[New-Poetry] and yet it remains undefined...

[Bob Grumman]

It's not hard to define poetry as easily as one can define a housecat; 
what is hard is getting those who consider poetry sacred to accept any 
definition of it--just as those who consider life sacred will disdain 
any attempt to define a housecat.  Intellectual nihilists, who disdain 
all definitions of anything because no definition can be perfect will 
also always be with us.

--Bob

jforjames at aol.com wrote:
> Dennis Barone and I were talking today about how one tries to define 
> poetry, the difficulty
> and futility of even trying. I was saying to him that there are two 
> basic categories of
> definitions...
> 1) The short, poetic and pithy ones which are memorable but not very 
> emcompassing.
> 2) The long and explanatory ones that still fail to map the ambit of 
> the art while dragging their chain
> of prose.
>
> Anyway this my last humble attempt to define what poetry is:
>
> Words organized for affect; often employing the effects of sound, 
> imagery and metaphor
> through compressed expressions marked by their nuance or unusual 
> perspective.
>
> It sort falls in the second category...but the semi-colon gives the 
> first part some aphoristic
> punch, and what follows begins to bear the affect-effects thought 
> echo. So it pleased me,
> as far it goes. But my only real insight into the matter is this:
>
> One definition of poetry is one’s defense of poetry.
> -&-
> Let your next poem openly refute your last definition of poetry.
>
>
>
> Finnegan
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