Beardsley and taken up by Brooks and had predecessorial echoes in Eliot, Empson, and Richards. The entire concept of authorial intent has had many varied takes on it in the 20th Century, and various critics have embraced or rejected it to various extents. Barthes, eg, coined the term "Death of the Author," but what's most understood about that is that Barthes was really trying to emphasize context/intertextuality as opposed to the romantic notion of authors being these divinely inspired being separated from their cultural/historical context.


You sticking to an english word limitation dated to the XVIII century does not mean anything. You citing one French author you clearly have an affinity for does not mean anything either. You can't make reality go a different way by changing definitions. Baudelaire's "prose poems" are no closer to poetry just because you call them such.


Baudelaire (among many others, as he is not the only to do such thing) is an authority. Not you. It is Baudelaire who give a damn for what you think and there is more than one bridge made of people claims in a site. Your definition must deal with Baudelaire and all questions that his Prose poetry pointed, pretending you can dismiss it simply talks against you. I believe I've studied poetry long enough to be considered some kind of authority. Nonetheless, my definitions are supported by almost every single textbook and dictionary and other authoritative reference I can find. That you cite an author whom "challenged the limits" of poetry and prose no more alters their extensional qualities and definitions any more than John Cage "composing" 4'33" changed the definition of music.


Because it is not poetic.Says you. I say it's poetic, and since we're all exalting subjective, connotative interpretations of language, my "definition" of what is poetry and prose is as good as yours or Baudelaire's. After all, apparently we don't need to classify by pointing to objective qualities.


Seriously? How a metaphor "is the same" as textual style and even to say, an aesthetic experiement that produced several texts are the same thing?It's not about the metaphor, it's about the fact that Dickinson was trying to "define" poetry in a way which only had meaning for her. Textual style can create new classifications, but it does ipso facto completely change old ones, and when you have two things that are diametrically opposed that are given different labels, like poetry/lineated VS prose/non-lineated, then you can't make them "go together" just by playing off the connotations of either term. It's the same thing as my thin fat man.


The proposition of "Prose poems" by baudelaire is exactly a way to expand the understanding what poetry is. He understood it so well that he was claiming the use of poetic language was possible in prose. And voillá, he proved his claims (and of Poe, Mallarmé, and many others) by producing several prose texts with clearly poetic devices. He just proved Poetry is certainly not just a poem or what is written in verses. We don't need to expand what poetry is. The first fallacy in Baudelaire's "experiment" is that there's such a thing as "poetic language," and there's not. Poetry has been written in every language from the highest, most esoterically learned diction, rhetoric and form (eg, Milton) to the lowest, most commonly understood diction, rhetoric and form (eg, Burns). There is poetry that is allegorical and symbolic and highly metaphoric and poetry that says what it means with no recourse to metaphor. So it's a complete myth that there's such a thing as "poetic language," as almost every kind of writing that is found in poetry can be found/utilized in prose and was probably done so (somewhere) before Baudelaire.

Now, what you CAN say is that there are some types of writing/style that are MORE COMMON in poetry than in prose, but these are connotations, associations, NOT the things that denote and define poetry to begin with. Baudelaire may use all the devices most commonly found in poetry and reject all of those most commonly found in prose, but, again, this makes for poetic prose, not actual poetry. So, no, Baudelaire proved no such thing.

[JCamilo]

What will help them is to say "verses organized without a metrical pattern" and then point to examples of what terms like "line," "meter," "form," etc. is. If they ask what a "line" is, I'll point to many lines of poetry and say "line," and many prose paragraphs and say "not line," until they get it. Form is a generalized abstraction of varied content. I can use metrical examples (ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM is a "form" of meter called "iambic pentameter), or a rhyme scheme that goes ABBA is a form of rhyme, or a 14-line poem with certain rhyme schemes is a fixed-form called a sonnet, and the type of formal rhyme scheme determines what kind of sonnet it is, etc.

My suggestion is for Aunty to post here a poem where She thinks my be prose and from try to tell here why she choose to break the lines, the relevancy of that breaking for the poem rythim, etc. If she can do it, she will see it is a poem and not prose.


Firstly, Frye was not really one of the "new critics." His pioneering work on Blake (Fearful Symmetry) clearly discusses what "beliefs" Blake is expressing allegorically in his works. The Intentional Fallacy was coined by Wimstatt and Beardsley and taken up by Brooks and had predecessorial echoes in Eliot, Empson, and Richards. The entire concept of authorial intent has had many varied takes on it in the 20th Century, and various critics have embraced or rejected it to various extents. Barthes, eg, coined the term "Death of the Author," but what's most understood about that is that Barthes was really trying to emphasize context/intertextuality as opposed to the romantic notion of authors being these divinely inspired being separated from their cultural/historical context.

Second?


You citing one French author you clearly have an affinity for does not mean anything either. You can't make reality go a different way by changing definitions. Baudelaire's "prose poems" are no closer to poetry just because you call them such.

I think you need to understand something. It is not poetry because i call them such. Way before I was born it was called poetry. There is several authors and critics that call it poetry. One of them, a critical authority as Baudelaire. You cannot dismiss him with a shrugging, objectively he is a major part of history. Ignoring him is a major mistake.



I believe I've studied poetry long enough to be considered some kind of authority.

And some people believe in god. Good for them. But overall, you are just one more student of poetry, that studied nowhere as enough and is being ridiculous by dismissing another critical authority as Baudelaire with a shrug. You need to do a lot more than this.


Nonetheless, my definitions are supported by almost every single textbook and dictionary and other authoritative reference I can find. That you cite an author whom "challenged the limits" of poetry and prose no more alters their extensional qualities and definitions any more than John Cage "composing" 4'33" changed the definition of music.

That is an ontrageous and ridiculous lie. Several people do not consider "your definitions" true. Formalists dont. Baudelaire don't. Poe dont. Coleridge dont. Valery does not. Borges dont. And Eagleton even goes to say that the boundaries between prose and poetry are vague enough. His definition of poems by the line breaks is only possible in modern western (altough, several poets didn't exactly controled the line breaks and such), but simple fail. This is a poem:

8911

We certainly cannot use line breaking here, so we cannot exactly, as we do not even know how it sounds, discern the metric and use "what is left" according to him. Yet, it is an Epic Poem. His definition works well to study typical poetry in a classroom,but that is all. Even the definition is put to test. Finnegans wake is fictional, verbally inventive moral and most likely, Joyce (and his helpers) decided where the line ends. And it is prose.


Says you. I say it's poetic, and since we're all exalting subjective, connotative interpretations of language, my "definition" of what is poetry and prose is as good as yours or Baudelaire's. After all, apparently we don't need to classify by pointing to objective qualities.

We do not choose with objective qualities to fit to a defintion, like you are doing.


It's not about the metaphor, it's about the fact that Dickinson was trying to "define" poetry in a way which only had meaning for her. Textual style can create new classifications, but it does ipso facto completely change old ones, and when you have two things that are diametrically opposed that are given different labels, like poetry/lineated VS prose/non-lineated, then you can't make them "go together" just by playing off the connotations of either term. It's the same thing as my thin fat man.

Do not insist with the Dickison thing. She just said a metaphor about what is poetry to her. Prose Poems are not such thing they are a textual style meaning a team with poetic devices without verses. They are not similar at all.

And You are being ridiculous, not only you can use diametrically opposed terms to build an expression with a particular meaning, as 200 years ago a french poet did it. And you are claiming it is not possible :D

Tell me, do you get angry with "Oral Literature" ? It means spoken-written words, you know, two diametrically opposed terms. Apparently, it is not possible. Could you be objective and not try to ignore history?


We don't need to expand what poetry is.

It is done all the time. We are far from the old definition of poetry and prose as the daily language and stylized metric language.


The first fallacy in Baudelaire's "experiment" is that there's such a thing as "poetic language," and there's not. Poetry has been written in every language from the highest, most esoterically learned diction, rhetoric and form (eg, Milton) to the lowest, most commonly understood diction, rhetoric and form (eg, Burns). There is poetry that is allegorical and symbolic and highly metaphoric and poetry that says what it means with no recourse to metaphor. So it's a complete myth that there's such a thing as "poetic language," as almost every kind of writing that is found in poetry can be found/utilized in prose and was probably done so (somewhere) before Baudelaire.

