What is the shortest poem?

[RiverNotch]

I don't know how to use photoshop or whatever, but I'd say I can go even shorter: a comma, but with the squiggly bit at the bottom detached, so that it looks like a period with a bit of dirt below.
I think anything can be a poem, but for something to be a poem, the author must have intended it as such, and the reader must receive it as such --- that is, poetry, to be itself, has to communicate, not just to exist, to be written, to be read. Of course, as for what is good poetry --- and what among these short poems are good --- may be a little harder to define, although I refuse to believe such subjectivity is, in a practical sense, immeasurable. I like the thumbprint one, though, much more than the ly one, if only because it didn't look like someone just messed up on the typewriter --- it looked more deliberate --- if I had read it without such prompting, I would have more readily appreciated it, at least as another form of art. But then that's another question: what differentiates poetry from other media?

[Tiger the Lion]

I am still exploring the bottomless meaning in John 11:35... "Jesus wept."  - gut wrenching and beautiful at the highest level - whether history of fiction or an amalgam of both. You could say it's not a poem. I don't think that matters. The video discussed the most weight being carried by the least words/characters. For me "Jesus wept" splits the atom.

[ambrosial revelation]

I don't know how to use photoshop or whatever, but I'd say I can go even shorter: a comma, but with the squiggly bit at the bottom detached, so that it looks like a period with a bit of dirt below.

[ellajam]

Yoko Ono's Yes was pretty good. It's called a painting but it doesn't really matter what it's called..

Back in November 1966, she exhibited her "Ceiling Painting" (or the "YES Painting") at the Indica Gallery of London. Viewers had to climb up a white ladder in the center of the room, from where a magnifying glass hanging from the ceiling allowed them to view the word "YES" written in tiny letters on a framed piece of paper affixed to the ceiling.

[RiverNotch]

Yoko Ono's Yes was pretty good. It's called a painting but it doesn't really matter what it's called..

Back in November 1966, she exhibited her "Ceiling Painting" (or the "YES Painting") at the Indica Gallery of London. Viewers had to climb up a white ladder in the center of the room, from where a magnifying glass hanging from the ceiling allowed them to view the word "YES" written in tiny letters on a framed piece of paper affixed to the ceiling.

Does it, though? Doesn't calling a something a piece of poetry make the criteria for judging it a bit different than calling it, say, a painting, or a piece of music?

And if it seems like a rhetorical question, which it kinda does to me, well it isn't, and I don't really know much about other fields in terms of their, er, proper definitions and whatnot for me to give a good answer. Anyone?

[ellajam]

Yoko Ono's Yes was pretty good. It's called a painting but it doesn't really matter what it's called..

Back in November 1966, she exhibited her "Ceiling Painting" (or the "YES Painting") at the Indica Gallery of London. Viewers had to climb up a white ladder in the center of the room, from where a magnifying glass hanging from the ceiling allowed them to view the word "YES" written in tiny letters on a framed piece of paper affixed to the ceiling.

Does it, though? Doesn't calling a something a piece of poetry make the criteria for judging it a bit different than calling it, say, a painting, or a piece of music?

And if it seems like a rhetorical question, which it kinda does to me, well it isn't, and I don't really know much about other fields in terms of their, er, proper definitions and whatnot for me to give a good answer. Anyone?

For me there is no dofference, I think because what I'm looking for in art is either an undeniable emotion or something that sets off an interesting chain of thought. To me it doesn't matter what kind of art it is and certainly not what it's called. I think, more than judging, I'm interested in experiencing.

[ambrosial revelation]

For me a piece of music that is in actual fact silence is in some ways an intellectual statement, that's not me saying it is intelligent because it's not. Music or sound we perceive through hearing which is a sense, there are other factors that determine how we additionally perceive it but ultimately it is down to the sense of hearing, so silence is the exact opposite of that and not a minimalist version of it. A minimalist piece of music could be two notes played simultaneously an octave apart or a note and its perfect fifth played simultaneously, or a three note melody that was a palindrome, I can see/hear how these can be interpreted as a statement with some kind of meaning, whereas silence is the antithesis of sound/music. 

