What is poetry?

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Poetry  Subjective; symbolic; brevity; Poetic diction; Auditory qualities; Form;

Imaginative; Subject matter; Figurative language etc; Also is it expectation, what and
how a text shows something, how the text shows itself, the speaker, literary use of
language etc.

The expression of beautiful or elevated thought, imagination, or feeling, in appropriate

language, such language containing a rhythmical element and having usually a
metrical form. (Oxford English Dictionary)
BUT: What is beautiful? What is an elevated thought? This definition is tricky, all of
these words could have several definitions. It should have (or not) correspond nce
between what is exposed and not, as in the language and context (or not).
Ogden Nash, “The Hippopotamus”
Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim
I wonder how we look to him.
Peace, peace thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.
Subject matter of the poem: What is suggested is that beauty lies in the eye of the
beholder. Nobody sees things the same way.

Archibald McLeish, “ArsPoetica”:

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. […]
Subject matter of the poem: Chaos; Chaotic words with a meaningful sense. Truth
masked behind words. You can create an image to present bitterness/whatever in
genera/feelings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

For it is not meters, but a meter-making
argument that makes a poem – a thought
so passionate and alive that like the spirit
of a plant or an animal it has an architecture
of its own, and adorns nature with a new
thing.
About the essence of poetry, meter is not necessary, but argument meter necessary even
if it changes the topic. Poets and poems are individuals on their own.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, THE SNOW STORM: POETRY READER 1
PAG.5
PROSODY: POETRY READER 1 PAG 1 Y 2.
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Rítmica: Tutún-tutún-tutún-tutún

Blank verse:
 unrhymed iambic pentameter
 close to the natural rhythms of English speech
 introduced by the Earl of Surrey in his translation
 of Virgil’s Aeneid(about 1540)
 became standard meter in Elizabethan and later
 poetic drama

Example for blank verse (Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus):

You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds,
That when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may Issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven.
Rhythm: measured flow of words and signifying the basic (though often varied) beat or
pattern in language that is…
 Established in stressed and unstressed syllables and pauses
 close to speech patterns
 often created by parallelism, euphony, repetition
 of great importance when reciting a poem

„Es wallt das Korn weit in die Runde,

Und wie ein Meer dehnt es sich aus“
-/ -/ -/ -/ -
-/ -/ -/ -/
---/ ─ / --/ -
---/ ─ / --/
If rhythm is so important, why bother about meter?
Example:
“Oh no, it is an ever fixed mark”
 Use of expansions (“fixed”) or contractions/elisions (“o’er” for “over”)
determine recital of poem.
 Does it matter whether a piece of music is written in two-four time or three-four
time?
RHYME POETRY READER 1 PAG 2

true/full/perfect rhyme: land-stand C V C

rich rhyme/identical rhyme (homophones): rite-right C V C
know-no CV
(homographs): stare-stare
eye-rhymes: prove-love, daughter-laughter
imperfect/slant/partial/near rhyme/para-rhyme: trees-rose, tomb-worm, drunkard-
conquered C V C
Consonance: lad-lid (C V C); groaned-crooned-ground