What is a poem?

by susan Russell
12th March 2014

What exactly is poetry? I'd love to be able to write it but really don't know where to start. Are there worthwhile books on the subject? I've shared a short work that perhaps is a poem, or perhaps not!?

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A novel is a dramatic poem.

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Adrian Sroka
14/03/2014

According to Johnathon Clifford poetry is a disciplined collection of words which, by its controlled sound pattern, or combination of both, cannot be prose.

Emily Dickinson expresses it thus:- 'If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it.

Dorothy L Sayers says' You only experience a thing when you can express it - however haltingly- to your own mind.

I wouldn't begin to try to say what it is but it is something I would like to be able to write well.

best wishes to all poets among us.

rosa.

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Rosa Johnson
14/03/2014

One of the different kinds of rivulet for thought flow.. is what I feel. A means to express yourself! :)

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