Poetry doesn't seem to have that possibility of an antithesis... Ah actually I've totally lost the thread of what I was originally meaning, but I'll still post this anyway, I may get back to it... I was going to say something like a poem is not one sense like music or a painting is, you can read a poem, you can hear a poem, you can feel a poem... actually, what is a bloody poem? Ultimately there has to be some level of intellect that has to interact with whatever it is to be able to say ah ha. The I with the thumbprint was the one that I thought did the job the best, is it a poem or a good idea? Who knows... I once saw a piece of 'art' in which a man had blood taken from him safely over a period of time then had a cast made of his head, filled it with the blood and froze it, took the cast off and then presented it as an art piece. Is it art?? It certainly was a really good idea, but it was a good idea that I could have had and done and I am rubbish at art.

When I start writing these things I have a thought but then I get so easily distract... ooh look butterfly!!

[QDeathstar]

Shortest poem:



Written on one grain of rice...

[Rogo]

To me, a poem's degree of compression determines its "length" and often vice versa (i.e. the measure of meaning from a literal measure of words). 

Dickinson, Basho, Creeley, Armantrout — these poets exemplify this, despite not penning the "shortest" of poems. 

Although, like the initial post showed, there is also minimalist and visual poetry, which typically use deconstructive and/or optical (non-literary) approaches to composition. For example, Robert Grenier's handwriting or George Swede's disassembled words. 

"Missing" by George Swede

M SS NG
Thiiief!

Similar tendencies can be traced back to the literary/multimedia experiments of the Dadaists and Futurists. 

[RiverNotch]

"Missing" by George Swede

M SS NG
Thiiief!

Oh, that is brilliant!

[CRNDLSM]

'Unsure' by Unknown

Yes, no,
maybe so...

[NobodyNothing]

I thought the shortest poem was...

Adam
Had 'em

...But then it was supplanted by Muhammed Ali's...

Me
We

What do I know.

[RiverNotch]

For me a piece of music that is in actual fact silence is in some ways an intellectual statement, that's not me saying it is intelligent because it's not. Music or sound we perceive through hearing which is a sense, there are other factors that determine how we additionally perceive it but ultimately it is down to the sense of hearing, so silence is the exact opposite of that and not a minimalist version of it. A minimalist piece of music could be two notes played simultaneously an octave apart or a note and its perfect fifth played simultaneously, or a three note melody that was a palindrome, I can see/hear how these can be interpreted as a statement with some kind of meaning, whereas silence is the antithesis of sound/music. 

Poetry doesn't seem to have that possibility of an antithesis... Ah actually I've totally lost the thread of what I was originally meaning, but I'll still post this anyway, I may get back to it... I was going to say something like a poem is not one sense like music or a painting is, you can read a poem, you can hear a poem, you can feel a poem... actually, what is a bloody poem? Ultimately there has to be some level of intellect that has to interact with whatever it is to be able to say ah ha. The I with the thumbprint was the one that I thought did the job the best, is it a poem or a good idea? Who knows... I once saw a piece of 'art' in which a man had blood taken from him safely over a period of time then had a cast made of his head, filled it with the blood and froze it, took the cast off and then presented it as an art piece. Is it art?? It certainly was a really good idea, but it was a good idea that I could have had and done and I am rubbish at art.

When I start writing these things I have a thought but then I get so easily distract... ooh look butterfly!!

On "Self", the blood sculpture by Marc Quinn: apparently, it's not one sculpture -- the artist makes the same sort of self portrait every five years. So, uh, yeah, cool. Really, it disgusts me, if only because the cast looks like a grape juice or pomegranate juice ice lolly, and I keep imagining myself licking it.....

"Unsure" by Unknown --- I can't tell if Unknown is a deliberate pseudonym or not. It's much more interesting because it's by "Unknown", I think, although the poem is fairly interesting by its own right. Or funny -- eh, funny helps.

[ambrosial revelation]

On "Self", the blood sculpture by Marc Quinn: apparently, it's not one sculpture -- the artist makes the same sort of self portrait every five years. So, uh, yeah, cool. Really, it disgusts me, if only because the cast looks like a grape juice or pomegranate juice ice lolly, and I keep imagining myself licking it.....

I'll make you a Kate Bush shaped pomegranate juice ice lolly and you can lick it until your heart is content. 

[kolemath]

There's a poem my Hemingway that's just punctuation..

[QDeathstar]

I don't know. Thoughts seem to always be full of meaningless words....

[QDeathstar]

My thoughts are just feelings. Or experiences... The inspiration for eventual words that may turn into poetry.

see how many meaningless words you just used to describe your thoughts? QED.

[nibbed]

I love you.

[Lizzie]

Art is all about inciting feelings, isn't it? No.