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Jon really touches on the problem here: other art forms seem easily identifiable and therefore should be able to be defined, while poetry escapes definition. I believe the early Greeks defined poetry as 'making' - very similar to definitions of sculpture. In the modern world, both sculpture and poetry are increasingly problematic, for attempts to define are ideological attempts to contain. Sculpture can be variously charted as a movement: ritual - space - architectural - the break with walls into the figurative - human distance v form (Giacometti v Moore) - internal landscapes, external volumes - physicality - sound - poetry. Or otherwise. As many words written about prosody and the cannon of poetry have been written about sculpture. For me, poetry is closer to sculpture and dance than music, film and theatre - and it is the aspect of sculpture which informs. Sculpture can be liquid, modelled, cast, reductive, expansive, fabricated, 2D, 3D, kinetic, time-based and pure sound. No art school and no professor can define sculpture in order to contain it now. I wish this were true of poetry - I really do. The production of sculpture is entirely in flux - with attendant contradictions - but I SO wish this was poetry too! All of us pigeon-hole poetry too easily because of our fear that poetry is the most ephemeral art. We cling to the cannon, teachings, what we know, our influences (Me, especially!). Yet, for a moment, place the Sculpture Hat on your Poetry Head and view an altered perspective of 'making:' what was resting on learning and belief is turned to making the concept concrete in given time, space and situation (both freedoms and limits, sure, but outward bound). I hope there is no defintion of poetry (let it be all). However, I would like to see the diversity of its production shared and more considered. *** I'm embarking on a huge environmental sculptural project with sculptor/artists Tonia Jillings and Joan Murray. To me, this is poetry - as much as poetry is. Rupert www.mallin.blogspot.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Corelis" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2007 6:10 PM Subject: Poetry? What's that? > "What is poetry?" > > To me, the question is not nearly so interesting as the fact that it's > asked and that no one's surprised that it's asked. > > "What is music?" The question would only occur to a few cloistered > aestheticians. It would never occur to most people, even most > musicians and composers, to spend much time worrying about it. And if > anyone does ask it, it usually doesn't really mean "What is music?" > -- that is, what is its concrete definition, how does it differ from > speech or noise -- but is shorthand for more general questions like > "What does music mean? What is its role in life? What are the > reasons it affects us?" Whereas the question "What is poetry?" is > almost always a way of asking for the concrete definition -- "Exactly > how is poetry different from things that aren't poetry?" "What are the > criteria by which we call one thing poetry and something else not > poetry?" -- which must precede those more general questions. In other > words, "everyone knows" what music is, but nobody knows what poetry > is. > > "What is cinema?" The question is famous, but only among a small > coterie of theorists. The average movie goer would find it quite > irrelevant, if not absurd, to try to define what a movie is. > > "What is art?" A question made much of in the art world, I suspect > mostly because public attempts by artists to raise it are an effective > way of getting media attention. > > "What is the significance that the question 'What is poetry?" is so > often asked and never really answered?" > -- > =================================== > > Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/ > > ===================================