: 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?" —

@Kristi637

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There is a continuum between poetry and prose. Some prose is very poetic, and some poetry is deliberately prosaic. At one time, the distinction was easier to draw, because poetry was chiefly practiced in strict forms, with set rhythm and rhyme schemes, and thus easily identifiable.

Absent the formal markers, I think the core distinction between the two is that prose is primarily concerned with the literal meaning of words, whereas poetry is primarily concerned with the impact words can create outside of their literal meanings. You can, of course, bring the tools of poetry to bear on your prose, but the overall goal of prose is direct communication, generally of things that can be expressed in standard ways; and the overall goal of poetry is not.

The marker of a great poem is that it somehow expresses something unique, something that has never exactly been captured in words before. We do not generally demand that of prose.

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