What is poetry?
How would you define poetry? Keep reading, then leave a comment to join this dialogue. [Ed. from the Archive.]
Is poetry a feeling? A state of being? An ellipsis? An idea partially or wholly materialized with ink or digital space on a page? Or is it something else a little more or less tangible? Perhaps. Because poetry is more than mere word conditions and arrangements and positions and omissions on a page and off the page of memory via memory. No?
What is poetry then?
Perhaps poetry is the epitome of archival beauty. Standards realized then updated again and again with phrases and punctuation, or lack thereof. Or perhaps … poetry reveals the lurking, ugly things deep within us? Those things that cannot be revealed or understood via any other medium, or screened and seen, you see? The nonstandard. Is that what it is?
What is poetry then?
How would we define a poet’s life? As consumers. As bystanding purveyors. As artists and doers of language arts. Who insist on explaining things at our own peril, to our own detriment. As we showcase and absorb the simulacrum of life painted on canvas and walls. Perhaps that’s what poetry is. Living reflections of an un-static trans-mutating language. Abbreviated. Felt. Invisible. Demonstrated. Performed. Large. Ever evolving? Is that how we would describe something that evades true clarity? Through living.
What is poetry then?
Perhaps poetry is life itself. The intangible breaths we take and give to things. And others. Who take and give things to others. The meaning of things real and imagined and sensed. As gifts. Things that themselves take and give. By us. For us. To us. Like heartbeats and prayers in the ephemeral magic of the sky that opens up and holds our indecipherable spiritualities? Does that sound right?
What is poetry then?
Historical truth. Or silly irreverence? Passion that burns beyond rhyme and meter through the significant impermanence of our lives. Something that survives us, that exists and persists long after we’re gone from the world. Clinging to our songs, unsung. The erratic, crescendo-ing, beautiful music of our lives that reverberates across space and time?
Is that what poetry is then? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.
Maybe the point of poetry, its entire essence, its entire purpose, its entire cause— which can never be tamed or trapped or wrought, if poetry even has any of those qualities— will forever leave us with less answers and more questions, then. Poetry is awe …
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