So you are saying that prose never tells of impression or uses metaphor
in a new way?
Is that your definition of poetry?
Then "War and Peace" is poetry... "Winter in the Blood" is poetry... and
many respected sonnets are not.
What is your standard? What list of criteria do you use when you measure
a piece to determine whether it is poetry?
That isn't a trick question... I am truly interested in your baseline.
RDL wrote:
>transcendence is an elusive quality indeed, but I will stick with my
>premise
>that a poem says something prose cannot. That is its purpose. It is not
>primarily
>to sound pretty, or even achieve the conciseness of a Shakespearean or
>Petrarchan sonnet, though it may do that well. But it must tell of
>impression, or use a metaphor in a new way, or somehow stimulate the
>imagination in a way that prose cannot. Otherwise, it may as well be
>prose.
>
>.
>
>
>
|