What Is Poetry?
Some Definitions:
• “An imaginative work, in meter or free verse,
usually employing figurative language”
(Barnett 1296).
– Meter = measured pattern of rhythmic accents, or
stressed and unstressed syllables
– free verse = poetry without regular patterns of
meter or rhyme
– figurative language = form of language in which
writers or speakers convey something other than
the literal meaning of words
• A poem “begins in delight, but ends in
wisdom” (Frost).
– See “The Road Not Taken” – p.539
– http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717
• A poet “distills amazing sense from
ordinary meaning” (Dickinson).
– See poem on p. 644
This was a Poet -- It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings -And Attar so immense
From the familiar species
That perished by the Door -We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it -- before -Of Pictures, the Discloser -The Poet -- it is He -Entitles Us -- by Contrast -To ceaseless Poverty -Of portion -- so unconscious -The Robbing -- could not harm -Himself -- to Him -- a Fortune –
Exterior -- to Time –
• A poem is a “wealth of meaning in an
economy of words” (Patterson).
• Enjoying poetry is more than analyzing its
meaning – or figuring out what it is “about”.
As our text explains, it is an act of
imagination – originality – and emotion.
“Introduction to Poetry”
Billy Collins
(See poem on p. 783)
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.