What is Poetry?

What poetry means and what famous poets said about it.

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

I was browsing my Facebook home page when I saw someone ask a question, “What is Poetry?” This got me thinking and so, I decided to write about it.

Poetry can mean many things to different people. It can be the writing of words in a poetic sentence. It can be a string of heartfelt sentences. A poetic verse with a meaningful story. It is prose with a sole. A flesh of something meaty to get into. It can be a story or a feeling of something we need.

Most poems have a deep magical substance even if it’s a description of an animal or insect. The insect or animal can be a simile to something else by using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. A story may lurk beneath the poetry even if it doesn’t directly show it.

Of course, a poem can mean something much more. For instance, a poem written about a person who is no longer living is a dedication to them. A poem written about the wind or the weather may not just be about that particular thing but perhaps, the sole of the prose isn’t revealed as clearly because you have to look for it. The sole of prose is a thing I look for and can sometimes be felt when reading a poem just like the story of a movie, tv-series, a fictional novel, dance, music, or paintings. The sole is the thing that makes the art of the poem exciting, thrilling, adventurous, and outstanding in every way possible. The words of the poem can excite our senses and flourish our minds just like it does when we read a novel that excites us. The sole is something you know when you hear it, read it, or see it. Others may have their own ideas about poetry.

In the dictionary, ‘sole’ means the following:

“Sole comes from the Latin solus, meaning “alone,” and it can describe being the only person involved in something, like being the sole member of the Special People Club. As a noun, your sole is the bottom of your foot. If you order sole in a restaurant, you’ll get a flatfish that looks like the bottom of your shoe. Although they sound alike, if you order the soul, the waitperson might send you to a church down the street.”

Famous poets

W.B. Yeats is one of my favorite poets. His poet's tongue interests me deeply. One of his poems titled The Second Coming gets to me every time I read it. Its meaning of the spirit world is written with conviction and doesn’t really elaborate on its meaning clearly but it’s felt in the soul of the prose. I believe the feeling of soul is within W.B. Yeats’ words.

W.B. Yeats below, a verse from The Second Coming:

“The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man”

There are other famous poets below:

Sylvia Plath.
Shakespeare.
Rudyard Kipling.
Robert Burns.
Oscar Wilde.
John Milton.
John Keats
T.S. Elliot

Poets and their definition of poetry

Edgar Allan Poe’s definition of poetry describes it as a rhythmical creation of beauty and its sole arbiter has taste:

“I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth.”

Philip Larkin believes that a poem should be its own sole. He wrote:

“As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n ‘tradition’ or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people.”

T.S. Elliot states: