What Exactly Makes a Poem… a Poem?

What is it that elevates a collection of words to the realm of poetry? Poets themselves have grappled with this question for centuries, often resorting to metaphors to capture its essence. Is a poem a delicate machine, a bursting firework, a lingering echo, or perhaps a fleeting dream?

While a definitive answer remains elusive, we can identify several characteristics that frequently appear in poetry.

The Hallmarks of Poetry

1. The Music of Language

Poetry emphasizes the musicality of language. This is achieved through various techniques, including:

Rhyme: The repetition of similar sounds at the end of lines or within lines.
Rhythm: The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.
Meter: A regular rhythmic pattern in a poem.

Examples of this can be found in the sonnets of Shakespeare, the odes of Confucius, and the ancient Sanskrit Vedas.

2. Condensed Language

Think of poetry as literature with all the unnecessary elements removed. It's about conveying maximum meaning with minimal words. Every word is carefully chosen and contributes to the overall impact of the poem.

3. Intense Feelings

Poetry often explores profound emotions, ranging from the spiritual to the deeply personal. Examples include:

Rumi's spiritual explorations.
Pablo Neruda's passionate odes, such as his famous "Ode to an Onion."

Challenging the Definition

Poetry, like all art forms, defies easy categorization. While early poems relied on rhythmic patterns to aid memorization before the written word, modern poetry has evolved in surprising ways.

Visual Poetry: Artists like Reinhard Döhl and Eugen Gomringer blur the lines between visual art and poetry with works that emphasize the visual arrangement of words.
Shaped Poetry: E.E. Cummings experimented with the visual shape of poems, using the arrangement of words to enhance the meaning and emotional impact.

The Blurring Lines

The boundaries between poetry and other art forms are becoming increasingly blurred. Consider these examples:

Songs as Poems

The question of whether song lyrics qualify as poetry is a subject of debate. While some may not consider songwriters to be poets in the traditional literary sense, the lyrics of artists like Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and Tupac Shakur often possess poetic qualities that stand alone, even without the music.

Rap and Poetry

In rap, elements like rhyme, rhythm, and vivid imagery are integral to the form. The Notorious B.I.G.'s lyrics, such as "I can hear sweat trickling down your cheek / Your heartbeat sound like Sasquatch feet / Thundering, shaking the concrete," demonstrate the poetic power of rap.

Prose Poetry

Prose poems utilize vivid imagery and wordplay but are formatted like paragraphs, challenging the traditional notion of line breaks as essential to poetry.

Poetry in Unexpected Places

When we shift our focus from form to concept, we discover poetry in unexpected corners of our world:

Spiritual Hymns: The language of hymns often possesses a poetic quality.
Oratory: The speeches of figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK, and Winston Churchill are filled with poetic devices.
Social Media: Even social media can be a source of poetry, as demonstrated by journalist Joanna Smith's powerful and evocative tweets during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

The Essence of Poetry: Creation

The word "poetry" originates from the ancient Greek word "poiesis," meaning "to create." Poets, like skilled craftspeople, work with the raw materials of the world to forge new understandings and offer commentary on the human experience.

Researchers have even attempted to teach robots to write poetry. However, these attempts have been unsuccessful, highlighting the unique human capacity for poetic expression. While artificial intelligence excels in manufacturing, medicine, and journalism, poetry remains a distinctly human endeavor.

Poetry's waters run wide and deep, constantly evolving and challenging our perceptions. Ultimately, it is a testament to the power of language to create, to evoke, and to connect us to the world around us.