This week: We begin a new chapter of words about words, this time words about poetry. It's an impossible subject defined by its absolute lack of a cohesive definition but, like so many other things, we know it when we see it. And here, we discuss it. Then some links and the usual footnotes. Here we go.
What makes a poem? Dictionary.com has a characteristically thorough definition:
a composition in verse, especially one that is characterized by a highly developed artistic form and by the use of heightened language and rhythm to express an intensely imaginative interpretation of the subject.
[a] composition that, though not in verse, is characterized by great beauty of language or expression
I like that these definitions highlight both the form and the substance of poems. We first learn poems as bits of verse and, as we grow older and become more mature, we become capable of seeing the beauty of the words, regardless of how structured they may or may not be.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms makes the same distinction in the latter notes of its entry on poetry:
Some critics make an evaluative distinction between poetry, which is elevated or inspired, and verse, which is merely clever or mechanical.
But the best definition1 I have come across is one that not only gives meaning to the word but is something of a prose poem in itself comes from the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms:
In the final analysis what makes a poem different from any other kind of composition is a species of magic, the secret to which lies in the way the words lean upon each other, are linked and interlocked in sense and rhythm, and thus elicit from each other's syllables a kind of tune whose beat and melody varies subtly and which is different from that of prose
I mean, right? I like that this definition just kind of gives up on rational explanations about forms and ascribes magic as the defining element of a poem. I feel like this definition matches those of some of the best poets when tasked with defining their medium.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge2:
Poetry; the best words in the best order.
Robert Frost:
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Percy Bysshe Shelley:
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
To me, what's important in these definitions is how they come at the topic from three very distinct places - words, emotion, and a recording of a moment. Because, to me, for me, that's what poems are. They are the words we use to encapsulate a tiny fragment of our fleeting experience as conscious beings. More importantly, perhaps, poems enable us to string together fragments and glimpses from our internal worlds and externalize them.
In finding definitions for poems, I came across two stories I had read years ago, and which, through happy circumstance, got me thinking about this topic. The first is a piece in The Atlantic called What Is a Poem? Writer Mark Yakich talks about poetry from his experiences as a teacher and as a student. His conclusions are less about what poems and poetry actually are and more about how we should experience them. And this is something I want to talk about.
I first discovered poetry, consciously, in fifth grade (around ten years old). My teacher had us write limericks. I found no small amount of delight in putting the words in the familiar AABBA pattern even though finding an appropriate punchline was always a chore. As I got older, limericks gave way to other forms, then free verse, then forms, then free verse...and on and on. I still find the forms of poems - sonnets, sestinas, haiku - to be the best kind of constraint, that one that forces creativity upon you and wills you to express yourself in spite of the boundaries.
The other piece is by Katy Waldman (in Slate) and called Notes on Notes. In the piece, Waldman talks about the way our notes apps in our phones have become collections and fragments of our internal lives, externalized and left on our phones. In cataloging and exploring the digital detritus of her own notes app, she found that "The Notes app therefore serves as a diary for nondiarists, a catchall for the flotsam and ephemera you didn’t even realize you wanted to record." There's a kind of poetry in the different notes and the way they flow together. The way they "lean upon each other."
The article and the experience of keeping a bunch of notes on my phone that could be, in weak light, called a poem, reminded me of the Dadaists' found and absurdist poetry amongst other literary and artistic movements.
And so, this newest chapter for Volume 4 of Learned, Words We Use When We Talk About Words: Poetry. Over the next few issues, we'll get into some of the stickier words around poetry, including those we kind of remember from school, like "enjambment," ones we were never sure we were understanding correctly, like "poetic meter," and all the words for the hundreds of different kinds of poems from haiku to sestina.
But, I'll leave you with one last quote from Robert Frost, a quote that is, without a doubt my favorite definition of poetry: “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
Stay curious,
J
More Art:
I want to recommend two other artistic endeavors to you, both of which could, possibly, be considered a kind of poetry, if you squint and look at them just right.
The first is a webcomic called False Knees. Beautifully illustrated and populated with birds and other creatures, painfully honest, and cynically funny. Worth checking often.
The second is also a webcomic, although less a series and more individual panels by an artist on Instagram who just goes by Peteski. They take old comic book panels and re-caption them, turning them into remixed bits of art and poetry in your feed. Also worth checking often.
A Glossary of Literary Terms has no entry on poetry. Instead, it skips straight from "poetaster" to "poetic diction." This feels a little bit like a cop-out. Something like, "oh, uh, everyone knows what a poem is so we don't really need to define it, right?"
The full quote: 'I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; - poetry; the best words in the best order.' -- S.T.Coleridge