How you call a fallacy and then agree that all baudelaire proposal - which you call myth - that all kind of writing found in poems can be used in prose? Baudelaire knows and he claims to be doing an experimentation on prose. He is not Mallarmé, this one much more radical than him. Prose poems are exactly the evidence - not the first, but the main propaganda - that usual defintion of poetry as musical, metric, rythimical, etc is flawed since you can use it all in prose. he was helping, questioning (does not matter his own answer) exactly to make clear the distinctions. Poems have verses and are not just the use of poetic devices. He pretty much predates your homeboy Eaglaton by more than a century, but all he needed was to use the term "prose poem" and produce works from it.



Now, what you CAN say is that there are some types of writing/style that are MORE COMMON in poetry than in prose, but these are connotations, associations, NOT the things that denote and define poetry to begin with. Baudelaire may use all the devices most commonly found in poetry and reject all of those most commonly found in prose, but, again, this makes for poetic prose, not actual poetry. So, no, Baudelaire proved no such thing.

Dude, Poetic means relative of poetry or with poetry traits. Poetric prose literary means prose like poetry, so it is all the same. And yes, Baudelaire did prove he can use poetic devices in prose.

[MorpheusSandman]

Way before I was born it was called poetry. There is several authors and critics that call it poetry. One of them, a critical authority as Baudelaire. You cannot dismiss him with a shrugging, objectively he is a major part of history. Ignoring him is a major mistake. It doesn’t matter who calls anything what. They called Pluto a planet before I was born; now they don’t. What they call it is all in how they define “planet,” but whatever you call it changes nothing about the actual object. That was my point about Baudelaire’s “prose poems,” calling them “poems” doesn’t make them any closer to other objects called “poems” than calling 4’33” “music” makes it any closer to other objects called “music.”

I don’t think I’m “dismissing” or “shrugging off” Baudelaire, I just strongly disagree with his (or anyone’s) attempt to redefine things that don’t need redefining. One thing Baudelaire certainly wasn’t was an expert on cognitive linguistics, and being that that’s an area I’ve studied as well, I know how the human brain processes words and why artists are prone to “messing” with denotative limits. It’s all well and good that some artists can provoke us to really think about definitions and limits rather than blindly accepting them, but there comes a point where you can mess with a term so much and include so many objects that the term becomes absolutely useless as a means of fruitful communication.


That is an ontrageous and ridiculous lie. Several people do not consider "your definitions" true.I never said everyone agreed with my definitions, what I said was that most every dictionary, textbook, and authoritative reference (eg, Princeton) does. Princeton may be THE reference book for such terms, and let’s see what it says:

POETRY

I. Means and Ends. A poem is an instance of verbal art, a text set in verse, bound speech… Traditionally these have been taken as the ones offered by pros., i.e. verse form: lineation, meter, sound-pattering, syntactic deployment, and stanza forms… p. has traditionally been distinguished from prose by virtue of being set in verse. What most readers understand as p. was, up until 1850, set in lines which were metrical, and even the several forms of vers libre and free verse produced since 1850 have been built largely on one or another concept of the line. Lineation is therefore central to the traditional conception of p. Prose is cast in sentences; p. is cast in sentences cast into lines. Prose syntax has the shape of meaning, but poetic syntax is stretched across the frame of meter or the poem’s visual space, so that it has this shape as well as meaning. Whether the pros. of the poem is primarily aural, visual, or mixed it creates design. (p. 938-939)

I could also cite Furniss/Bath’s textbook, and many others that mention “line” as the unifying element of all objects we call poetry.

Besides, this is rather beside the point whether or not we can actually find any common link between all objects we call “poems/poetry” and then distinguish them from those we call “prose.”


This is a poem:

We certainly cannot use line breaking here, so we cannot exactly, as we do not even know how it sounds, discern the metric and use "what is left" according to him. Yet, it is an Epic Poem.Ok, I’ll challenge you: how do we know it is an epic poem? What makes it epic and what makes it a poem?


We do not choose with objective qualities to fit to a defintion, like you are doing. Then what do we do?


Do not insist with the Dickison thing. She just said a metaphor about what is poetry to her. Prose Poems are not such thing they are a textual style meaning a team with poetic devices without verses. They are not similar at all. Right, she expressed what poetry meant to her; Baudelaire took elements that constituted poetry FOR HIM, put them in prose, and called it a prose poem. You keep using the term “poetic devices” but what makes those devices strictly poetic and not, you know, prosaic?


not only you can use diametrically opposed terms to build an expression with a particular meaning, as 200 years ago a french poet did it. And you are claiming it is not possible IF we define poetry as “lineated literature” and prose as “non-lineated literature” then it is absolutely impossible to combine them at the same time, the same way something can’t be both alive and dead (barring Shrodinger’s Cat), or fat and thin, or tall and short, or whatever. Of course, that’s IF we define them that way; I’m arguing we should, you’re arguing that we shouldn’t. I would challenge that if you don’t, the distinction between them becomes impossible to delineate (no pun intended). Now, one might could combine lineated literature and non-lineated literature in a single work, and perhaps THEN you’d have a prose poem, but even then the prose and the poetry would be separate from each other within the work.


Tell me, do you get angry with "Oral Literature" ? It means spoken-written words, you know, two diametrically opposed terms. Apparently, it is not possible. Could you be objective and not try to ignore history?LOL, what a terrible example! What’s written down are the “written” words, and what’s spoken are the “spoken” words. There’s nothing diametrically oppositional about them at all! To use a better example: you can pour water into a cup. You can take that same water and freeze it to make ice. That water can never be both water and ice at the same time. However, you could freeze that water, and pour another glass of different water, so you could have the same molecules in two different forms. The first example (same water both frozen/liquid) is what I mean about prose/poetry. The exact same text can’t exist in two diametrically opposed states (lineated VS non-lineated) simultaneously; what you’re talking about is the second example, having two different forms of the same general substance (frozen/liquid, spoken/written)


How you call a fallacy and then agree that all baudelaire proposal - which you call myth - that all kind of writing found in poems can be used in prose?What I’m calling a fallacy is the notion that those things that Baudelaire transposed from poetry to prose were what made the poetry poetry in the first place.


Poems have verses and are not just the use of poetic devices. He pretty much predates your homeboy Eaglaton by more than a century, but all he needed was to use the term "prose poem" and produce works from it.Well, if you agree Baudelaire agrees with Eagleton about poetry being founded on the notion of “verse,” then what are we arguing about?! All I’m saying is that Baudelaire’s “prose poems” weren’t actual poems.


Dude, Poetic means relative of poetry or with poetry traits. Poetric prose literary means prose like poetry, so it is all the same. Poetic means things associated with poetry, not things that denote/define poetry; THAT’S where the difference lies. It’s like saying that there’s the act of sex, and then there are “sexy” things that we associate with the act of sex, but which are not the act itself. That’s the difference I’ve been talking about all along. That you can have “sexy” things outside of sex doesn’t make those sexy things sex; that you can have “poetic” things outside of poetry doesn’t make those poetic things poetry. Associations, connotations, intensions, etc. ARE NOT denotative definitions.

[Nick Capozzoli]

I think you're confused: Eagleton's definition dealt only with the difference between poetry and prose, not poetry and verse or prose and verse. Verse traditionally WAS metrical poetry, and I see no reason to change its meaning now.

Why does it not differentiate it from other forms of language? Even if we're dealing with pre-written, verbal poetry, the meter essentially determined where "lines" ended. It was a type of formal arrangement. EG, in Homer the Dactylic Hexameter line almost always ended with a dactyl/spondee combination on the final two feet to "signal" the end of the line. Rhyme and other devices can help signal the same thing in other forms of verbal poetry. So even there you have a means by which the author is determining where the lines in by their usage of formal signals.

It might also be useful to read through Yudkowsky's "A Human's Guide to Words" and, more specifically, this entry (http://lesswrong.com/lw/o0/where_to_draw_the_boundary/) where "art" can be substituted for "poetry". It's the same argument, though.

If Red Wheelbarrow was written as prose it would not be "good poetry" or poetry at all. It might be "poetic," but not "poetry." One problem with reading free verse is that there really IS no way of distinguishing it from prose, unless one pauses significantly at the end of lines (which is my method).

I think you're confused: Eagleton's definition dealt only with the difference between poetry and prose, not poetry and verse or prose and verse. Verse traditionally WAS metrical poetry, and I see no reason to change its meaning now.

