Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A What makes a poem a poem?

There is a continuum between poetry and prose. Some prose is very poetic, and some poetry is deliberately prosaic. At one time, the distinction was easier to draw, because poetry was chiefly prac...

posted 7y ago by Chris Sunami‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:44:06Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29099
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Chris Sunami‭ · 2019-12-08T06:44:06Z (almost 5 years ago)
There is a continuum between poetry and prose. Some prose is very poetic, and some poetry is deliberately prosaic. At one time, the distinction was easier to draw, because poetry was chiefly practiced in strict forms, with set rhythm and rhyme schemes, and thus easily identifiable.

Absent the formal markers, I think the core distinction between the two is that prose is _primarily_ concerned with the literal meaning of words, whereas poetry is _primarily_ concerned with the impact words can create outside of their literal meanings. You can, of course, bring the tools of poetry to bear on your prose, but the overall goal of prose is direct communication, generally of things that can be expressed in standard ways; and the overall goal of poetry is not.

The marker of a great poem is that it somehow expresses something unique, something that has never exactly been captured in words before. We do not generally demand that of prose.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-07-06T17:04:52Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 17