: Poetry when unstructured? Like most kids, I went through the All Poetry Must Rhyme phase. Then a little later in school, rhyme was less essential (especially in English, a less rhyme-compatible

Vote Up Vote Down

This may sound wishy-washy but it comes from having my own understanding of poetry continue to grow over the years. I think if the writer intends what they are writing to be a poem, and lacking any strong evidence that it is something else (like a script), then it can probably be considered a poem. There are prose poems and many styles (including ones labeled "experimental") that will ignore one or more or possibly many of the aspects we normally think of (meter, rhyme, etc).

What this does not address is whether or not it is an effective poem (I prefer "effective" rather than "good" or "bad"). One problem that can happen with some poems that ignore a lot of those structures is that the structure (or lack) may be distracting. Line breaks and other things are clues to the reader. Intent has a lot to do with it. Does whatever you are doing on the page support the effect you are trying to have or the point you are trying to communicate? Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

As I suggested in response to the question you cite, poetry is writing that intentionally acts in dimensions that prose ignores.

Any individual dimension which renders a thing a poem might be eliminated and still leave a poem, like meter, rhyming (or alliteration or assonance), syllable-counting, emphasis through line breaks, indirect and allusive language, visual structure on the page, etc. (Some of the criteria partially overlap with each other.) Paradise Lost is unrhymed, but written in Iambic Pentameter, for example, and is unquestionably poetry. There are plenty of pieces of doggerel which are unmindful of meter, but which rhyme, and are commonly called poetry. Any particular characteristic is not strictly necessary to make a piece a poem.

Your question might be rephrased, then, "How many or which poetic criteria can be eliminated (or must remain) in order for a written piece to be a poem?"

If I may frame-challenge, I don't think there is a clear boundary or an obvious minimum. Just as much of music will be universally called music (whether it is liked or disliked by an person remarking on it), much poetry will be near-universally recognizable as poetry. But as the sound a wind-chime makes may or may not be strictly recognized as music (vs "musical"), the closer you get to a boundary of being a poem, the more often people will disagree about whether you've already crossed the boundary.

(0)