I'm not in the least confused. Eagleton (as represented in this thread...I've yet to read the original) says that the difference between poetry and prose is in the lineation (arbitrary/authorially chosen in poetry). "Verse" (from Latin) refers to "turning," i.e., the line breaks of written poetry. In this sense, "a verse" is a line of poetry. Of course some folks use "verse" more loosely to refer to "a poem" or "poetry" in general. My previous comments were based on what you've said about Eagleton's definitions. Verse may well have traditionally meant metrical poetry, but that is not what we are talking about, and Eagleton's definition clearly involves any sort of writing that is parsed into lines ("verse'") by a "poet," who by such orthography distinguishes the writing as "poetry" as opposed to "prose." I'm not sure that Eagleton meant this orthography to define "poetry" or just "verse." His definition certainly makes sense as a technical definition of "verse." "Poetry" is a more tricky thing to define technically. There are many definitions of "poetry" that seek to distinguish it from "other" forms of language.

We could define poetry as "verse," including verse with some sort of metrical (accentual. syllabic, or accentual/syllabic) regularity, or verse that is "free" of such regularity. Metrical regularity is defined as a recognizable rhythmical pattern. Traditionally, meter involves the counting of word accents and syllables in a poetic line, and in accentual/syllabic verse this involves the notion of "feet." These feet derive from classical meters. You can Google "poetic meter" to find good on-line discussions of these metrical units. Most of them are two and three syllable metrical units (iambs, trochees, dactyls, anapests, spondees, etc. There are also larger metrical units (found in Greek poetry), such as the coriamb.

Why does it not differentiate it from other forms of language? Even if we're dealing with pre-written, verbal poetry, the meter essentially determined where "lines" ended. It was a type of formal arrangement. EG, in Homer the Dactylic Hexameter line almost always ended with a dactyl/spondee combination on the final two feet to "signal" the end of the line. Rhyme and other devices can help signal the same thing in other forms of verbal poetry. So even there you have a means by which the author is determining where the lines in by their usage of formal signals.

No argument. But you are talking about metrical verse, not "free verse." Greek meters are complex (much more so than Latin or later English meters), with longer (4 and more syllables long) "feet."

"Free verse" is free of any such regularity. One could argue that it depends on the "rhythm of the entire line" rather than upon lesser metrical units.

JCamilo makes a good point: You certainly do not define verse or free verse to then define poetry, it is certainly the other way around. If it isn't poetry in first place, you do not even need to talk about verses. Verse is a line in the poem. Free verse is when a poem verses do not keep a metrical pattern.

[JCamilo]

It doesn’t matter who calls anything what. They called Pluto a planet before I was born; now they don’t. What they call it is all in how they define “planet,” but whatever you call it changes nothing about the actual object. That was my point about Baudelaire’s “prose poems,” calling them “poems” doesn’t make them any closer to other objects called “poems” than calling 4’33” “music” makes it any closer to other objects called “music.”

I don’t think I’m “dismissing” or “shrugging off” Baudelaire, I just strongly disagree with his (or anyone’s) attempt to redefine things that don’t need redefining.

Funny how you just wrote the Pluto and planet history where people attepted to redefine something and when it is baudelaire or anything shattering your definition of poetry.



One thing Baudelaire certainly wasn’t was an expert on cognitive linguistics, and being that that’s an area I’ve studied as well, I know how the human brain processes words and why artists are prone to “messing” with denotative limits. It’s all well and good that some artists can provoke us to really think about definitions and limits rather than blindly accepting them, but there comes a point where you can mess with a term so much and include so many objects that the term becomes absolutely useless as a means of fruitful communication.

Newsflash: the term Prose Poem is stabilished for 200 years. It is a bit too late for you to rebel against it. By now, the vast majority of literary students can communicate pretty well with each other using it. So, your claim that "a mess with a term" is null. Come back, stopping dismissing it and deal with.


I never said everyone agreed with my definitions, what I said was that most every dictionary, textbook, and authoritative reference (eg, Princeton) does. Princeton may be THE reference book for such terms, and let’s see what it says:

You said almost every single, which is obviously ridiculous. And you can throw a list of your references here and it will not deny the list of people who defined poetry differently... but lets deal with Princeton.


POETRY

I. Means and Ends. A poem is an instance of verbal art, a text set in verse, bound speech… Traditionally these have been taken as the ones offered by pros., i.e. verse form: lineation, meter, sound-pattering, syntactic deployment, and stanza forms… p. has traditionally been distinguished from prose by virtue of being set in verse. What most readers understand as p. was, up until 1850, set in lines which were metrical, and even the several forms of vers libre and free verse produced since 1850 have been built largely on one or another concept of the line. Lineation is therefore central to the traditional conception of p. Prose is cast in sentences; p. is cast in sentences cast into lines. Prose syntax has the shape of meaning, but poetic syntax is stretched across the frame of meter or the poem’s visual space, so that it has this shape as well as meaning. Whether the pros. of the poem is primarily aural, visual, or mixed it creates design. (p. 938-939)

I could also cite Furniss/Bath’s textbook, and many others that mention “line” as the unifying element of all objects we call poetry.

Yes, they define poem and are careful to say it is a "traditional" view. They even mention the view that poetry was view until the middle of XIX century. But the most notable thing is what they say in the whole book. (they are talking about two different approaches on metric and prosody).

"It was reportedly Jeremy Bentham who said that he knew poetry when he saw it: the words did not run all the way to the right-hand side of the page. But this seems a little confused: surely Bentham was not talking about poetry but rather verse. Verseform is the mode of presentation of lang. which segments speech into lines, which on the printed page do not fill all the space to the right, or in recitation are marked at their ends for aural recognition (see LINE). Poetry, most of us would say, is something else, something less definite. Poetry is memorable..." (pg.1024)....

So, The give , sorry, THE given book actually proposes that Poetry is something else. As I said, the distinction between prose and poetry is quite more complex than you are pretending it to be. To deal with this complexity, they add after listing a handful of poetry defintions which do not deal with verses:

"We have, then, not two terms, poetry and prose, but three—poetry, prose, and verse." (and of course, Poem is what they defined by the use of verse. So in the end they are pretty close to say we have 3 things, poetry, prose and poems, just like I said). But one can claim they still think Poetry must have verses. Oh, but no. They do claim otherwise.

"It is possible there could be poetry not set in lines., if one defines poetry in terms of content or compression of content; and certainly there are hybrid forms such as rhythmical prose (see PROSE RHYTHM) and the prose poem (q.v.)." pg.737

Lines here more or less like verses (they work with verses being metrical, not just lines however), They do acknowledge other forms to define poetry (hence why they as encyclopedia do not end the definition in poetry in a few lines), suggest there will be poetry without the line break and of course, consider prose -poetry as a hybrid, you know, something that unify both things and not negate each other. They go on, mentioning they are working with those unities because of their importance and because the majority (not all) poetry takes advantage of the verse organization.

They do not stop of course. They know it is not as simple and add:

"Essentialists—"affectivists" might be a better term—do not consider verseform essential to the definition of poetry and view poets as more and sometimes other than versifiers. For centuries, from Quintilian (Istc. A.D.) to romanticism, it was a critical commonplace that Lucan was a rhetorician or historian who wrote in v. and that Plato, Xenophon (Cyropaedia), and Heliodorus (Ethiopian History) were poets. The major Western proponents of this view incl. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, Sidney, Wordsworth, Shelley, Arnold, and Croce."... pg, 1390.

Oops, so they even add there is an entire critical group that oppose to the definition? Of course, THE encyclopedia cannot ignore their object. One page before, when they mention the confusion that it is all this therminology, they mention

"We must first recognize that the two modes, verses.and prose., intersect the concept "poetry" and its opposite, nonpoetry.". They certainly think you cannot dismiss prose so easily while defining poetry. And that it is not just verse use, rather one of the concepts in the definition. Of course, the new edition of the ecyclopedia changed a bit the definition, ending with the claim that the very defnition of poetry is not stable and there always someone denying an poetic form in a culture. Exactly what you do. (They aslo say Zulu poetry does not have verse, so they again, do not seems to be limited to your definition).

So, can we move on with the idea that Princenton just agrees with you?



Besides, this is rather beside the point whether or not we can actually find any common link between all objects we call “poems/poetry” and then distinguish them from those we call “prose.”

Well, maybe besides for us, but for the topic starter, that was the point, recall? :D


Ok, I’ll challenge you: how do we know it is an epic poem? What makes it epic and what makes it a poem?

Sorry, you do not challenge me as I do not need to present anything except contest the previous Eagleton defintion. It's (not the only example) poetry. How the definition that is minimalist can ignore this poem? It cann't.



Right, she expressed what poetry meant to her; Baudelaire took elements that constituted poetry FOR HIM, put them in prose, and called it a prose poem. You keep using the term “poetic devices” but what makes those devices strictly poetic and not, you know, prosaic?

