what is poetry

What is Poetry? What is poetry? What is a poem? How can you tell the difference between poetry and prose? I usually try to provide a defintion, knowing that the definition is little more than a simplified starting point for this elusive and irresistible genre. I developed this one collaboratively with my colleague at TCC, Stan Barger, who team-taught English 112 with me several summers: Poetry is the concentrated, rhythmic, verbal expression of observations, perceptions, and …

…see Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur") nonmetrical cadences Free Verse (open form): Free verse has predecessors in the nonmetrical rhythms of Greek poetry, the cadences of the King James Bible Psalms, Milton's poetry; however, the true groundbreaker for free verse rhythms was America's Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century Some Familiar Fixed (Closed) forms Sonnet Villanelle "Venus and Adonis" stanza: ABABCC (see Puritan poetry) Closed couplets Terza rima: ABA BCB CDC ("Acquainted with the Night")