Great novels -- Wonderful poetry

[RiverNotch]

I got confused reading Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism once because he lumped novels with plays with poems -- called the lot Poetry. That's sort of how I understand all those arts now: novels and plays and, ofc, poems, are all Poems, just with different voices, different purposes, and different devices. The only stuff that's truly Prose is technical or journalistic stuff: perhaps the same voices, pehaps the same devices, but with the purpose all, er, technical.

Just to pick... where do you classify letters? And does it depend on how the letter is written? I might sort a letter from Dickinson differently than a letter from Cicero (and I only pick him because I'm familiar).

One of my instructors referred to some novels as "poetry", while other (quite famous novels) he simply called "girl's books". I am undecided on this question, so I think I'll find both sides interesting to read here.

It depends. Novels, plays, letters, essays, verse, when done creatively, and when received creatively, is Poetry --- when not, then not. So the Epistles of Paul could be considered poetry, while Mum's grocery list probably shouldn't -- Gone with the Wind, Poetry, your average bodice ripper, not -- Shakespeare, poetry, television advertisements, not -- and haiku, Poetry, campaign slogans, not. Of course, as to what "done creatively, received creatively", or rather done with beauty and aesthetics and junk in mind and not (but not exclusively -- thus, Paul's letters were both made to be beautiful for beauty's own sake, were received as beautiful for beauty's own sake, and also were made and received as theological treatises), I can't entirely say. But I'm guessing individual taste and cultural consensus plays a part -- thus, the general weirdness of the nature of Pop Art.