Baudelaire did no such thing. He opted for an already existing form, so he could stretch the boundaires of prose with poetry. Nothing of "definition what is poetry". Those devices are usually related to poetry due to tradition, that is all.


IF we define poetry as “lineated literature” and prose as “non-lineated literature” then it is absolutely impossible to combine them at the same time, the same way something can’t be both alive and dead (barring Shrodinger’s Cat), or fat and thin, or tall and short, or whatever. Of course, that’s IF we define them that way; I’m arguing we should, you’re arguing that we shouldn’t. I would challenge that if you don’t, the distinction between them becomes impossible to delineate (no pun intended). Now, one might could combine lineated literature and non-lineated literature in a single work, and perhaps THEN you’d have a prose poem, but even then the prose and the poetry would be separate from each other within the work.

Of course, people already combined it. Basho for example. But the problem is: a definition that is not satisfactory must be challenged.


LOL, what a terrible example! What’s written down are the “written” words, and what’s spoken are the “spoken” words. There’s nothing diametrically oppositional about them at all!

you must be joking, tell me you are joking. Oral Literature does not deal with any written word, or you are unaware of this? Oral Literature is a famous oxymoron, something quite discussed among oral literature students. Because you know, Oral Word and Writen word are exactly two oposites that do not exist together at all.


To use a better example: you can pour water into a cup. You can take that same water and freeze it to make ice. That water can never be both water and ice at the same time. However, you could freeze that water, and pour another glass of different water, so you could have the same molecules in two different forms. The first example (same water both frozen/liquid) is what I mean about prose/poetry. The exact same text can’t exist in two diametrically opposed states (lineated VS non-lineated) simultaneously; what you’re talking about is the second example, having two different forms of the same general substance (frozen/liquid, spoken/written)

Verse, not verse. Two forms.

See your both Eaglaton put a Lawrence poem in the freezer and removes, changing it from Ice (verse) to water (prose).


What I’m calling a fallacy is the notion that those things that Baudelaire transposed from poetry to prose were what made the poetry poetry in the first place.

Good for him.


Well, if you agree Baudelaire agrees with Eagleton about poetry being founded on the notion of “verse,” then what are we arguing about?! All I’m saying is that Baudelaire’s “prose poems” weren’t actual poems.

You, I dunno. You went to argue and then we certainly advanced over the theme. Go and check my first post on this thread.


Poetic means things associated with poetry, not things that denote/define poetry; THAT’S where the difference lies. It’s like saying that there’s the act of sex, and then there are “sexy” things that we associate with the act of sex, but which are not the act itself. That’s the difference I’ve been talking about all along. That you can have “sexy” things outside of sex doesn’t make those sexy things sex; that you can have “poetic” things outside of poetry doesn’t make those poetic things poetry. Associations, connotations, intensions, etc. ARE NOT denotative definitions.

The word is sexual, not sexy. Sexy is more close to sensuality than sexuality. And Poetic means things related to poetry and with the traits of poetry (so if you say this text is poetic is because it has poetry traits, this prose is poetic, it is because it has poetry traits) and you know, what define us right? Our traits.

[MorpheusSandman]

Funny how you just wrote the Pluto and planet history where people attepted to redefine something and when it is baudelaire or anything shattering your definition of poetry. I don’t think you got my point. People calling Pluto “not a planet” DID NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT PLUTO. All it did was change how our cognitive linguistic map was wired. Similarly, calling Baudelaire’s work “prose poems” DOES NOT MAKE IT ANY CLOSER TO FARTHER TO OTHER OBJECTS WE CALL POETRY. All it did was change (for some) how their cognitive linguistic map was wired.


Newsflash: the term Prose Poem is stabilished for 200 years. It is a bit too late for you to rebel against it.I’m far from the only person in those two hundred years to claim that the term is an oxymoron and shouldn’t exist.


Yes, they define poem and are careful to say it is a "traditional" view. They even mention the view that poetry was view until the middle of XIX century. But the most notable thing is what they say in the whole book….It was the view up until the middle of the 19th century and still is for the vast majority of poetry readers, and I contend there’s absolutely no good reason to change it. I’m well aware Princeton writes a great deal more on the subject, but even if you take what they wrote: “Poetry, most of us would say, is something else, something less definite…” well, the entire point of having definitions is to be, well, definitive! Speaking of yet another oxymoron, you can’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) have an “indefinite definition,” especially when you can have one that IS definite and actually has some practical application.


the distinction between prose and poetry is quite more complex than you are pretending it to be. To deal with this complexity, they add after listing a handful of poetry defintions which do not deal with verses: No, the distinction is made complex by people that have a distaste for such definitiveness and prefer connotations to denotations. Like I said, we have definitions that work perfectly well if people were content with leaving them alone, but poets love to screw with language, hence the fact that they’ve refused to leave it alone. But take this:


"It is possible there could be poetry not set in lines., if one defines poetry in terms of content or compression of content; and certainly there are hybrid forms such as rhythmical prose (see PROSE RHYTHM) and the prose poem (q.v.)." pg.737Yes, it it POSSIBLE to have poetry not set in lines, IF one defines poetry in terms of something else besides form. What I’ve been arguing is that we SHOULDN’T DO THIS. Further, I’ve argued WHY we shouldn’t do this. Two major reasons:

1. We have two definitions that ARE definitive, work extremely well, and actually rely on something that’s objective about the text that allows us to clearly demarcate one from the other because they are simultaneously incompatible.

2. If we choose to redefine them it will be at the expense of 1. and for the benefit of other things that are NOT mutually exclusive (at best) and, at worst, are entirely subjective.

Why in the world would you want to “redefine” something by trading the former for the latter?


Oops, so they even add there is an entire critical group that oppose to the definition?But who cares? I never denied such a thing. However, are you really denying that verse = poetry is still the majority view and the definition that most clearly separates prose from poetry?


Of course, the new edition of the ecyclopedia changed a bit the definition, ending with the claim that the very defnition of poetry is not stable and there always someone denying an poetic form in a culture. Exactly what you do.What I’M doing is trying to keep language as clear as possible so mutual communication is fruitful. Miscommunication happens when you have two people running around with completely different intensions of the same word in their head, and many, many, many debates could be avoided if people were more concerned with connecting their intensions with extensional qualities. Lineation is an extensional quality that is easily recognized and understood. So it makes sense to me to have a word that refers to lineated literature (poetry) and a word that refers to non-lineated literature (prose), because the consequence not using those words to refer to those qualities is that you end up with a jumble of intensions that are applicable to both lineated and non-lineated literature, so that when someone says “poetry” or someone says “prose,” NOBODY WOULD HAVE A F’ING CLUE WHAT QUALITY SOMEONE WAS USING TO DEFINE THE WORD.

Consider this: if we both share my definition of poetry, when I say “poetry” you know exactly what I mean and, what’s more important, what I DON’T mean. On the other hand, let’s ignore my definition and say I use the same word: what the hell do I mean now when I use the word and, what’s more, can you point to anything in the text that will distinguish it from any other kind of writing objectively?


So, can we move on with the idea that Princenton just agrees with you? Being an encyclopedia of course they’re going to include other “definitions” of poetry, but they open their entire section on “poetry” with the passage I transcribed FOR A DAMN GOOD REASON. However, we can forget about what sources agree/disagree with me and just focus on the issue of whether or not it’s wise to attempt to redefine either term.


Sorry, you do not challenge me as I do not need to present anything except contest the previous Eagleton defintion.If you’re going to challenge definitions yet offer none of your own, essentially just leaving things with terms meaning anything, then what the hell’s the point? Do you really think I think that Eagleton’s definition is the ONLY definition out there? Do you really think I hadn’t read that entire Princeton section (and others)? Of course not; my point from the beginning was that Eagleton offered the best definition for all the reasons I’ve been giving. Now, if you think it’s NOT the best definition, it’s not enough just to point out that there are others, since that’s trivial; you have to point to others and argue why they’re better. Similarly, if you’re going to keep using terms like “epic poetry” while not choosing a definition, then you should be prepared to be challenged on just what the hell you mean by calling something “epic poetry” when you haven’t bothered to define either term; otherwise you’re just begging the question.


a definition that is not satisfactory must be challenged.Right, but there’s nothing unsatisfactory about Eagleton’s/my definition of poetry other than that people want to call other forms of literature poetry on a capricious whim.


you must be joking, tell me you are joking. Oral Literature does not deal with any written word, or you are unaware of this?No joke, I think we just misunderstood each other: I thought you were referring to oral literature that was written down as well. Still, there’s nothing oxymoronic about the term. If literature deals with written words, oral literature deals with spoken words; the same way verse can deal with metrical lines and free verse deals with un-metrical lines.


