Poetry is...

What is poetry? What allows words to come to together in such a powerful way to inspire, soothe, provoke, and question?

According to the dictionary, poetry is (noun):

1.

the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts.

2.

literary work in metrical form; verse.

3.

prose with poetic qualities.

 
Ugh. That stinkpot definition captures nothing of what poetry is all about. It is ironically unpoetic.

Not surprisingly poets themselves define "poetry" better. In Carl Sandburg's collection, Good Morning America, he published thirty-eight definitions of poetry. For instance:
     "Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance."
     "Poetry is a pack-sack of invisible keepsakes."
     "Poetry is a sky dark with wild-duck migration."
     "Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what
      is seen during a moment."


Other poets offer their own insightful definitions:
      "Poetry is what gets lost in translation." (Robert Frost)
      "Poetry is language in orbit." (Seamus Heaney)
      "Poetry is thoughts that breathe and words that burn." (Thomas Gray)
      "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and a thought has found its words." (Robert
            Frost)
      "Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is." (James Branch Cabell)
      "Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful." (Rita Dove)
      "Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words." (Edgar Allan Poe)
      "Poetry is a mirror that makes beautiful that which is distorted." (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
      "Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth." (Samuel Johnson)
      "Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." (Lawrence Ferlinghetti) (My fave!)
      "Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge-it is immortal as the heart of man." (William
             Wordsworth)
      "Poetry is what happens when nothing else can." (Charles Bukowski)


Make your own definition of poetry. What does it mean to you? (Note, if it doesn't mean anything to you, hopefully my posts will change that as you become more aware of expressive language!)

My own definition: Poetry is a blue-gray storm rising in a still morning sky.
(Good poetry always changes the way I think and generates powerful emotion)
                            
Read the poems this year and spend some time with them. You will not always understand. Are you really meant to? But allow yourself to enter another's mind, to be swept up into a mood, and to travel to another place.