Which is odd. Because afterall isnt all writing about telling a story? Why should poetry be an exception..
Maybe you are a performance poetry aficionado. There is performance poetry nowadays. But most of the emphasis there is on performance. Although Sarah Kay's love letter is a gem. She seems to be truely in love when she recites that poem. Its a treat just to watch her read out that poem. That aside, Taylor Mali. is an amazing performer. And no mention of performance poetry can ever be over without mentioning Galway Kinnel's Bear. It is "". Iam refraining from using any specific adjective since amazing, fantastic, all have been diluted through over use and when something truly fantastic like Bear comes along you are left with an empty vocabulary. Damn our pc age. Ill call it enchanting. That is still not that frequently used is it?
But still performance poetry is not strictly mainstream poetry. If you read good quality mainstream poetry, one thing is certain. There is sort of a light and shade, magic forest kind of feeling over there. and you are continually filling in the shades with the light of your own imagination. The poetry becomes personal.
Logically then, if I write a whole story or take a detailed police record and rub off in places asking my imagination to fill in, it will be poetry. To be a poet then all one needs is a book of records and an erasure.
You might have noticed, there is something wrong about the above argument.
Poetry has another dimension, as does all great art. It is craft. The way a poet constructs her sentences, there lies half the magic.So, a great poem is a well crafted structure with lots of imaginative gaps. Otherwise, a great novel would have been a great poem as well.
If you have a complete story and great craft, you have a great novel. What is missing? Nothing. Infact there is too much of it. Imagination. In constructing the whole story the author has crafted out his entire imagination which you, the reader must then internalise. You can be inspired by it and match it to your experience but you cant plug in your own. And that is where a great novel is different from a great poem. In a great poem, you are essentially working with the poet in building the story for your individual self. Too much story would spoil that effect which is core to the very definition of a poem.
That is my argument on what differentiates a poem from other works of literature. Later I might talk a little about craft as well. How much of craft is about details and going down to the basics deep within the big picture. But later.
Maybe you are a performance poetry aficionado. There is performance poetry nowadays. But most of the emphasis there is on performance. Although Sarah Kay's love letter is a gem. She seems to be truely in love when she recites that poem. Its a treat just to watch her read out that poem. That aside, Taylor Mali. is an amazing performer. And no mention of performance poetry can ever be over without mentioning Galway Kinnel's Bear. It is "". Iam refraining from using any specific adjective since amazing, fantastic, all have been diluted through over use and when something truly fantastic like Bear comes along you are left with an empty vocabulary. Damn our pc age. Ill call it enchanting. That is still not that frequently used is it?
But still performance poetry is not strictly mainstream poetry. If you read good quality mainstream poetry, one thing is certain. There is sort of a light and shade, magic forest kind of feeling over there. and you are continually filling in the shades with the light of your own imagination. The poetry becomes personal.
Logically then, if I write a whole story or take a detailed police record and rub off in places asking my imagination to fill in, it will be poetry. To be a poet then all one needs is a book of records and an erasure.
You might have noticed, there is something wrong about the above argument.
Poetry has another dimension, as does all great art. It is craft. The way a poet constructs her sentences, there lies half the magic.So, a great poem is a well crafted structure with lots of imaginative gaps. Otherwise, a great novel would have been a great poem as well.
If you have a complete story and great craft, you have a great novel. What is missing? Nothing. Infact there is too much of it. Imagination. In constructing the whole story the author has crafted out his entire imagination which you, the reader must then internalise. You can be inspired by it and match it to your experience but you cant plug in your own. And that is where a great novel is different from a great poem. In a great poem, you are essentially working with the poet in building the story for your individual self. Too much story would spoil that effect which is core to the very definition of a poem.
That is my argument on what differentiates a poem from other works of literature. Later I might talk a little about craft as well. How much of craft is about details and going down to the basics deep within the big picture. But later.
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