Verse, not verse. Two forms.

See your both Eaglaton put a Lawrence poem in the freezer and removes, changing it from Ice (verse) to water (prose). Or poetry and prose, two forms; and verse/free verse, two forms of poetry.

I don’t know what you’re suggesting with the latter. The equivalent of “freezing” a “water” poem to make it prose would be like writing out Red Wheelbarrow in sentences without lines. It can’t exist both ways unless you write it out twice each way (like having two glasses of water).


The word is sexual, not sexy. Sexy is more close to sensuality than sexuality. And Poetic means things related to poetry and with the traits of poetry (so if you say this text is poetic is because it has poetry traits, this prose is poetic, it is because it has poetry traits) and you know, what define us right? Our traits.Sexual, sexy, it doesn’t really matter to the point I was making. If you can have “sexual” things outside of sex, those things are clearly not what defines sex; if you can have “poetic” things outside of poetry, those things are clearly not what defines poetry. All it means is that there are qualities that are associated with something but that can exist outside that something without defining what that something is. Yes, traits “define” things, but some traits are required for that definitions and some are not. The color white might be a trait of a rose, but it is not what defines it as a rose since roses can come in multiple colors.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm not sure that Eagleton meant this orthography to define "poetry" or just "verse." His definition certainly makes sense as a technical definition of "verse." "Poetry" is a more tricky thing to define technically. There are many definitions of "poetry" that seek to distinguish it from "other" forms of language.Ok, I understand what you mean: Eagleton clearly meant this orthography to define poetry and not just verse. Or, perhaps more technically, if we were only to refer to verse as "the line," poetry could be the entire lineated work. As I've been debating JCamilo about, if you choose to (re)define poetry to mean anything else, then you are moving into realms where it would be impossible to distinguish it from any other writing on any objective level. As I said in my previous post, I'm aware there are other definitions of poetry out there, but, as JCamilo has been giving examples of (Baudelaire), those things are clearly not limited to "verse," and why would we want to refer to qualities that are not limited to what format they're written in when we can use those words to refer to the form itself?


JCamilo makes a good point: You certainly do not define verse or free verse to then define poetry, it is certainly the other way around. If it isn't poetry in first place, you do not even need to talk about verses. Verse is a line in the poem. Free verse is when a poem verses do not keep a metrical pattern.I don't see why that's a good point since it's just a chicken and the egg game. If it was poetry without being in verse then what made it such, and how would we know since it WAS written (or spoken) in verse to begin with?

[AuntShecky]

Now that yours fooly's eyes are glazing over, let me put it this way:

Imagine a round of "Final Jeopardy" in which the category is "Literature Forms." Write the "answer" appearing on the screen while the Jeopardy! theme plays for 30 seconds, until the winning contestant holds up the little blackboard containing the winning "question":

"What is free verse?"

[MorpheusSandman]

Imagine a round of "Final Jeopardy" in which the category is "Literature Forms." Write the "answer" appearing on the screen while the Jeopardy! theme plays for 30 seconds, until the winning contestant holds up the little blackboard containing the winning "question":

"What is free verse?"This literary form is defined as 'non-metrical verse.'

Good luck, contestants. (Hard to write an actual Jeopardy-sounding "answer," since the "question" would be so obvious. A writer would probably have to get creative to make it a bit tougher. Something like: "This literary form might be thought of as emancipated turns.")

[JCamilo]

Yes, Auntie, I was waiting to give you room since the discussion would side track you. (A mod may want to break the thread, it would be ok).

If you are having such doubts, you certainly have a work that caused such doubt on you, right? Why don't you post here. Sometimes experience is a better guide than didatism. For example, try to see which metre was in a given line. None? Any? Why you broke the line like this? Why you choose such word order. If we find all those answers and they indicate an metric, irregular or not, a preference for rythim, a nuance on the effect of the line caused by such order or break, we may have a free verse.

Otherwise - without vallue judgement - you may have prose.

Can you make a defintion that will give you peace? Nope, several poems were written without line breakers, people is completely unware of this. Technically knowing it is fine, but even before someone coined 'free verse" and used it as a flag for their poetics. So, it is another near oxymoric defintion there will be always grey areas, therefore just rest us to read your poems.

[AuntShecky]

Yes, Auntie, I was waiting to give you room since the discussion would side track you. (A mod may want to break the thread, it would be ok).


Thank you, J.

If and when we can come up with a workable definition of free verse upon which the consensus would more or less agree, optimally it could be applied universally --to the works of both "real" modern poets and poetasters such as yours fooly.

The "poem," or whatever it should be called, is #462 in the thread, appearing here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?45537-Auntie-s-Anti-Poems&p=1231422&viewfull=1#post1231422).

An astute LitNutter whose opinions I thoroughly respect characterized it as "prose" in response #464. I wasn't at all "hurt" by his observation, despite the fact that I'd worked on the darn thing for a full three weeks ,and it hadn't been something that I'd "dashed off" in a matter of minutes.

I've been a LitNutter for over six years, and in that time I've noticed that the majority of contributions on the "Personal Poetry" forum by other LitNutters have been non-traditional, non-metered, unrhymed verse. A very small number of responses to these poems criticize them for being "prose."

But I really wanted to know what exactly constitutes "free verse," and how it differs from "prose," which ,when one is attempting to write "poetry," sounds pedestrian and mundane.

[tailor STATELY]

I see your edit Aunty and remove my link.

Interesting thread that has *piqued my curiosity as well.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[JCamilo]

My opinion, It is free verse. Not saying there is not the "Prose feeling" mentioned, but free verse do and can have prose feelings. But the line breaking seems to impose a edgy, fragmented reading which i did not found when i put the poem in prose, without breaks (to have a similar effect in prose i think you would need other words, other order, etc). It make the poem eletric, like buzzing. There is no regular metric obviously, but seems to impose a rythim. If that was your aim better for me :D

Anyways, i think it is a poem because the versing (free) is targetting for an effect not attainable in prose, not a casual line breaker.

Edit: another thing that seems to bring some strangeness is that made me think a bit of portuguese poetry (modern portuguese poetry of course), not the short english words, but long words that are used more often in portuguese.

About the definition, the difficulty is exactly that free verse approaches to prose, as until XIX century there was the convention that poetry used metrics. Technically, a very good free verse poet will can easily make prose and free verse be so alike and good that the only difference be seen in printing process. I guess the question it is free verse if the use of line breaks without the metre causes an effect not attained in prose and that maybe the only way to find the difference.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks again, J.
"Line breaks" -- that is the dominant theme. If you bring "enjambment" into the mix, that's another feature that might distinguish the thing from "prose." And you also offer a rule of thumb--try to set the lines in conventional "prose" form without the line breaks: if it works better WITH the line breaks, then it is "free verse" indeed, not prose.

[JCamilo]

No worries, Aunt,
Yes, the more typical elements, easier to distinguish. I guess it is a rule of thumb, a good one for writers, hard to define, but if the effect caused by the text is altered by the line breakers, you can consider it verse. It is not perfect, but give you ground to walk.

[MorpheusSandman]

If and when we can come up with a workable definition of free verse upon which the consensus would more or less agree, optimally it could be applied universally --to the works of both "real" modern poets and poetasters such as yours fooly.We have a workable definition of free verse upon which the consensus agrees; it's the one printed in Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster... and you are no poetaster, my dear.


The "poem," or whatever it should be called, is #462 in the thread, appearing here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?45537-Auntie-s-Anti-Poems&p=1231422&viewfull=1#post1231422).

An astute LitNutter whose opinions I thoroughly respect characterized it as "prose" in response #464. I wasn't at all "hurt" by his observation, despite the fact that I'd worked on the darn thing for a full three weeks ,and it hadn't been something that I'd "dashed off" in a matter of minutes.

I've been a LitNutter for over six years, and in that time I've noticed that the majority of contributions on the "Personal Poetry" forum by other LitNutters have been non-traditional, non-metered, unrhymed verse. A very small number of responses to these poems criticize them for being "prose."

