h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wasn't it Archibald McLeish who said "A poem should not mean, but be"? Maybe you could add that quote to your introduction. I like that notion a lot as it frees both readers and authors from, basically, any restriction. As long as what you create/read qualifies in some way as "being" you are good to go

And of course there are poems where there is no, not even some subtle, use of rhythmic devices - and in chosing not to apply rhythmic devices, the author does refer to rhythm, so you are yet again good to go.

Oh, and thanks for liking my six lines. Good to have you back on hootoo.

Y.

Hi Yelbakk,

Perhaps, I should replace the word rhythmic with 'musicality' or something. That should help to clear the blurriness between rhythmicality and free verse etc.

Oh, I like that, musicality.

BUT (I guess you saw that one coming...) there are some Expressionist poems that I would hate to declare to have musicality. German author Gottfried Benn wrote some very disturbing ones about what he found at the local morgue...

But I also remember my lit. classes where we tried to define what makes a poem, and we just were never able to find one definition that would cover all poems there are. Except for one: the author chose to call it a poem.

I guess you are right, though. In most cases, there is something about rhythm, meter, rhyme, line breaks, and what not. There is one attempt at defining that appeals to me: in poetry, language is "more loaded" than in any other form of communication. (And that is NOT an official attempt at defining poetry! It's my very own )

Y.