What's the diffrence between poetry and delineated prose?

[Quixilated]

Quix

Haven't heard you jump back in.

Indubitably.

Between your use of 'indubitably and billy's reference to Schrodinger's Cat (something I've used in several poems), I feel like I'm being channeled, here.

You offend my honor good sir. I assure you that I have never once in my life been so brazen as to channel anyone.   I’m afraid I cannot answer as to what billy may have done with Mr. Schrödinger’s cat.  The poor thing is probably alive or dead for all we know.

[Seraphim]

Prose is a form. There is form and there is style. There are degrees and levels of style. How much style, what style. What is style. Heightened language at least is an attempt to excite affect, any affect. So there's the personal reaction, and there's the value of that reaction in connection with the stimulus. That's that. If you want to analyze in more than a direct bodily way and define things critically, aesthetically, and truly heightened, you have to trace value judgments and posit values and define value all at once. You define and redefine as you go, and you're holding on to established things, propping yourself up by use of them, taking them for granted or as merely useful or not so useful props. You choose or you improvise or both.

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A critic can draw out something hidden. And a critic can describe an essence that wasn't put into the thing to begin with; and putting that into it can present it with new value. Album reveiwers are particularly good at that.

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Whatever form used is important to being poetic. Even prose. What's prosaic has no need for form other than as a vehicle. Form and what's poetic are inseparable. That is what heightens language. As objects, poem and prose are prosaic. As poetry they are poetic. Heightened language as a term is prosaic. The result of heightened langauge is a poem. As for students of prosody, unless they're young and attractive, they are irrelevant. Just read and write and whatever happens happens. Leave it to the critics to define terms by terms that need to be defined and defined and defined. The prosaic is this. Poetry is writing and reading poetry.

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In a realm of paranoia that the internet Identifies Me With, I usually feel like everyone's the same person. I feel the same when I close my eyes in a restaurant.

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And in answer to your question: prose is what it is, you know what prose looks like. Poetry can be prose or verse or anything poetic. If you want to keep it to only written or spoken words, then do.

So to paraphrase your response, poetry is whatever we want it to be. One cannot articulate a distinction, but 'You know what it looks like', (I can't tell you what art is, but I know it when I see it. Associating reader response with the definition of poetry. A strong response means the literature is poetry. More use of the term 'heightened language', without any offering of what that is. Form determines genre.

Unfortunately, none of these responses aids a poet in learning the tools and techniques of their craft. Reading and writing poetry is poetry? Too esoteric a philosophy for me. Read poetry - GOOD poetry. Yes. But choose carefully a writer who speaks to you. Read Angelou, and you'll write like Angelou *shudder*.

I can't help but get the feeling you're backtracking on your original comment reference verse and prose. If prosody - the study of verse theory - is irrelevant, why did you bring it up in context to prose and poetry? Obviously I thought you were going somewhere else with those elements, not separating them completely. The error was mine.

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OK. I’ve been asking questions, we’ve had some good discussion, and maybe it’s time to try to assemble some pieces. Maybe it’ll get people re-evaluating their own style (a good exercise for everyone), or look into other elements of writing. Hopefully, other discussions will bud from this one, and people might learn something new, or paths. Writing must evolve or stagnate, someone said.

Quix started off with an observation – one which is a very prevalent opinion concerning modern literature - about the functions of poetry and prose in our society. It is not one which which I would personally adhere to, but he is not wrong.

Duke offered ‘self-consciousness’ as a definitive factor, but I personally find it impossible to distinguish self-consciousness in a piece of literature, so I’m not sure how that would us distinguish between literature and prose.

I think Rowens made a start with his reference prose, verse and poetry and, later, heightened language and form – a topic which UB also began touching upon – but still was only skirting the meat of the topic.

If we look at the section of ‘The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics’ entitled ‘Verse and Prose’, it distinctly points out an intersection between prose and verse which could be labeled ‘poetry’. [side note: it also mentions the functions in modern society which Quix originally brought up]. So I think if we start looking for a distinction, we have to look into the study of prosody – verse theory. It is here where begin to delve into the ‘heightened language’ and covers topics being brought up in this discussion. According to the same publication, all [valid] definitions of poetry include the use of verse. Not sure how I feel about that comment personally, but there it.

The legal world has a phrase when it comes to determining guilt or innocence of a suspect – it is not a single piece of evidence which needs to be looked at, but the totality of the events. So there are numerous tools and techniques which can be applied both to simple prose and poetry, but where do we start looking.

For me, the most defining factor in identifying poetry [not the ONLY] is poetry’s dependence [this will argued lol] on repetition – a technique almost synonymous with verse. {Found that P&P backed my thoughts on this}.

