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Where is the line between poetry and prose? Posted by frizzyperm on Dec 19, 2008. |
Poetry Forum Group
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"I am the very model of a modern Major-General, this above is clearly poetry. Is this below... Her mother shed a tear or two but wasn't really Posted by frizzyperm on Dec 19, 2008. |
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A prose poem is poetic text that often (but not always) ignores the conventions of poetry by discarding line breaks, but does include meter, rhythm, figures of speech and the like. Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud were the first prose poets to gain wide recognition for this style. Here is "The Port," by Baudelaire:
See the book "Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems," by Joseph M. Bernstein. http://www.enotes.com/symbolism/development-modern-prose-poem-symbolist Posted by linda-allen on Dec 19, 2008. |
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The line between poetry and prose is literally a line! Prose (from Latin, Prosa) means "straightforward discourse," whereas Poetry, composed of verse (from Latin, versus) means "a turning of the plow," or furrow or line. (Definitions from American Heritage, Dell Publishing Co.) Or at least that's the classical definition. And here I was always thinking the difference was if words rhymed or not, like
would be considered poetry, but....
....would not. Posted by enotechris on Dec 21, 2008. |
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Chambers's dictionary defines poetry as the essential quality of a poem, and a poem is defined as a composition of high beauty of thought or language and artistic form, typically, but not necessarily in verse. By this definition the main criteria to qualify as poem is "beauty". Unfortunately beauty is very subjective. As Shakespeare it "lies in the eyes of the beholder". But, I suppose, every poem is beautiful in the eyes of its composer, and therefore every composition that the composer chooses to call poetry is poetry. It is a different that I find lot of poetry, in verse or otherwise, not all that beautiful, so for me that is not a poetry. In the end if I find some composition beautiful, I just concentrate on enjoying it, not thinking about whether or not it is a poetry. Posted by krishna-agrawala on Jun 14, 2009. |
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Prose, which is normal discourse has no meter, rhyme, or artful construction. Posted by epollock on Jun 15, 2009. |
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If prose has "no meter" or "artful construction" why are so many words in English composed of iambs and how is it that figurative language abounds in the writings of such as Thomas Hardy and many others? I concur with the "line" as the definitive mark of poetry. Posted by mwestwood on Jul 3, 2009. |