But I really wanted to know what exactly constitutes "free verse," and how it differs from "prose," which ,when one is attempting to write "poetry," sounds pedestrian and mundane.Firstly, I agree that b|v is typically a very astute, eloquent, well-learned reader and critic of poetry, but I have no compunction saying that he's dead wrong here. I think what he means by calling it "prose" is that it reads like a narrative (which it is) as opposed to a lyric (which it isn't), and there's often a tendency to associate narrative more with prose than poetry today because of the dominance of narratives being in novel form (especially when most of the famous narrative poems one can name are in verse). Secondly, I agree with JCamilo that you most certainly use line-breaks in a substantial way in this poem. Even with a cursory reading I notice several patterns of both syntax and sound that the line-breaks create (eg, the echo of "leftOVER and thUNDER" in L4 and L6 that is strengthened by being placed at the end of the lines). Thirdly, even without these patterns and affects created by the line breaks, I'd STILL call it free-verse even if read no differently than chopped-up, banal prose. As has been mentioned, prose can contain the most heightened, flowery, sound/rhythm dominated language imaginable, such as in Joyce, but it's still very much prose even if it extremely "poetic." Similarly, even if your free-verse was entirely prose-like, it would still be free-verse, even if it wasn't good free-verse (which I think it is).


Thanks again, J.
"Line breaks" -- that is the dominant theme. If you bring "enjambment" into the mix, that's another feature that might distinguish the thing from "prose." And you also offer a rule of thumb--try to set the lines in conventional "prose" form without the line breaks: if it works better WITH the line breaks, then it is "free verse" indeed, not prose.The problem with your last sentence is this: whom is to say whether or not it works better with line breaks? That's the problem I was referring to about creating a definition that relies on a subjective reaction. If someone doesn't think the line-breaks make it work better, why not just let them call it "bad free verse" instead of "prose"?

[AuntShecky]

I hear ya, MS ^ and thanks.

[JCamilo]

I don’t think you got my point. People calling Pluto “not a planet” DID NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT PLUTO. All it did was change how our cognitive linguistic map was wired. Similarly, calling Baudelaire’s work “prose poems” DOES NOT MAKE IT ANY CLOSER TO FARTHER TO OTHER OBJECTS WE CALL POETRY. All it did was change (for some) how their cognitive linguistic map was wired.

I has nothing to do with people not understanding you. It is hilarious that you keep claiming a definition must be definitive and you start you post exactly proving definitions change. It is hilarious that you go with sweeping generalisations as if your argument is universal and end in completely contraditory arguments. But yes, People do not understand Humpty Dumpty.


I’m far from the only person in those two hundred years to claim that the term is an oxymoron and shouldn’t exist.

Really? And? You are not an authority, those people either. More, you are not the first person to try to change a definition.


It was the view up until the middle of the 19th century and still is for the vast majority of poetry readers, and I contend there’s absolutely no good reason to change it. I’m well aware Princeton writes a great deal more on the subject, but even if you take what they wrote: “Poetry, most of us would say, is something else, something less definite…” well, the entire point of having definitions is to be, well, definitive! Speaking of yet another oxymoron, you can’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) have an “indefinite definition,” especially when you can have one that IS definite and actually has some practical application.

I could go that academic definitions are always open to questioning. That the object described is not -as you with your failed analogy with Pluto - something that "stays the same" (Poetry clearly changes with cultures). I could point that actually the first definition of poetry do not deal with verses, so if things were definitive, then your definition is the one "wrong' in changing. The definition means more to define than definitive forever. That the word redefine proves that definition changes. That being accepted by most people does not means it is a specialist accepts it - and the whole point of Authority as you claim is working with specialist opiinions, after all, we all know appeal to majority is a typical logical fallacy. But the point is you claimed your definition is supported by THE Princeton Guide while it does not.


No, the distinction is made complex by people that have a distaste for such definitiveness and prefer connotations to denotations. Like I said, we have definitions that work perfectly well if people were content with leaving them alone, but poets love to screw with language, hence the fact that they’ve refused to leave it alone. But take this:

If we are going to leave alone, then we are not going to bring your definition. And it does not work well. You are dodging but you just cann't apply you definition to old forms of poetry that had no verse (as Zulu poetry), since you cannot identify versification in poems like Gilgamesh or Biblical poetry, since it cannot account for poetic forms and the development of prose since XIX century. A definition that cannot reach the real limits of the object like yours - it is more what the word means - fails. Yours failed.


Yes, it it POSSIBLE to have poetry not set in lines, IF one defines poetry in terms of something else besides form. What I’ve been arguing is that we SHOULDN’T DO THIS. Further, I’ve argued WHY we shouldn’t do this. Two major reasons:

1. We have two definitions that ARE definitive, work extremely well, and actually rely on something that’s objective about the text that allows us to clearly demarcate one from the other because they are simultaneously incompatible.

Refused because you either has no academic training reggarding definitions or you have no idea what the world means. Also you do not have to settle for a definition that cannot objectively include all object being described.


2. If we choose to redefine them it will be at the expense of 1. and for the benefit of other things that are NOT mutually exclusive (at best) and, at worst, are entirely subjective.

Nobody is using terms mutually exclusive.


Why in the world would you want to “redefine” something by trading the former for the latter?

But who cares? I never denied such a thing. However, are you really denying that verse = poetry is still the majority view and the definition that most clearly separates prose from poetry?

Poetry is not verse according the authoritative source you brought, Princenton. I do not care the majority view, I am not dumb to appeal to majority. And you claimed the majority of authoritative sources supported your definition and ridiculously brought one that not only does not support your defintion as list several other authoritative sources that do not. Moving the goals posts to "I never denied the existence of other definitions" is not going to help you.


What I’M doing is trying to keep language as clear as possible so mutual communication is fruitful. Miscommunication happens when you have two people running around with completely different intensions of the same word in their head, and many, many, many debates could be avoided if people were more concerned with connecting their intensions with extensional qualities. Lineation is an extensional quality that is easily recognized and understood. So it makes sense to me to have a word that refers to lineated literature (poetry) and a word that refers to non-lineated literature (prose), because the consequence not using those words to refer to those qualities is that you end up with a jumble of intensions that are applicable to both lineated and non-lineated literature, so that when someone says “poetry” or someone says “prose,” NOBODY WOULD HAVE A F’ING CLUE WHAT QUALITY SOMEONE WAS USING TO DEFINE THE WORD.

Yes, so could you stop creating such confusion? Because the source you quoted, sorry THE SOURCE, clearly said poetry is not using verse, that there is linead prose, etc.


Consider this: if we both share my definition of poetry, when I say “poetry” you know exactly what I mean and, what’s more important, what I DON’T mean. On the other hand, let’s ignore my definition and say I use the same word: what the hell do I mean now when I use the word and, what’s more, can you point to anything in the text that will distinguish it from any other kind of writing objectively?

Me and Princenton guide do not share your definition of poetry. Since you unable to back up your use of the word with anything but "Majority of readers" , It will be fine if you stop stubbornly to cause confusion trying to impose your definition, ok?


Being an encyclopedia of course they’re going to include other “definitions” of poetry, but they open their entire section on “poetry” with the passage I transcribed FOR A DAMN GOOD REASON. However, we can forget about what sources agree/disagree with me and just focus on the issue of whether or not it’s wise to attempt to redefine either term.

So, you selected a passage ignoring all others to show an "Authority" that supported your claim while you were fully aware the same source would, in encyclopedical way, list every defintion? How is that supporting? How you didn't copy and pasted (for a damn reason: honestidy) the entire discussion that made clear, unlike you claim, they didnt exactly agree with your definition? So, you really considered I would had no access for the book, Morph?

As opening the section, really? I wish to go to a teacher and say the reason i support a defintion in a 6 pages entry is because the first 8 lines. Anyways are you aware they do not start the same way in the 4th edition. It starts with Aristoteles (after saying about the history of the term as filled of uses), so now you will claim Aristoteles definition is right (he does not define according to verses). But more, what about really reading the entry?

"A poem is an instance of verbal art, a text set in verse, bound speech…"

A Poem. They define a Poem, not poetry as a text set in verse. They do say it was a traditional view to think poem = poetry, but they say it is a traditional view, not their view (which would justify why they kept the entry, this means this defintion is not "definitive" for them. Of course you could say they were just accounting the different schools, but this is not true. When they claim, Poetry is more than verses, that Poetry definition must account prose and verse, they do not mention anything about being a traditional (and outdated view), they just claim it in every other related entry. To them, Poetry is not the same as Poem or Verse. To them Prose Poems are poetry. They are not contraditory (considering all other quotations i posted), because they let clear, Prose is contraditory to verse, not to Poetry.

So, yes, Princenton - it is an echo - do not define poetry as you do. It is not just to some people, It is their definition. They never defined Poetry as what set in verse at all. They agree with me. They do not support you at all. Which is why you mentioned them in first place. You are not going to argue with their authority will you?