Let’s start with meter. We HAVE to start with meter, I think, because the base of English is accentual-syllabic. We speak to the foundation of meter. Whether a poet consciously thinks of meter when he writes, or not, he cannot claim he doesn’t use meter. [Unless he’s writing in a foreign language.] Meter is drilled into as kids, and we use it automatically. If we don’t, our language sounds off.

What else … rhythm? Meter is the foundation of rhythm. Like a drummer who keeps the beat with his left, his right hand complements or plays against the beat, to make things interesting. Yes, a person writing prose uses meter, but a poet pays attention to it, and uses it to establish the rhythm of the line, and the entire composition. A small part of that heightened language, perhaps.

More repetition? The repetition of line length. Though many people eschew the idea that consistent line length [measured in feet] is a mandatory in prosody, it is still an effective tool in a poet’s arsenal, to be used when he wishes.

What the repetition of complete – or partial - lines? Some forms – which might be viewed as templates for repetition – mandate the repetition of lines, sometimes in a manner which actually changes the meaning of the line.

Repetition of sound – rhyme, slant rhyme, assonance, consonance, alliteration, - all things of which poets speak, but for my definition, some form of established repetition – no matter how subtle – is required to fit the bill.

There is much more to verse theory than just repetition. There are books on the topic.

There is a world of tools and techniques available to a writer to heighten his language. A search ‘list of rhetorical devices’ alone will produce lists of 50 or more techniques to play with. Bored or out of ideas – try using metonomy (using a part of something to represent the whole): such as describing a girl’s nature or disposition by merely describing her hair.

Ultimately, each person has their opinions, and will choose their own path. There is no right or wrong. Thoughts?

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Indubitably.

Between your use of 'indubitably and billy's reference to Schrodinger's Cat (something I've used in several poems), I feel like I'm being channeled, here.

You offend my honor good sir. I assure you that I have never once in my life been so brazen as to channel anyone.   I’m afraid I cannot answer as to what billy may have done with Mr. Schrödinger’s cat.  The poor thing is probably alive or dead for all we know.

Only if you've opened the box to check..

Well played!

[rowens]

The ideas and ideas in general of what poetry should be is playing tug-of-war with the poetry you're reading or writing. If they stop playing, they fall to the death. You know what prose is, but you don't know if it's poetic if you have no point of reference for what poetic or heightened language is. To me the word summer is heightened language, anything with the word summer is poetic to me. Heightened language makes many people feel the way I do when I think of summer. I have to make a myth of language that's musical. In sound and in cognitive pleasure, even repulsive pleasure, but that circles around itself.

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Do you want to talk about how to produce heightened language, or what heightened language is existentially, or experientially, or is there a difference?

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Reading and writing poetry is poetry, if what you're reading and writing is poetry. What is poetry? Poetry is poetic. What is poetic? In language, heightened language is poetic. What is heightened language? Prosodic techniques can produce it, but what is it? Why is it? How is heightened language? Poetic techniques. Why? It isn't. It isn't heightened language to people who aren't interested in poetry. People who aren't interested in poetry might find other kinds of speech heightened. I use heightened speech when I get angry. I use it when I'm exciting myself over a woman, or trying to excite her. The nonpoetic is useful in the poetic, as the unfunny is useful in humor. Everybody here already knows about poetic techniques. Why these techniques should or could be used is, for me, part of poetry. As is why they shouldn't. When I write poetry, I'm going through a magical operation. I'm doing something biological. I'm conducting physics. I have lots of books on prosody that I read after the fact. If at all.

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Poetry, for me, is action. Life not death. Success and failure.

[RiverNotch]

And so the conversation has reached a dead end. No, not just a dead end. A pit.

I will sound very very abrasive in saying this, but quite frankly, the question, and the way the question has been addressed by some of the participants in this discussion, has been, at best, *deserving* of such rancor.

If we look at the section of ‘The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics’ entitled ‘Verse and Prose’, it distinctly points out an intersection between prose and verse which could be labeled ‘poetry’. [side note: it also mentions the functions in modern society which Quix originally brought up]. So I think if we start looking for a distinction, we have to look into the study of prosody – verse theory. It is here where begin to delve into the ‘heightened language’ and covers topics being brought up in this discussion. According to the same publication, all [valid] definitions of poetry include the use of verse. Not sure how I feel about that comment personally, but there it is.

This. This is called pointless pedantry. This is called "winning the argument".

I think quix and billy gave the general versions, the aphoristic summations, if you will, of the actual answer to this question. Which, in the end, *does* exist -- only a real mooncalf says that art is everything, everything is art -- it's just that the answer is so fundamentally complex, one can't even begin to answer it in a single forum post. In a single philosophical work (say, Kant -- ba dum tss). In a single lifetime.

