Define "Poetry"

In a course this fall that to some extent surveys British and American lyric poetry (shorter poems, in other words) from Shakespeare's time to the present, I included two tests. On such tests I tend to ask such questions as "Who wrote 'The Second Coming'?" or "What is blank verse?" --Identifications and definitions, in other words. Nothing too fancy.

For the second test, the students helped me generate a range of possible questions, and one student suggested that I ask, "What is poetry?" The rest of the students chuckled, but I put it on the list, and then I put it on the test. Before offering his answer, one student wrote, "I can't believe it! You really asked this, didn't you?"

I was impressed with the answers to this almost impossible question. The answers tended to focus on poetry as a "verbal art," as concentrated language, as arrangements of words to emphasize images and sound-patterns, and so on. Especially after the free-verse revolution and the emergence of such forms as "prose poems," defining "poetry," as distinct from fiction and other kinds of writing, became even harder than before.

One way to approach the problem, of course, is to consider what poetry might do (its function[s]) and also what it might be (what does poetry "look like"?). This is the old form-and-function gambit.

It's tempting, certainly, to see poetry's function as expressing emotion, but that's too limiting, I think. For the sake of argument (and in the interest of time), however, let us grant that much of what poetry expresses--what it does--concerns emotion. But what is poetry?

Poetry is a comparatively compressed form of writing that evokes images and uses words as much for their figurative power and their impact on the ear and the tongue (figuratively speaking!) as for their rhetorical or semantic function. At least that's what I think poetry is on this particular cold day in December.

Ah, but why am I wrestling (rassling) with the definition, when I can simply turn to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)? We know he's famous for having written The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, "Kubla Khan," and other poems; for collaborating with William Wordsworth; and for writing the Biographia Literaria, which gathers some fine criticism, including the well known bit about literature's (and, by extension, drama's and cinema's) capacity to induce in the audience "a willing suspension of disbelief." That is, instead of stubbornly insisting that we're just sitting in a dark place munching popcorn and watching light play on a screen, we agree to believe that that guy is really chasing that other guy down a dark alley.

Coleridge's definition of poetry (or one of his definitions)? The following:

QUOTATION: "I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose—words in their best order; poetry—the best words in their best order." ATTRIBUTION: Table Talk.

(I have cut-and-pasted this quotation from Bartlett's Quotations on line--on the bartleby.com site.)

True, the definition doesn't say much about the function of poetry, about what it is "supposed to do" or what it has done in different societies and as compared to prose. Coleridge leaves that for another day. But the definition does a nice job of telling us what poetry is, provided we can agree on what we think the best words and the best order are!

Of course, we can't agree about these things. (And where would be the fun in our agreeing?!)

Once again this semester, for example, excellent students whose opinions I respect expressed their less than enthusiastic appreciation of Emily Dickinson's poetry, whereas I happen to think she is easily one of the best, most original, most enduring poets ever. I also think she is one of the more misunderstood poets. An impulse in the culture wants to turn her into the precious recluse, when the poetry itself has always struck me as earthy, direct, and connected with things important to almost everyone. Her mannerisms--the clipped diction and the dashes--cause some readers undue discomfort, I think; for some reason, I was never put off by these elements of her poems, even when I first began to read her work. In any event, the disagreements about Dickinson and innumerable other poets and poems persist, so in the rooms behind Coleridge's pithy definition arises the din of endless arguments about which words in what order are indeed "best." But least Coleridge gave us a short, sweet definition that was good enough to start some arguments.

Best wishes, and orderly wishes, to you as you write and/or read "poetry," whatever that is!

(I'm reading A.E. Housman's The Name and Nature of Poetry, which wrestles in entertaining, informative ways with definitions of poetry, but a discussion of that sharp little book will have to wait for another blog-entry.)