If you’re going to challenge definitions yet offer none of your own, essentially just leaving things with terms meaning anything, then what the hell’s the point?

I am pretty sure no such academic would really defend a definition that is show to be flawed just because a new definition isn't produced.


Do you really think I think that Eagleton’s definition is the ONLY definition out there?

Nor i claimed it. I said it is limited and flawed good for student guides that will basically study traditional forms.


Do you really think I hadn’t read that entire Princeton section (and others)?

If you read, then why you claimed it supported your view while I quoted several portions of it where it pretty much reckognize Poetry as not the same as versing and that is compatible with Prose?


Of course not; my point from the beginning was that Eagleton offered the best definition for all the reasons I’ve been giving. Now, if you think it’s NOT the best definition, it’s not enough just to point out that there are others, since that’s trivial; you have to point to others and argue why they’re better.

No, to show the flaws of Eagleton definition I must just point to those flaws. It is rather ridiculous you keep claiming i just said there is others while i even posted a picture of a gilgamesh epic - Poetry - and showed Eagleton defintion cannot be used to show it is Poetry opposed to prose. I also mentioned - with my own words and of course, my new favorite THE Princeton guide - works of prose with metre and poetry without it. It is not because you stubbornly ignore it that make me "just point there are others."


Similarly, if you’re going to keep using terms like “epic poetry” while not choosing a definition, then you should be prepared to be challenged on just what the hell you mean by calling something “epic poetry” when you haven’t bothered to define either term; otherwise you’re just begging the question.

However my defintion of poetry (or what I suggest, since I did not really wrote one) is supported by an authoritative reference (eg, Princeton) does. Princeton may be THE reference book for such terms, did you knew it? Yours? Some dude writing a guide for grad students...


Right, but there’s nothing unsatisfactory about Eagleton’s/my definition of poetry other than that people want to call other forms of literature poetry on a capricious whim.

Do you mean like those Princeton guys? In a capricious whim they consider Prose Poems as poetry?


No joke, I think we just misunderstood each other: I thought you were referring to oral literature that was written down as well. Still, there’s nothing oxymoronic about the term. If literature deals with written words, oral literature deals with spoken words; the same way verse can deal with metrical lines and free verse deals with un-metrical lines.

Morph, Literature means "writen works", so Oral Literature is "oral writen works". Oxymoron. As some may say about free verse. So, as I said, several terms are created with contraditory terms and accepted with their new meanings.


Or poetry and prose, two forms; and verse/free verse, two forms of poetry.

Except it is Poems and Prose.


I don’t know what you’re suggesting with the latter. The equivalent of “freezing” a “water” poem to make it prose would be like writing out Red Wheelbarrow in sentences without lines. It can’t exist both ways unless you write it out twice each way (like having two glasses of water).

Sexual, sexy, it doesn’t really matter to the point I was making. If you can have “sexual” things outside of sex, those things are clearly not what defines sex; if you can have “poetic” things outside of poetry, those things are clearly not what defines poetry. All it means is that there are qualities that are associated with something but that can exist outside that something without defining what that something is. Yes, traits “define” things, but some traits are required for that definitions and some are not. The color white might be a trait of a rose, but it is not what defines it as a rose since roses can come in multiple colors.

Except poetic or poetical means with the traits of poetry. (Being white is not a rose trait, it is a trait of a specific rose, btw. It is more like saying "rosic" is having petals, scent, or thorns - even with roses without thorns, so all that is poetic, have traits you will find in poetry). Hence "poetic prose" means prose like poetry and it would be an oxymoron according to your definition.

[MorpheusSandman]

JCam, I’m going to try to pare down this debate. It’s getting too close to an omnislash war. I’m going to try to group the different threads together as opposed to replying to them line-by-line. If I miss anything, just point it out in your next response.

RE: Definitions/Poetry Changes


It is hilarious that you keep claiming a definition must be definitive and you post exactly proving definitions change… That the object described is not -as you with your failed analogy with Pluto - something that "stays the same" (Poetry clearly changes with cultures)… Definitions can and do change, of course. My whole point, and the one you keep ignoring, is that there is no reason to change the definition of poetry or prose from the ones I’ve given. That other people have called objects “poetry” that falls outside my definition does not invalidate my point, much as you’d like to think it does.

But you’re still begging the question (speaking of logical fallacies); you continue to challenge my definition of poetry, yet you then turn around an insist that “poetry changes.” Well, pray tell, how can you say “poetry changes” if you don’t even know what poetry is? You’re just assuming—incorrectly—that there are these things that are poetry as opposed to there being these things that are linguistic works with different qualities that we call “prose” and “poetry,” and that what we call them is dependent upon our individual and social understanding of those terms and, what’s more, if you do as you’re doing—essentially saying there IS no agreed-upon definition of poetry—you lose every ground you have for claiming anything is or isn’t poetry! Yet, lo and behold, despite the fact you’re still using the term like it has some actual meaning! I think I should start pointing out every time you use the word “poetry” in the same paragraph you’re challenging that there is any definitive definition of poetry, because you’re sure using the word like it has some kind of definition that you understand and are comfortable using!

RE: My Definition


I am pretty sure no such academic would really defend a definition that is show to be flawed just because a new definition isn't produced. You haven’t shown my definition to be flawed. All you’ve done is say “other people call things poetry that fall outside that definition.” What makes you think that’s showing a flaw in a definition as opposed to showing a flaw in what other people chose to call poetry?


A definition that cannot reach the real limits of the object like yours - it is more what the word means - fails. Yours failed.The problem is that if you choose to group too many unalike objects under the same label then it eventually becomes impossible to find any quality they all share that would justify using the same label. This is not MY failing, or a problem with MY definition, this is the failing of people who have foolishly chosen to group things with no similarities under the same label. I would have no problem calling non-verse literary works non-poetry to begin with. Or, if one insists on using the term, then attach some modifier to it that would give its own specialized meaning. So, say, “Gilgamesh poetry” would only exist to describe the kind of literary poetry we find in Gilgamesh. Otherwise, if you take something like Gilgamesh, The Bible, and then all of English verse and say “I feel we should give all of these works the same label; I’ll call that label “poetry,” yet you can’t find any quality that they all share, then that reveals a problem with your attempt at using one label for too many dissimilar works.

See here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/o0/where_to_draw_the_boundary/

Relevant abstract (and I’m going to change some words to make it more relevant to this discussion:
Someone comes to you and says:

Long have I pondered the meaning of the word "poetry", and at last I've found what seems to me a satisfactory definition: "Poetry is literature written in verse."

Just because there's a word "poetry" doesn't mean that it has a meaning, floating out there in the void, which you can discover by finding the right definition.

It feels that way, but it is not so.

Wondering how to define a word means you're looking at the problem the wrong way—searching for the mysterious essence of what is, in fact, a communication signal.

Now, there is a real challenge which a rationalist may legitimately attack, but the challenge is not to find a satisfactory definition of a word… The challenge is figuring out which things are similar to each other—which things are clustered together—and sometimes, which things have a common cause.

If you define "eluctromugnetism" to include lightning, include compasses, exclude light, and include Mesmer's "animal magnetism" (what we now call hypnosis), then you will have some trouble asking "How does electromugnetism work?" You have lumped together things which do not belong together, and excluded others that would be needed to complete a set.

We could say that electromugnetism is a wrong word, a boundary in thingspace that loops around and swerves through the clusters, a cut that fails to carve reality along its natural joints.

Figuring where to cut reality in order to carve along the joints—this is the problem worthy of a rationalist. It is what people should be trying to do, when they set out in search of the floating essence of a word.

What is "poetry"? But there is no essence of the word, floating in the void.

Perhaps you come to me with a long list of the things that you call "poetry" and "not poetry":

Gilgamesh: Poetry.
A punch in the nose: Not poetry.
Bible Psalms: Poetry.
A flower: Not poetry.
Paradise Lost: Poetry.
A cross floating in urine: Not poetry.
The Odyssey: Poetry.

And you say to me: "It feels intuitive to me to draw this boundary, but I don't know why—can you find me an intension that matches this extension? Can you give me a simple description of this boundary?"

…

But of course my definition of poetry is not the real point. The real point is that you could well dispute either the intension or the extension of my definition.

(You could dispute) my intension, my attempt to draw a curve through the data points. You would say, "Your equation may roughly fit those points, but it is not the true generating distribution."

