When is a poem a poem?

Lovely. Thank you, P

"You had a name once, a proper name, not cat, or kitty or puss
You offered companionship on your own terms, acquiescing to a caress, or bestowing your own blessing, rubbing your head against his leg.

You never counted years, and now he has lost the knack.
The gnarled hand reaches out to stroke the bony back.

Your name, your proper name is still there,
Somewhere deep inside the old mans head.
But no matter that he cannot recall it now, at this exact moment.
The gas fire sputters,
And in the warm, quiet room, companionship is enough."

A poem should always have a rhyme
If not it could be a waste of time

"Poetry is violence committed on ordinary language." A bit extreme, but it means that poetry can break the rules, of punctuation, of grammar, of structure, to shake us into re reading and re listening. Defamiliarization again.

You can use the structure of a poem to reflect the content; for example to illustrate distress. If a poem is about madness then a random and incoherent structure would be good perhaps. I would far rather have a poem that didn't rhyme thatn one of those that rhymes no matter what - where rhyme is forced even if it destroys the meaning.

If it is structured, lucid, (can still be demanding!) and organised in familiar ways, then I would say it is prose.

As far as I can remember prose is the written word as in a novel.

You can also have a prose poem which is a piece of prose written in a poetic way.

Good question, NfkDumpling! I don't feel qualified to answer but I'm sure someone will.

So, if that's poetry - what's prose?

I like that, janerowena. Do you know it by heart or did you have to look it up?

Yes, I was taught that when I did my English 'A' Level many years ago, so it was considered a form of poetry even back then - just look at e e cummings.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear

no fate (for you are my fate my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

There was a poetry module on an OU course I did two years ago. We were taught that one way of writing a poem was to write a piece of prose and then break it up into lines, so for example:

There was a poetry module
on an OU course
I did two years
ago
We were taught that one way of writing a poem
was to write
a piece of prose and then
break it up
into lines

Yes, I thought it was mad, too, but it can actually be quite thought provoking if you get it right.

Ana quite right! Nor is poetry always beautiful.

It was good Phoenix - but surely not a poem? My pedant mother would have called it prose, but that no longer seems to exist.

I'll go with your idea of 'defamiliarisation', Ariadne. A quotation that rings true with me is:

'Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.'

T. S. Eliot

If it doesn't rhyme, scan or flow then it's just prose. Not necessarily beautiful prose.

What's the definition of a poem anyway?

If it doesn't rhyme, scan or flow then it is beautiful prose.

To pretend it is a poem is like proclaiming the Emperor's new Clothes.

"what oft was said, but ne'er so well expressed" is one idea about poetry.

But I like the concept of defamiliarization - presenting the everyday and the commonplace in such a way that we can see it anew. "To make the stone stoney."

I heard that poem, I thought it was good.

I used to tell my students that poetry was painting a picture with words so anything above the mundane is acceptable in my opinion.