[New-Poetry] An Innocuous Taxonomy of Poetry

[Bob Grumman]

Every once in a while I work up a classification of poems based on size.  I 
just posted one to my blog.  Here it is:


24 March 2007: I haven't been able to find any of my writings on the 
classification of poems by size, but I gave the matter thought last night in 
bed.  Result: I think I taken care of the problem permanently!  My 
breakthrough was coming up with simple, appropriate terminology, to wit: 
book-length poem, chapter-length poem, page-length poem, half-pagepoem, 
quarter-page poem and minimalist poem.

The approximate size of each kind of poem should be clear, but to pin it 
down a book-length poem would be the length of any normal or semi-normal 
book--that is, from 24 to a zillion pages long.  A chapter-length poem would 
be more than a page long but less than 24 pages long.  As for a page-length 
poem, I had in mind a standard book-page, which is about six inches by nine 
inchs.  Half that for the half-page poem, and a quarter of it for the 
quarter-page poem.  I'm assuming the kind of page I have in mind would hold 
around forty lines of conventional solitextual (solely textual) poems.  A 
half-page solitextual poem by that reasoning would be twenty lines or less 
in length, but I break logic with my definition, making such poems sixteen 
lines or less in length.  The standard example would be the fourteen-line 
sonnet.  In other words, for me, a half-page poem is more or less the size 
of a sonnet.  A quarter-page poem is eight lines of the equivalent, or less, 
in length.

Each of these kinds of poems has a bottom linit, too: a page-length poem is 
over sixteen lines or the queivalent in length, a half-page poem over eight 
lines or the equivalent in length, a quarter-page poem over . . . 
twenty-five *syllables*, or the equivalent, in length--because a minimalist 
poem is any poem twenty-five syllables or less in length.  Such as a haiku.

Because of the importance of minimalist poems to me, I split the minimalist 
poem category into three parts: maximinimalist poems, microminimalist poems 
and nanominimalist poems.  The first are more than three words (which total 
less than ten syllables) in length, the second three words (which total lsee 
than ten syllables), but more than a single word (of no more than three 
syllables) in length.  At this point, the sizes I've given for the three 
minimalist poem divisions are extremefully tentative--pure guesses as to 
what would be most appropriate--although the smallest division is probably 
set.

Strictly speaking, a haiku could only be in the maximinimalist category. 
Those not interested in small poems may question the value of my three 
divisions--if not the value of my entire scheme.  But I think exciting 
things are going on, in quantity, in all minimalist poetry divisions.  In 
any case, if my extra three classifications are cumbersome, there's no need 
to use them: the term, "minimalist poem," covers any poem in any of them.

Comments welcome.

--Bob G.