It's a question multiple people, even laypersons, struggle with all their lives, and no one in their right minds expects a single answer to it. No one in their right minds asks it for kicks -- they ask it for a reason. One asks, "what is poetry?", either because one is a child who knows nothing, or because one wants to figure out, "does my work count for poetry? am I a poet? are the people around me poets?" It's the same question Socrates posed when Diogenes showed him the plucked chicken, and his answer is similar to a lot of the attempts at a definitive answer here, from UB's "Poetry, in my mind, is about compression...." to OP's quite frankly irritating "Please define the term and explain how we 'heighten' language." You can't. No one can. When it comes to defining what humans are -- defining to the same level OP and, to a lesser extent, the likes of UB demand -- one has to define the entire human genome, and to distinguish it from the genomes of other animals, and define the physical expressions of said genomes, and why we humans recognize that this bunch of genes expressed through the Central Dogma is human and this bunch of genes expressed through the same is not. In other words, it's the work of a lifetime -- of multiple lifetimes -- that no one individual could ever fully comprehend.

Because poetry *is* like the visual arts. There's a gratingly Eurocentric viewpoint throughout this thread, that the visual artist can explain the principles behind his work, where the poet can't -- it assumes that the principles of composition and color theory are the same throughout all cultures, throughout all times. We need only look at European art, in fact, to realize that these principles have changed drastically over the past few decades; perspective technically didn't even exist throughout most of the Middle Ages, at least the materialist, "what the physical eye sees" perspective we consider as such today. The *satisfactory* answer to what is visual art is as dauntingly vast, as impossible to answer in one go, as the answer to what is poetry, or what is a human being -- at least, the answer as defined through philosophy, rather than through sweet, sweet intuition.

Rowens, I think, goes in the right direction with his second post. It is also, fundamentally, an aphoristic summation, but unlike quix's and billy's answers, it's comprehensive enough that it can actually lead us to what questions actually matter. To wit:

If you gather all the splinter connotations of the word 'poetry', it's a value effect that's overseeing the construction. You move from prosaic to heightened language by valuing the language itself. You can separate individual definitions of 'prosaic' and have prose as prose and prose as less or not at all heightened language and anything, not only words, that is flat or dull or just not valuable to such a degree in affect. This I'm writing now is prosaic. It's prose. It's not poetry, though whether or not it's poetic is someone's value judgment. And to maintain any valid value judgment, you have to do a lot of examining and comparing of what is mostly consensus judgment of similar and different things, the different being more difficult. Your poetry can add to the dimensions of value, as can your prosaic or poetic critique of value. What is prosaic and what is poetic? The form is never separate from poetic. With prosaic, it's not so important.

What composes heightened language? Why is heightened language composed as such? Why does Rowens think that what he's writing is prosaic, while I think it's very poetic, to the point that, taken in the context of this long and difficult discussion, it actually works as poetry, at least in the mode UB puts poetry in? Those are questions OP is getting to, but to what end? *For* what end? Because when he concludes his latest statement on the topic with

Ultimately, each person has their opinions, and will choose their own path. There is no right or wrong. Thoughts?

the same answer our dependable aphorists gave, I have to ask: what was he trying to do in the first place? What was he trying to present himself as? What was he trying to make of those he countered, those whom he implicitly insults with his opening post?

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Although I'll be honest: without this discussion, I wouldn't have written the above, nor would Rowens have written his, or duke taught me another point that could help me argue why poetry is so much cooler than prose, so in that way, OP has done some great work.

[Seraphim]

All I did was ask questions and challenge the answers. People rise to challenges.

The question is only at a dead end when people stop trying evaluate or reevaluate their own answers and stop trying to learn because they think they already know the answers. I’m not at that stage yet. Winning the argument? No one wins an argument. One debates to hear alternate sides of a topic. One debates both sides of a topic, and learns to see both sides of a position.

Why initiate the conversation? To give people the opportunity to examine others’ thoughts and learn. If someone picked up on one idea which they thought they might use in writing, or achieved a direction or goal, then it was worth the effort, in my book. It was also meant to be a lead-in to the craft of writing poetry, but meandered instead into the philosophical. Thanks OK - discussions form a mind of their own and go where they will. It was still interesting.

Quoting from a source? To demonstrate this questions have already been researched, asked and opinions offered. I would love to see citations on works to support the opinions offered here. There are several articles I wanted to introduce, but haven’t figured out how to scan from books to text onto the iPhone. Most of the articles offering varying viewpoints to consider. There are many ways to learn.

