Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paint-spattered canvas - but instead of paint the poet uses words to paint, and in the whole process you become the canvas. One should not shackle poetry with definitions. Poetry is not a frail and cerebral old woman, Poetry is stronger than one thinks. Poetry is imagination and will break those chains faster than you can say "Harlem Renaissance." Though there are several definitions for poetry but defining poetry is like grasping at the wind - once you catch it, it's no longer wind.There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;" Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;" and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing." and my definition of poetry is " The poetry does not need to necessary rhyme but each word should be a poem in itself " One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page. The poet, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.#writingpoetry
Have you ever written poetry? What was your first poem called? Do you believe that poetry is really a 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings'?
Though I agree with you when you ask is poetry a " spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings " but I would like to add a little more to it " Poetry not only is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings but also the strong flow of emotions that can take others along with the flow "Though I started scribbling two liners at a very young age but the lines below titled " Tuberose Under My Pillow " , I feel are my first few words that I could think of calling a beginners poetry.
Tuberose Under My Pillow
Was that a saviour
Freaking me out in my dream
I looked under the pillow.
Lay some tube rose,
Some silver and some moccasin !!
Am I illusion
Or is it a hallucination powered by my dream
But tube rose under the pillow are real and smell sweet!
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