DEFINING POETRY
AP HONORS ENGLISH IV
I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its
sole arbiter is Taste.
--E.A. Poe
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion
recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the
tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was the subject
of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.
--W. Wordsworth
A poem begins with a lump in the throat, a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a
reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one
where the emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.
--R. Frost
“A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does
not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.” ~ E. B. White
“A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start
arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” ~ Salman Rushdie
“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” ~ T. S. Eliot
“I think one of poetry’s functions is not to give us what we want... [T]he poet isn’t
always of use to the tribe. The tribe thrives on the consensual. The tribe is pulling
together to face the intruder who threatens it. Meanwhile, the poet is sitting by himself
in the graveyard talking to a skull.” ~ Heather McHugh
“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.”
~ Kahlil Gibran
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” ~ Rita Dove
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the
expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those
who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these
things.” ~ T. S. Eliot
“Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal
which the reader recognizes as his own.” ~ Salvatore Quasimodo
“To have great poets, there must be great audiences.” ~ Walt Whitman
Introduction To Poetry
By Billy Collins
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.
Ars Poetica
By Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as he sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—
A poem should not mean
But be.
DOUGLAS McGILL says:
A piece of writing is poetic when it:
1. Sings
2. Moves
3. Shimmers
4. Cracks the whip
5. Has an undefinable “woo woo” quality
6. Recreates the early childhood pleasures of moon, Mom, and mud
7. Forces an epiphany
8. Imitates nature
9. Contains the music of plain speech
10. Marries sound and meaning
11. Just sounds good
12. Shatters self-important, secluded views of the world
13. Snaps you into a different state of mind
14. Sets off your indicator lights
15. Is the exact opposite of a gazebungle
16. Connects the reader with an interior “otherness,” sort of like music
17. Brings the whole soul of man into activity
18. Offers the most accurate possible symbolic image of objects which when they are
actually seen cause distress (corpses, worms, etc.)
19. Instructs by pleasing
20. Proposes pleasure, not truth, as the immediate object of attention
21. Creates a sort of religious feeling
22. Is nothing else, so is poetic by default
23. Remembers things silently gone out of mind
24. Induces movement by precise expression
25. Transforms contemplated emotion into actual, felt emotion
26. Breathes the finer spirit of all knowledge
27. Looks before and after
28. Sees relationships and love everywhere
29. Binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society
30. Feels as if it was always intended to be written as a poem and does not feel like
prose in drag
31. Achieves a certain level of song that exceeds the limits of human language
32. Causes a crackling blue spark to arc from the page to the reader’s mind
33. Purges pity and terror
34. Ritualistically recalls horrible memories in loving detail
35. Is news that stays news
36. Hits you with a brick
37. Lives beautifully for a moment and then dies
38. Burns for the joy of it
39. Rings your bell
40. Lifts you off
Consider the following questions.
1. What is poetry.
2. Why do you think people read poems?
3. Why do you think people write poems?
4. Do you think there is a content that is more or less appropriate than other content for a
poem?
5. Do you think there is a form that is more or less appropriate than other forms for a
poem?
6. What do you not like about poetry?
7. What do you like about poetry?
POETRY ISLAND
Your goal is to find the best idea of what poetry is and the poet who best reflects this idea in her
or his work. If you are convincing, your poet will survive until the end and become our class
poet. If you fail, your poet will be invited off the island and asked to immediately gather her or
his things and leave.
STEP 1: In your group, read over the quotations and poems about poetry. See if you can come
to some kind of consensus on what poetry is and/or can do well. Choose a poet and one of her
poems from the poetryoutloud website. You WILL NOT be able to choose the same poet (ie., 2
groups can’t have Giovanni), so whichever group chooses a poet first owns that poet
Prepare a presentation introducing your poet and the poem your group selected.
Your first presentation should include a reading of the poem and an additional three minutes
to explain what your idea is of poetry and how your poem reflects this as well as why we should
vote to keep your poet on the Island.
MAKE IT CONVINCING! Remember, the criteria you are using to vote is
 How strongly the group convinces you their definition of poetry is superior.
 How strongly the poem reflects this definition of poetry.
STEP 2: Round 1 of presentations. Once every group has gone, we will vote one of the poets
off the Island.
Step 3: In the remaining groups, you will have @15 minutes to choose another poem and
prepare your presentation.
If your poet has been voted off the Island, you will be given specific literary elements to
research. Your goal is to prepare a 3 minute presentation defining these terms and showing how
each is used.
Groups on the Island will read their new poem and will have 2 minutes of additional time to
convince all of the groups (groups whose poets are voted off still get a vote) to vote for your
poet. Included in your presentation should be examples of how the poet uses the literary terms
discussed in the beginning presentations. Remember, the criteria you are using to vote is
 How strongly the group convinces you their definition of poetry is superior.
 How strongly the poem reflects this definition of poetry.
Step 4: SAME AS STEP 3 WITH REMAINING GROUPS, EXCEPT GROUPS WILL ONLY
HAVE 1 ADDITIONAL MINUTE ALONG WITH THEIR READING TO PERSUADE US TO
VOTE FOR THEIR POET.
Steps 4 ¼- 4 ¾: (if necessary ) Repeat step 3
STEP 5: Final winner selected and crowning of the class poet.