Agreeing with the aphorists? Not really. More a concession to the inevitable, to try to bring the topic online with the original intent.

Interesting responses. Too bad the discussion has been declared at an end. I was looking forward to the discussion moving from the philosophical to the more mundane topic of craft. As I stated originally, I don’t see it discussed much anymore.

Gotta admit though, from going back and looking at older posts, this is the most interaction I’ve seen on the forum.

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And also causes me to wonder what - if anything - in the previous discussion has contributed to the lack of popularity of modern poetry? Mostly I hear from people is that they don’t understand modern poetry. Are we over thinking - over rationalizing it? Or are we attempting to justify somehow our inability to engage the majority of the populace with modern poetry?

Just musing...

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Do you want to talk about how to produce heightened language, or what heightened language is existentially, or experientially, or is there a difference?

Yes. Since we seem to agree ‘heightened language’ is a differentiating factor between prose and poetry, then I think it’s an important discussion for students of poetry to have.

[CRNDLSM]

Ba dum tsss...

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The only point I can see from asking the question, is to find a new thing, that isn't either, but still works. Drawing the lines is cliche.

[billy]

So we pretty much have the "Poetry is whatever I want it to be" mindset?  We look at we've written and say, "this is poetry."  The only distinction between prose and poetry is the fact we want it to be poetry?

So if I ask a painter about the elements of composition, he dismisses the concept and says, "It's art because I say so."

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poetry for me is what the reader makes it. there will be and never can be a definitive answer to something so dynamic and creative.  we are what we say we are while also being what other's say we are.  poetry is shroedinger's cat being screwed by a non-existant dog.

The question was not, "What is poetry?", it was "what's the difference between prose and poetry?"

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if we can define then we can say what the differences are. we don't ask any artist what art is we tell them it is or isn't art. art is art because it affects someone else or the artist. art is art because it affects me. art is not objective and the difference between the outright piece of prose and the outright piece of poetry is not objective. there is no concusive answers to questions like these, only subjective answers. rowens pieces are sometimes prose, sometimes poetry but it's not always easy to discern. i often see his block writing as poetry. many would see it as prose simply because it's a piece of block writing.

ps. i saw you posted further on saying you think you're be channelled. in truth you're not; you're being engaged. something we should all aim to be.

[UselessBlueprint]

Jumping back a bit, because I've been at work most of the day unable to reply. I'd again like to remark that I believe in quantitative definitions. Something must be quantified to be categorized.Take for example the difference between detonation and deflagration. Detonation occurs when the flame front travels at or greater than the speed of sound. Deflagration occurs when the flame front travels below the sonic velocity. [ref]
Again, the defining lines you choose will depend on what you call a poem. If I were to write some prose, but call it a poem, how would you disagree with me? In fact, how would you know that everything I've written here is not a poem itself?
Be critical. Ask questions of yourself, pursue the answers. When we have differing views on what is a poem and what is not, we will have differing views on the line that "divides" prose from poetry, if such a line exists. If you only believe in the collective consensus of the literary world you subscribe to, I do hope your beliefs are never challenged by a skilled writer.

I'm not sure I've ever heard prose and poetry being described as polar opposites.  I have, but that's a moot point perhaps, as long as you can accept something is both poetry and prose.
Rowens has suggested a relationship to the two which cannot separated, and has suggested concepts which differentiate between the two - in his opinion. Personally, I battle with your suggestion that prose can be poetry and vice versa.  I see no dispute with the suggestion prose can be poetic, perhaps even poetry can be prosaic (though that would have to be explained if anyone wants to take up the challenge), but I can't see a writing being both. I'd like to know the difference between something that is poetic and something that is poetry, in that case.

Prose doesn't make the reader search for veiled meaning? It can. In my original post, I said that it may. But for me to consider it prose -- see duke's etymology -- it must reach an objective in a straightforward manner. Not every objective must be met this way, but at least one.
"Au contraire," I would shout, if I knew what meant lol. Prose can use symbolism, allegory, analogy, etc and fine prose often does, IMO. I never said otherwise.
One of my favourite authors created an entire world based on [lightly] hidden meaning, and as such became one of the most endeared writers of our generation. (Sorry to digress). Don't want it so deeply hidden - in either poetry or prose - the reader never finds it. Are you arguing these are tools one can use in poetry? Certainly.  One might even argue meaning can be hidden more deeply in a poem which is "compressed" because a reader has more time to be contemplative, as there might not be too much material to parse.
But does all poetry use hidden levels of meaning? Not in my opinion. Hidden is not the same as compressed.
Are all poems 'compressed?  Again, I'll mention epic poetry. Nothing finer than to be forced to  wade through the adventure of Odysseus *snort*.  I spent seven years in my teens thoroughly enjoying my Latin class, at least two good years of it were reading Catullus and Virgil. I hope the Aeneid counts as an epic.
Compression is another tool, but I don't believe it [alone] is a definitive one.

