Hi all, this has probably been covered a few times.
Is there a point at which a piece of writing becomes prose and not poetry? Or poetry and not prose?
Barcud
Poetry or prose?
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Ros
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I'm sure there is, but you're not going to get much consensus on where that point is!
Rosencrantz: What are you playing at? Guildenstern: Words. Words. They're all we have to go on.
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Ah okay. Just wondering, what's to stop me chopping up a couple of story paragraphs and reconstructing them to look like poetry? I'm guessing that because I have written them like a poem and say it is a poem who's to say that it isn't a poem? Right?
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Ros
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Well, it's all a bit subjective - but my opinion is that a poem would need some sort of heightened language, and rhythm, and attention to sonics, to the way the words sound together, and metaphor, and imagery, etc etc. All of which prose can have some of, of course, but it doesn't tend to be sustained in the same way.
Ros
Ros
Rosencrantz: What are you playing at? Guildenstern: Words. Words. They're all we have to go on.
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bodkin
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I have sometimes had the crit: "this is like prose with funny line-breaks" and I do see where those critters are coming from.
So I guess as a purely mechanical exercise you can't just cut prose up to make poetry. OTOH prose may be poetic before you start. Did you see the found poetry forum, the idea of that is pretty much to spot accidentally poetic text and give it that little push...
On the other hand, I never like to be told my poem is like prose, because usually I knew that I was doing something like that and I feel the critter may have missed the point. e.g. that I was deliberately exploring that area, possibly because it is a subject that would suffer from being too poetic, or even because I'm try to express a mood that won't fit too well with another approach.
On the third hand, getting a crit which shows the critic missed part of what you were saying is perfectly valid and useful feedback. It means you have in some degree failed to say what you meant.
And this, I think is a valid general point. There are all sort of laws of poetry, and none of them are "laws" they are all guidelines. Everybody is free to flout as many laws as often as they like, however:
1) the rich seems of good poetry are far more likely to be found away from the weird and wacky border regions (more likely, not "only", c.f. revolutionary geniuses but n.b. there are 1,000,000x as many people who _think_ they are revolutionary geniuses than who actually are)
2) the more laws you flout, the less likely you are to be easily understood
Possibly every poem should break some law, however...
Ian
So I guess as a purely mechanical exercise you can't just cut prose up to make poetry. OTOH prose may be poetic before you start. Did you see the found poetry forum, the idea of that is pretty much to spot accidentally poetic text and give it that little push...
On the other hand, I never like to be told my poem is like prose, because usually I knew that I was doing something like that and I feel the critter may have missed the point. e.g. that I was deliberately exploring that area, possibly because it is a subject that would suffer from being too poetic, or even because I'm try to express a mood that won't fit too well with another approach.
On the third hand, getting a crit which shows the critic missed part of what you were saying is perfectly valid and useful feedback. It means you have in some degree failed to say what you meant.
And this, I think is a valid general point. There are all sort of laws of poetry, and none of them are "laws" they are all guidelines. Everybody is free to flout as many laws as often as they like, however:
1) the rich seems of good poetry are far more likely to be found away from the weird and wacky border regions (more likely, not "only", c.f. revolutionary geniuses but n.b. there are 1,000,000x as many people who _think_ they are revolutionary geniuses than who actually are)
2) the more laws you flout, the less likely you are to be easily understood
Possibly every poem should break some law, however...
Ian
http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/