Or you could dispute my extension by saying, "Some of these things do belong together—I can see what you're getting at… Here, the presumption is that there is indeed an underlying curve that generates this apparent list of similar and dissimilar things—that there is a rhyme and reason, even though you haven't said yet where it comes from—but I have unwittingly lost the rhythm and included some data points from a different generator.Now, I’ve had to change much of that article to make it be about “poetry” rather than “art,” but the point remains the same. If you come to me with a list of works you call “poetry” and say “I feel we should draw the boundary around these objects,” it’s quite possible you will find no similarities between them beside the fact that they’re literature (either written or oral). If you can find no common similarity amongst all of them, it makes no sense to use the same label to refer to all of them, because that label can’t refer to any common extension or intension. There can be no shared, communal meaning of the word.

On the other hand, I’ve given you such a thing with my definition. My definition has clear, objective extension (lineated literature = verse = poetry) and intension. If we chose that definition we could communicate meaningfully. Otherwise what you’re left with is a word that groups too many dissimilar things together and one that cannot be used to communicate meaningfully. It can communicate VAGUELY, ie, someone says “poetry” and everyone gets a very vague idea of what they’re talking about—ie, they’ll know they mean literature, but, beyond that, they’ll only be guessing at what the person means by the term.

RE: Princeton


Poetry is not verse according the authoritative source you brought, Princenton. I do not care the majority view, I am not dumb to appeal to majority… Me and Princenton guide do not share your definition of poetry Firstly, Appeal to majority is only fallacious for certain things. When you’re talking about definitions, you’re talking about meanings that are shared by the many people. Language is communal, so majority accounts for a great deal. It’s not an appeal to say “most people use X word to mean Y.”

Secondly: When I said Princeton “supported my definition” I meant precisely that my definition was listed, and it was. I did not say that it exclusively supported my definition, that it did not list any others. It seems to me that you’re trying to turn my claim into something it never was. You’re making it out like I was saying “Princeton supports my definition excluding all others. That was never my claim. In fact, let’s go back and see exactly what was claimed:

Me: “Nonetheless, my definitions are supported by almost every single textbook and dictionary and other authoritative reference I can find.”
You: “That is an ontrageous and ridiculous lie. Several people do not consider "your definitions" true.”
Me: “I never said everyone agreed with my definitions, what I said was that most every dictionary, textbook, and authoritative reference (eg, Princeton) does.”

To say “my definition is supported is not to say my definition is supported at the exclusion of all others. The reason I only copied Princeton’s entry on my definition was to show that it did “support,” ie include, my definition, not to show that it said “yes, this is what poetry is and all other definitions are wrong.” Of course it (and few, if any other sources) wouldn’t say that. Perhaps the confusion happened over your bit about “my definition being true.” Definitions aren’t “true” or “false,” they’re simply either in usage or they’re not. My point was that: “My definition is in usage, supported, ie, listed, by most every authoritative reference, and here’s why we should use it.” So there’s two parts to my claim:

1. Authoritative sources support, ie list, my definition.
2. We should use my definitions for the reasons I’ve been giving.

I was not trying to use those sources to argue 2. If I back up in the discussion even further, what prompted me to mention the authorities to begin with was that you were questioning my authority to use that definition at all. As if you were saying “you’re not an authority, you have no basis for choosing that definition to begin wtih.” My bringing up Princeton et al. was to say “no, other authorities mention that definition, so I’m not just making it up by my lonesome,” not “these authorities support me at the exclusion of all other definitions.”


But more, what about really reading the entry?

"A poem is an instance of verbal poetry, a text set in verse, bound speech…"

A Poem. They define a Poem, not poetry as a text set in verse.Errr, wrong: “p. has traditionally been distinguished from prose by virtue of being set in verse. What most readers understand as p. was, up until 1850, set in lines which were metrical, and even the several forms of vers libre and free verse produced since 1850 have been built largely on one or another concept of the line. Lineation is therefore central to the traditional conception of p. Prose is cast in sentences; p. is cast in sentences cast into lines.” By “p.” they mean “poetry,” since “poem” or “poems” wouldn’t work grammatically with their claims. It being “traditional” means relatively little to the issue of whether or not it’s a good definition.

RE Other


Morph, Literature means "writen works", so Oral Literature is "oral writen works". Oxymoron. As some may say about free verse.Or it just reveals that there’s a different underlying similarity than what was formerly thought. EG, people thought verse meant “metrical literature” when what it really meant was “metrical lineated literature,” so “free verse” meaning “non-metrical lineated literature” may create an oxymoron with the former definition, but not the latter, since “free” refers to only one aspect of the definition. Similarly, while literature usually means “written works,” it could just as well mean “written works of language” and “oral literature” would be “spoken works of language. The reason we don’t add “of language” to the former is because it sounds redundant, but it’s not redundant when we consider the oral tradition. There’s only an apparent contradiction, not an actual one.


Except poetic or poetical means with the traits of poetry. (Being white is not a rose trait, it is a trait of a specific rose, btw. It is more like saying "rosic" is having petals, scent, or thorns - even with roses without thorns, so all that is poetic, have traits you will find in poetry). Hence "poetic prose" means prose like poetry and it would be an oxymoron according to your definition.No, this is quite wrong. Being white is a trait of many roses, just like, eg, metaphors are a trait of many poems, but not all poems. So someone might consider a beautiful metaphor to be “poetic” without it being something that is a trait of all poetry. If you’re talking about things being “poetic” like thorns are “rosic” (lol) then you’d be talking about something that’s a part of almost every poem, but, even then, wouldn’t be something that “defines” poetry (since there are a few sub-species of roses without thorns).

[JCamilo]

Secondly: When I said Princeton “supported my definition” I meant precisely that my definition was listed, and it was. I did not say that it exclusively supported my definition, that it did not list any others. It seems to me that you’re trying to turn my claim into something it never was. You’re making it out like I was saying “Princeton supports my definition excluding all others. That was never my claim. In fact, let’s go back and see exactly what was claimed:


:D Don't worry, I will not go line by line (since they are ignored anyways), not even mention that you used a text to defend your definition while the conclusion of the text that both extensional and intensional can be wrong(with you being the only one giving a definition so it certainly cannot apply to me) but really... Supporting means listing? Why I will bother to discuss the meaning of Poetry in face of such claim, even if THE Authority Princeton clearly contradicts your definition and support more or less what I said? The important here is that we must use words with precise meanings, the important is what Supporting means. But this does not interest me.

[MorpheusSandman]

:D Don't worry, I will not go line by line (since they are ignored anyways), not even mention that you used a text to defend your definition while the conclusion of the text that both extensional and intensional can be wrong(with you being the only one giving a definition so it certainly cannot apply to me) but really... Supporting means listing? Why I will bother to discuss the meaning of Poetry in face of such claim, even if THE Authority Princeton clearly contradicts your definition and support more or less what I said? The important here is that we must use words with precise meanings, the important is what Supporting means. But this does not interest me.JCam, I was not trying to ignore you; it's simply that both of us were getting in the habit of repeating ourselves due to replying to each others' post line by line. If you feel I missed anything, simply point it out and I will reply to it. Further, I tried to explain what I was doing in "using a text to defend my definition." I think there was simply a misunderstanding there. Any encyclopedia or dictionary or (most any) textbook is going to list all possible definitions, they are not going to TELL a reader which definition to choose. So, yes, the fact that they LIST a definition means they SUPPORT the usage of that definition by essentially saying "this is how many use this word." Supporting one definition doesn't mean not supporting others; it's not an either/or situation. As I tried to explain, there were two issues (I thought) being discussed: the first being whether my definition was valid to begin with, meaning that it's "supported" by authorities; the second issue was whether or not my definition was the best one. I was using the "authorities" to argue for the former, and my arguments for the latter were completely different, and they're arguments I still don't feel like you've adequately addressed. Plus, I still don't know why you feel Princeton "contradicts" my definition when they open their entry by saying precisely what I've been claiming. Which version are you using as a reference? Because I'm using the 3rd Edition, and I looked up the page you referenced and couldn't find that entry.

Yes, the importance is to use words with precise meaning, but, ironically, that's precisely what I'm saying the problem with other definitions of "poetry" are! They aren't precise, at all! Yes, the text I listed from lesswrong states that intensions or extensions can be "wrong," but you have not really argued how either my extensions or intensions are wrong, all you've done is state that other people have different intensions, ie, definitions subjective ideas of what poetry is. Saying that others have different intensions does not make either my intension or extension wrong, and, in fact, I've been trying to argue why my intensions and extensions are BETTER than theirs. In order to dispute that mine are better you have to do something besides list others. Listing others proves there are others, not that mine is "wrong" or "worse".