I turn the question to you. What do you think defines a work of prose or poetry? What have you observed -- on your own reading, not from what we've all replied -- marks the difference between poetry and prose? The question you asked suggests you haven't marked a difference. Yet, if you think prose can be poetic but not poetry, tell me why. And if you think that poetry can be prosaic but not prose, tell me how.

[CRNDLSM]

Yet, if you think prose can be poetic but not poetry, tell me why. And if you think that poetry can be prosaic but not prose, tell me how.
[/quote]

The same way you say a bear is like a bear, what's the point, that dog is like a bear makes way more sense... Somehow

[Seraphim]

I turn the question to you. What do you think defines a work of prose or poetry? What have you observed -- on your own reading, not from what we've all replied -- marks the difference between poetry and prose? The question you asked suggests you haven't marked a difference. Yet, if you think prose can be poetic but not poetry, tell me why. And if you think that poetry can be prosaic but not prose, tell me how.

I kept trying to prompt Rowens into expounding on heightened language, because I think that’s key to my distinction. Prose can use heightened language, to the point it becomes poetic. Poetry depends upon it. If poetry is an intersection between prose and verse, that intersection can be closer to prose, or closer to verse. The more the intersection moves away from prose, the more poetic it becomes until it’s dependence on elements of verse moves it to the realm of poetry.

I started above discussing the use of repetition. For me that’s one major indicator. We discuss the rhythm of the line, but rarely do I see discussion on how to create rhythm. Meter is the foundation of rhythm. So when a writer starts looking at the meter of his lines - whether or not he’s counting the number of feet or not - and begins playing the various stresses with, or against the accent of the meter, creating more complex patterns of stress, he’s moving into the realm of poetry. When he begins paying stricter attention to the sounds of of words, how they complement each other, how they repeat, then he’s moving into the realm of poetry. When he makes decisive and significant use of rhetorical devices, he’s moving into the realm of poetry. When you see evidence of all these things, I deem myself to be looking at poetry; else, to me, it’s prose. I’m not a formalist, but I see forms as excellent opportunities to put our studies in prosody to practice. I love Japanese forms, because it’s a challenge to get the most out of a minimum of words. And one thing I like about my definition, is the final decision as to whether a piece is poetry depends on definite, articulable elements which can be taught and learned and which students can apply to heighten their own language, if you will, and to find their voice - not some vague philosophical speculation which provides no aid, that I can see, to improving one’s craft. I don’t want philosophy - I want to look at piece and see the author has demonstrated he has knowledge of tools and techniques of his craft, and he consciously applies those to a given work. If I see the effort, I conclude the author is at least attempting poetry.

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And if poetry starts becoming prosaic, it’s no longer poetry to me - it’s delineated prose.

[dukealien]

Must admit to having skimmed the discussion up to now a bit.  So if this point has already been made or passed, apologies.

Another way to look at the distinction between prose and poetry (or verse) is that poetry is performance while prose is communication - in its pure form, without performance.  (It's possible to speak or write prose artfully, but without its becoming poetry... so this may be incomplete or incorrect.  On the other hand, some free verse - especially political poetry - becomes very prosaic in its single-minded attempt to deliver a message despite compressed language and extended typography.)

One last thought, also likely inaccurate:  prose translates, poetry does not.  Maybe it employs a language's unstranslatable backstory where prose contains only elements all languages have in common.

P.S. It's easy to imagine a language the basic grammar of which has rules resulting in what would look like verse to us - rhyming, rhythm and the like that native speakers would supply as unconsciously as English-speakers use thuh or thee, a or an depending on the next word, only a bit more complex.  Its prose would be enjoyable (for us) to hear, but still prose because it was natural, neither made special nor performance.

