Writing
        By orinoco
-----------------
It's harder than it seems.

You can't write down
  Just anything
    And call it a poem.

Just anything

This
  Is not
    A poem.

22 responses total.

aha!
        by
b.d.                    place
----            ------

i think that's
true, but most                  people          haven
't              caught on yet.   perhaps
this is
why
e.e.
cummings
                        was
                                                so
                                                        pop
                                u
                lar
 .

Whee!

Poetry is in the eye of the beholder.

Poetry is in the eye of my mother.

Your mother is a beholder?

Your mother is a poet?

No.  My mother is a Beholder-kin!
/

Meanwhile,
  Ken Miltokowski
    Is minimalist.

He says
  Less than just anything
    And calls it a poem

Such
  Is life
    Says me.

        i have known people
        to take common prose
        and arrange it in lines
        of roughly equal meter
        and put it all
        in lower case only

        and call it poetry.

        indeed,
        i have done this
        myself.

poetry is

whatever you say

poetry is

Wrongo.  Poetry must either be epic poetry, narrative poetry, dramatic
poetry, descriptive poetry, didactic poetry, lyric poetry, satirical
verse, occasional verse, light and humorous verse, or a translation of
poetry from another language that fits into one of the previous
categories.  If it's not one of those things, it's not poetry.

Furthermore, it must be of iambic meter, trochaic meter, anapestic
meter, dactylic meter, spondaic meter, amphibrachic meter, or
paeonic meter{.  If it's not in one of those meters, it's not
poetry.

A poem must use one or more{of the poetic devices of caesura (feminine,
lyric, epic, or masculine), the end-stopped line, enjambment.  It should
have stanzaic structure of the couplet, the distich, the terget, the
quatrain, the cinquain, the sextain, the septet, the octave, the nine-
line stanza, or the ten-line stanza.

If rhyme is used, it must be of a pattern such as aa,bb... or aaa,bbb...
or abab, perhaps with the addition of random or internal rhyme.

Form must be terza rima, ballad, rubai, sapphic, venus and adonis,
rhyme royal, ottava rima, sicelian, spenserian, petrarchan sonnet,
miltonic sonnet, shakesperean sonnet, triolet, rondel, rondelet,
rondeau, roundel, kyrielle, lai, villanelle, pantoum, sestina, ode,
haiku, tanka, naga-uta, englyn, limerick, clerihew, or little willie.
T'ain{_'t poetry if it's not one of those.

So you can't just splatter down anything on the page and call it
"poetry".

perhaps not just anything.

but have you ever seen a sunset?
if that's not poetry to you, i guess we must come to the conclusion
that we have different definitions of poetry.
i will admit that all the above would probably result in something you
could call a poem, but I'm not so sure about poetry.

canteloupes can geedily
                     erase the steady surface of your skin
and this most speedily
                     replace the need for chewing aspirin.

Although this writing complies with some of the criteria listed
above in 11, is it poetry?  Same with muzak--is it music?  Hellmark
Pulitzer in 1887 is quoted as saying "It's not how stupid you are,
it's what you do with your brains that counts."  

Glad I could help.

The first four lines of #13 are the most sublime poetry I've seen
in the English language.

I liked that geedily bit myself.

picky, picky.

hehehe

Why this constant quibbling
  Over what is
    Or is not a poem.

Watch a sunset,
  Or smell the air
    Directly after it rains.

Then you can know.

Duh, wuz dat haiku?

no

This is not haiku
even though it has the same
pattern as they do

























BECAUSE THERE'S A FOURTH LINE!

har har.

*smash*

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