“Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made from visible ideas, the sound of an concept.” – Mina Loy
After I learn Mina Loy’s description of poetry as “prose bewitched,” I felt like somebody had captured the true essence of poetry for the primary time.
We regularly wrestle to outline summary or obtuse ideas. One of many biggest and most difficult questions of all time is “What’s artwork?” Though dictionaries try to outline artwork, no definition fairly captures its essence, so artists and thinkers have tried to outline artwork in their very own phrases for hundreds of years.
Just like the definition of artwork, the definition of poetry has been explored by writers, thinkers, artists, and poets themselves. So what’s it? What’s poetry?
Defining Poetry
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary offers us loads of definitions for the phrase poetry:
- the writings of a poet : poems
- one thing that may be very lovely or sleek
- metrical writing : verse
- writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative consciousness of expertise in language chosen and organized to create a selected emotional response by way of that means, sound, and rhythm
- one thing likened to poetry particularly in great thing about expression
With all due respect to Merriam-Webster, I don’t assume any of those definitions do poetry justice or actually convey a solution to the query “What’s poetry?”
I assumed I’d take a stab at defining poetry:
Poetry is a literary artwork type that may be written, spoken, or carried out. It focuses on the aesthetics of language. It’s often composed in verse and is anxious with evoking a picture or emotion. Poetry makes liberal use of literary units, reminiscent of alliteration and metaphor. It’s the musicality of language, the rendering of summary ideas, concepts, and feelings, rendered with phrases and sounds. It’s photos painted with phrases.
As you may see, I can’t seize the essence of poetry any higher than a dictionary. Poetry is all of these items and none of these items. There’s a magic in poetry that’s tough to explain in phrases, though poetry itself usually makes use of phrases to create magic.
What’s Poetry?
I feel we want poetry itself so as to actually convey what poetry is. Robert Frost offers us a definition of poetry that’s from the poet’s perspective:
“Poetry is when an emotion has discovered its thought and the thought has discovered phrases.” – Robert Frost
Do you ever write poetry? Which poems and poets are your favorites? How would you reply the query, “What’s poetry?” Share your ideas and concepts by leaving a remark, and preserve writing poetry!