[churinga]

I think ultimately it has to do with form. A novel tells a story, is usually atleast 100 pages and more likely 200-300 pages or more. A short story is usually around a page or up to 10 or so. There are exceptions, like the Iliad or the Dunciad. These are essentailly novels in poetic form. Just as Shakespeares plays are plays in poetic form. Poetry is usually, again there are exceptions, no more than two or three pages. Form is important because form follows function, (as architects say) and the function of a poem is different from the function of a novel, etc. As to content, I think it was Rimbaud ( there may have been others) who first put a short prose poem into 'A Season in Hell' his final poetry collection. So short prose poems became a form of poetry. Everything else applies to all forms, use of language, use of imagery, condensation. That can happen in poetry, plays, TV dialogue and novels and short stories. Perhaps only in poetry is rhyme important, many regard it as old fashioned but rhyme is an important element in poetry. It is also vital in most songs. Song and poetry are first cousins. Ultimatrly good writing as poetry is about sound, meaning and melody. These elements exist in all language both written and spoken. Melody is created by how words and the elements of words ( syllables, consonants and vowels) are combined to make a melody. A phonetic expert can explain this scientifically but most of use just use our ears. It applies much more to song but without it the poetic disappears from writing. A lot of novels contain poetry, as do plays and poetry is everywhere really but it has to be subtracted from a wider context. Poetry as poetry eliminates any other context. Understanding language and imagery is necessary for all fiction writing.

[Seraphim]

Must admit to having skimmed the discussion up to now a bit.  So if this point has already been made or passed, apologies.

Another way to look at the distinction between prose and poetry (or verse) is that poetry is performance while prose is communication - in its pure form, without performance.  (It's possible to speak or write prose artfully, but without its becoming poetry... so this may be incomplete or incorrect.  On the other hand, some free verse - especially political poetry - becomes very prosaic in its single-minded attempt to deliver a message despite compressed language and extended typography.)

One last thought, also likely inaccurate:  prose translates, poetry does not.  Maybe it employs a language's unstranslatable backstory where prose contains only elements all languages have in common.

P.S. It's easy to imagine a language the basic grammar of which has rules resulting in what would look like verse to us - rhyming, rhythm and the like that native speakers would supply as unconsciously as English-speakers use thuh or thee, a or an depending on the next word, only a bit more complex.  Its prose would be enjoyable (for us) to hear, but still prose because it was natural, neither made special nor performance.

I agree poetry is an oral art, something I feel people often forget. I wouldn't call it performance, per se, although some attempt to make it so. As for prose not being performance, as a former competitive after-dinner speaker (yes, such a thing exists lol), our speeches were very much performance. So I have a hard time accepting 'performance' as a basis of distinction.

I also agree poetry is nigh impossible to translate well - it always seems to lose something because languages are cultural, audiences are cultural, and poetics in various languages are different. Prose has it's own translation difficulty as well, but poetry translators are also trying to capture the poetic art of a piece, something which prose translators - even when dealing artful prose - don't have to contend.

I think ultimately it has to do with form. A novel tells a story, is usually atleast 100 pages and more likely 200-300 pages or more. A short story is usually around a page or up to 10 or so. There are exceptions, like the Iliad or the Dunciad. These are essentailly novels in poetic form. Just as Shakespeares plays are plays in poetic form. Poetry is usually, again there are exceptions, no more than two or three pages. Form is important because form follows function, (as architects say) and the function of a poem is different from the function of a novel, etc. As to content, I think it was Rimbaud ( there may have been others) who first put a short prose poem into 'A Season in Hell' his final poetry collection. So short prose poems became a form of poetry. Everything else applies to all forms, use of language, use of imagery, condensation. That can happen in poetry, plays, TV dialogue and novels and short stories. Perhaps only in poetry is rhyme important, many regard it as old fashioned but rhyme is an important element in poetry. It is also vital in most songs. Song and poetry are first cousins. Ultimatrly good writing as poetry is about sound, meaning and melody. These elements exist in all language both written and spoken. Melody is created by how words and the elements of words ( syllables, consonants and vowels) are combined to make a melody. A phonetic expert can explain this scientifically but most of use just use our ears. It applies much more to song but without it the poetic disappears from writing. A lot of novels contain poetry, as do plays and poetry is everywhere really but it has to be subtracted from a wider context. Poetry as poetry eliminates any other context. Understanding language and imagery is necessary for all fiction writing.

A couple points of contention concerning form as a delineator of poetry and prose.

For a formalist poet, form provides a template for repetitive elements of writing. Sometimes form becomes associated function: both the English sonnet and the Japanese tanka were considered ideal for expressing romantic sentiment. But function was never a requirement for these forms.

There is a connection between poetry and lyric. But lyric relies on pitch and the duration of a musical note (quarter note, half note etc). Poetics in English relies on meter, whether the poet uses it consciously or not. Melody is based on the music. The closet poetry can come is a well executed rhythm - but it does not use pitch nor duration. What is does use is one of the topics I like to see discussed here - on a different thread.

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Also wanted to mention that prose has various forms of its own; paragraphs have various structures, plots are graphed, etc. And length doesn't determine how a piece of prose is labeled, except perhaps for the convenience of having a label. IMO.

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Form. This is in paragraph form. Is it prose? Or has it achieved the level of poetry?

"In the season leaves should love, since it gives them leave to move through the wind, towards the ground they were watching while they hung, legend says there is a seam stitching darkness like a name. Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor. I move my hand and feel a touch move with me, and when I brush my own mind across another, I am with my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting self, I find her, and she brings arms that carry answers for me, intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me."

She leaves this trail through a shudder of the veil, and leaves, like amber where she stays, a gift for her perpetual gaze."

[churinga]

When it comes to form I was thinking not of specific forms like the sonnet but of the form of all poetyry except when poetry becomes a novel or a short story. I was thinking soecifically of how it functions eg, as a book of poems or as a single poem posted in a magazine or today as poems are presented on forums or ezines. They are all ( there are exceptions) presented as short, usually no more than a page or at most two or three. So that is their form, whether free verse or whatever. And I think 'the medium is the message' to an extent. But we could argue till the cows come home about poetry/prose. Many novelists saturate their novels with poetic devices and I often, as you have above, noticed a paragrapth in a novel that could be taken out and presented as a poem. Kingsley Amis is one such author, his novels abound in poetic writing.

[CRNDLSM]

Don't even start on found poems

[Seraphim]

Don't even start on found poems

Lol

---

When it comes to form I was thinking not of specific forms like the sonnet but of the form of all poetyry except when poetry becomes a novel or a short story. I was thinking soecifically of how it functions eg, as a book of poems or as a single poem posted in a magazine or today as poems are presented on forums or ezines. They are all ( there are exceptions) presented as short, usually no more than a page or at most two or three. So that is their form, whether free verse or whatever. And I think 'the medium is the message' to an extent. But we could argue till the cows come home about poetry/prose. Many novelists saturate their novels with poetic devices and I often, as you have above, noticed a paragrapth in a novel that could be taken out and presented as a poem. Kingsley Amis is one such author, his novels abound in poetic writing.

OK. I get you.

But for transparency’s sake, the writing I offered above should be credited to Annie Finch. It’s a poem entitled “Sanhaim”, and a fine example of iambic pentameter, should I put the line breaks back in place. The idea I was trying to get across was that poetry is poetry despite the form. But since I mistook your post, it seems the example is moot.

[billy]

is this poetry.

"In the season leaves should love, since it gives them leave to move through the wind, towards the ground they were watching while they hung, legend says there is a seam stitching darkness like a name. Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor. I move my hand and feel a touch move with me, and when I brush my own mind across another, I am with my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting self, I find her, and she brings arms that carry answers for me, intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me."

She leaves this trail through a shudder of the veil, and leaves, like amber where she stays, a gift for her perpetual gaze."

it's poetry. block writing doesn't always equate as prose. at worst it's prose poetry but when i read it i see no prose. this has meter, rhythm,
metaphor, simile, alliteration,

my question is this: where do you draw the line between prose and prose poetry? which is a known form.

[Seraphim]

Billy

Based on personal opinion, I see the term 'prose poem' as a contradiction of terms. For me, it's one or the other. Based on how one defines poetry, as we saw in the above discussion, others have no problem with the term.

And if we really want to heat things up, let's examine the term 'free verse' lol.

[rowens]

Poetry is inseparable from its specific form. If you abstract the feeling of that poem or poetry, the feeling or whatever constitutes feelings in someone, maybe more than some one, is the form of the poetry. That is a general idea, one that most experience. But it's not useful for many people, at least not useful to think that way, at least not for writers of poetry with an eye to critical qualifications. With an emphasis on concrete, at least linguistical concrete structures, it's fair to submerge any ideas of poetry as feeling or leave them alone in a secondary or far off faded position in pseudoscience layers of worldliness involving philosophy and psychology, high school and ethnic pride ceremonies. In the hard world of tangible language unit constructions, poetry is a sum of its parts, form is not a social construct but an aesthetic, which is a social, construct with natural assurances lurking and tingling and seeping, and definitions are concrete-hard and placeable. You can't feel the brain but you can

---

feel the mind which is the same thing. You can feel the brain. Concrete. To feel poetry, it's communicated, to yourself, others. So the concentration is on the craft. The poetry comes in the craft. It's inseparable from its form and its form is its mere device for abstracting into other forms, feelings, ideas, matters.

[RiverNotch]

Pt. II

The question is only at a dead end when people stop trying evaluate or reevaluate their own answers and stop trying to learn because they think they already know the answers.

Not for this question. The problem is people ask questions to figure things out, and those with things to figure out leap over this question easily. Rowens was right in saying it was heightened language that distinguished between poetry and prose, and duke was right in saying that a measure of consciousness was involved in distinguishing between poetry and prose.

