: Re: What makes a poem a poem? Warning: long question. To start it off lightheartedly, here is the topic as doggerel. There are plenty of questions with titles like these: "What is this form?" —

@Phylliss352

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First of all, you're not going to get a definition that covers all of modern poetry. There just aren't a set of unifying features behind, e.g., Kenneth Goldsmith's Day, Derek Beaulieu's Flatland, Ashbery's Three Poems, Siliman's Tjanting, Dickinson, Whitman, etc., etc. (to only include the western tradition). There are blurred lines between poetry and prose (with someone like Gertrude Stein being a genuinely difficult case) and even between poetry and visual arts.

Characteristics like the ones you proposed can work okay as rules of thumb. Not all poems do all six things listed and, as you noted, some non-poetry does those things. I think it's rather best to think of poetry as a family-resemblance term and a living practice. Poetry is the product of people self-consciously writing poetry who are aiming to in some way make their work resemble what has already been accepted as poetry.

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