----- Original Message -----
From: "Marcus Bales" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 9:04 PM
Subject: Re: FW: any formalists in the crowd? -- thanks to Annie Finch!
> Now, it seems to me, what you and others are saying is that in English
> there either is, or there ought to be, no such distinction between poetry
> and prose because you hold, if I understand you correctly, that anything
> is poetry that anyone says is poetry, on the grounds that poetry is an
> honorific, not a category of writing. Poetry might arise from washing
> machine instructions or even from a random collection of words.
>
> But my position is that poetry is not an honorific; it's not a way to
> describe that fine excess that shimmers at the top of the best writing of
> any kind. Poetry is simply metered language, while prose is unmetered
> language.
If I venture the term 'lineation' into the discussion at this point, let it
not be thought that I espouse the 'poetry is chopped-up prose' -- er, school
of thought. Yet even if you don't have a metrically-structured line, you can
still have a structured poem, even with washing machine instructions, if you
place your line-breaks carefully, so as to throw the important words into
relief. I tried it once with the gardening column in the paper, and it
worked a treat -- I have seen metrical stuff that I'd have been less happy
to call poetry.
joanna
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