Language is never, ever, ever objective on its own. Words do not exist in a vacuum. Everything must be read with the context taken into account. Those three statements are incredibly loaded, and multiple resources have already been devoted to them, which is why, in lieu of a more methodical dissection, I'll just relate two illustrative anecdotes.

---Humans are made extinct. An alien civilization stumbles upon our remains. They have languages like us and writing like us; they conceive of art and poetry in a similar fashion. They recognize our writing as writing, but otherwise have absolutely no tools to interpret them with.Meanwhile, art for them is treated with an absurd level of reverence. Because of how well-kept surviving collections of statistical records are, they consider those as poetry. Because of how commonly found the likes of Emily Dickinson and Louise Gluck are, they consider those as vulgar, apoetic writing.

---Someone takes a copy of Hitler's birth certificate, and posts it in the poetry section of a Holocaust archive.

Hence, it takes a certain level of consciousness that what one is reading is poetry -- even the writer must read his or her own works, whether on paper or in his mind -- for the work to be poetry.

As for "heightened language", I return to the problem that questions, especially questions posed to a community, require a certain level of mechanical thinking. Northrop Frye, in attempting to formulate a systematic method for the analysis of literature, disposes of the common distinction between "poetry" and "prose" immediately. Poetry, for his work in Anatomy of Criticism, is anything that employs a general sense of rhetoric -- heightened language -- in communicating feelings, ideas, and the like. What this general sense of rhetoric is, exactly, takes him the rest of the book to explain. Prose, on the other hand, does not really take the form of the work into consideration: what it communicates is what its words directly signify.

He disposes of the distinctions between the intention of the author and the interpretation of the audience, for this definition, instead using a more abstracted apprehension of consciousness. Functionally, he excluded works like scientific reports from being "poetry", because nuances in form are not, for those kinds of papers, taken into account by either their authors or their intended audiences.

Later in the book, however, he develops a theory of genres, defining the more commonly understood divisions between poetry and prose. His divisions considered, in greater detail, the relationship between the audience and the author -- the two consciousnesses involved in the apprehension of language -- with what sort of rhythmic tools the author may use, or how the author may represent what he is trying to communicate. His theory of genres, however, produces nothing definitive: there is the explicit admission that the fundamental "genres" he considered (fiction, lyric poetry, epic poetry, and drama -- note that what most would consider as poetry is divided into three genres, while drama is normally a mix of poetry and prose) overlapped more often than not.

The problem in this discussion is that it is often confused, not only in its general framework, but in the individual responses of its members. It does not know what sort of answer it is seeking, or, at least, what sort of method it seeks to pursue the question's non-answer. This confusion is propagated, I think, by the OP, who jumps from integrating the more general "poetry....is meant to be felt" answers to the discussion into his supposed method, while at the same time implying, through his emphasis on versification, that his method was concerned mostly with "the mundane topic of craft". And when there is no method, no theory, no general framework for the members of the discussion to follow, then the ideas and sentiments exchanged will only have been stated, not communicated. With the implicitly insulting first post comes the suspicion that such was the goal of the OP, whether consciously or not, hence my rather abrasive first response.

Some people have answered with attempts to discuss the nature of art in general -- poetry as a vehicle for epiphany, rather than ideas, and hence what "epiphany", "beauty", etc., actually entail. Those attempts were quickly shot down. Some have answered by giving a similar definition to that Frye posed in the beginning of his Anatomy -- again, heightened language -- but to the seemingly impatient dissatisfaction of the third category of responders.

Some, including, I suspect, OP, have tried to distinguish poetry as a genre separate from prose, only, instead of systematically considering the elements of what makes a genre first -- again, the chosen rhythm of the author, or the author's means of representation -- there is already the judgement that prosaic poetry somehow stops being poetry, while poetic prose somehow starts being also poetry. There is the start to Frye's conclusion that genres more often than not overlap, but the conclusion is reached too early, since such a conclusion requires there being an actual definition for what is poetry and what is prose.

What's worse is that the judgment of poetry being prosaic is *qualitative*: "prose" and "prosaic" do not refer to the same things, in this discussion, when having the supposedly antithetical quality of being "prosaic" in a poem stops it from being a poem, rather than actually complicating the discussion. In stopping to consider that a poem which is explicitly a poem might be prosaic and still be a poem, one stops trying to learn and falls back to one's original biases over what a poem actually is.

The question is not, in fact, one question, but *four*, with OP and the rest of the members of the discussion ignoring that distinction. Trying to shut down the discussion was a slight overreaction, on my part -- again, the insult in the first post may have been subconscious -- but, hopefully, this second response prompts clarifications from *all* members of the discussion on what it is they are actually pursuing.