What is a poem?

I've long been amused that when my beginning poetry students--and many other people--are asked this question, their answers almost always fall into three categories:

Emotion-Based "Words that move us," "The deepest truth," Words that come from the heart," "Our inner selves speaking," etc.

Intellect-Based "Language of mystery," " Words that don't have to make sense," "Words beyond meaning," "A poem can be anything you want it to be," etc.

Modernism-Based "A poem doesn't have to rhyme!" (if the discussion goes on long enough, someone will usually offer this as a definition)

There's something odd about these answers, isn't there? Can you imagine ideas this abstract in answer to the request to define any other art form—dance, or music, or painting? All that these definitions really say— all that most people today know for sure about poetry— is that a poem is made of words.

So, after years of frustration with the widespread and smug misunderstandings about the art to which I have devoted my life, I set out to discover a better one that was based not in lofty judgments of what good poetry is, nor in impressions of how poetry should make people feel, but in actual observation. Over almost twenty years, I developed this definition:

In its simplest version, answering an interviewer's request that I define poetry for a 7-year old, it goes like this.

A POEM IS WORDS PUT TOGETHER IN A SPECIAL WAY SO THAT WE FEEL IT.

Here is the adult version, specifying what that "special way" is:

A POEM IS A PIECE OF LANGUAGE THAT IS STRUCTURED THROUGH REPETITION.

And here is the most complete version of the definition:

A POEM IS A TEXT STRUCTURED (NOT MERELY DECORATED) BY THE REPETITION OF ANY LANGUAGE ELEMENT OR ELEMENTS.

To make use of this definition, the distinction between structure and decoration is key.

A structural element is one that the rest of the elements of the poem build on and depend on. If it goes missing, you will notice; its repetition is predictable. A decorative element, on the other hand, is optional. It can't be predicted, and its absence won't be noticed.

For example, try reading "The Night Before Christmas" aloud, but replace the word "nap" with "sleep" in line 8. Anyone hearing the poem will understand that the rhyme in this poem is structural. We can predict it will happen at a certain point, and if it's left off, we will feel as if something's wrong and needs to be fixed. On the other hand, if you read the poem aloud and replace the word "snug" with "tight" in line 5, nobody will notice (unless they already know the poem by heart). The consonance of the s's between "nestled" and "snug" is a skillful and satisfying sound-effect, but it is merely decorative, not structural. We can't predict it in advance, and we won't notice if it's gone.

A poem may repeat numerous decorative elements of language, but so can a passage of prose. It is only the repetition of structural elements that make a poem a poem.

At this point, you may be wondering, if poetry is defined by its structure, what about all the other wonderful qualities of poetry? What about its power to move us, to say the ineffable, to use the magic of language in striking ways? Isn't that all that matters?

These are all powers of good poetry, to be sure. But they do not address the question, which asks only for a simple definition of poetry that will apply to all poems, good or bad, boring or earthshaking, and not to other things. Emotional power and linguistic freshness, along with all the other qualities we usually think of as "poetic," could occur just as easily in prose (imagine, for example, a lyrical passage of prose such as the end of Joyce's Ulysses). Eloquence, concision, rhythm, musical patterns of consonants and vowels, carefully chosen diction, an emotionally moving tone, metaphors, similes, "the best words in the best order"—all these can be just as evident in lyrical prose as in lyrical poetry. Furthermore, we can easily imagine a text that anyone would agree is a poem that has absolutely none of these qualities. So the truth is that none of these elements defines poetry. Even repeating elements such as extreme rhythmicality, rhetorical repetition, and high amounts of word music don't necessarily make a text a poem—as long as we can't predict when they will occur. It is only when the repetition is structural that we have a poem.

Having written and taught poetry most of my life, I feel that it does poetry a disservice to limit its definition only to the earth-shaking examples. There will be more on this point below.

Another question that may arise for you is, Ok, if that's the definition of a poem, then what is "free verse"? By this definition, free verse is language structured by the predictable repetition of a single language element: the line break. The definition of a poem as language structured through repetition allows us to see poetry as a continuum rather than a conflict between the two separate camps of formal and free; it's just a matter of what the repeating element is. In the process of editing An Exaltation of Forms, I formulated it like this:

Any text that is structured through repetition is a poem. The more physically conspicuous (palpable, audible, tangible) the repeated language element(s) that structure the text, the more "formal" the poem will feel to us.

A free verse poem doesn't feel very formal to us because the line break is such a subtle language element, which can only be reliably detected by the individual reader's eye reading a poem on the page. But a free verse poem is a poem just the same, because it is structured through the repetition of a language element. Any language element can be repeated to create a poem, as long as the "structured, not decorated" distinction is maintained. So, as you will see from the chart below, our definition encompasses any type of poem: free verse, sonnet, slam performance poem, haiku, Paradise Lost, procedural poem, blues poem, pantoum, erasure poem . . .

Here is my taxonomy of repeating elements, with the poems that develop from them, followed by responses to some FAQ's. The taxonomy lists just some examples of the many language elements that can be repeated to structure poems, followed by the types of poems they create. The list is arranged to proceed roughly from ear towards idea, body towards mind, perceptible towards conceptual. Of course, the majority of poems are structured by more than one kind of repetition.

Taxonomy of Poetics

Annie Finch, Expanded from “A Taxonomy of Poetics”
The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self
(University of Michigan Press, 2002)

REPEATING ELEMENT TYPE OF POEM CREATED

AURAL REPEATING ELEMENTS

numbers of beats/accents	accentual poetry
accented/nonaccented syllable patterns	accentual-syllabic poetry
sounds of stressed syllables (final, medial, internal, etc)	rhymed poetry
groups of lines (independent of other lines)	refrain poems
conversational or voice patterns	call and response, litany, etc.
single lines	repeating poem (pantoum, villanelle,blues, etc)
groups of words (part of lines)	chant, catalog, ghazal, etc
initial consonants of words	alliterative verse
syntactic and grammatical patterns	chants, the house that jack built, etc.
numbers of syllables	syllabic verse

VISUAL REPEATING ELEMENTS

numbers of words per line	counted verse
line breaks	free verse
shape of poem repeats meaning	carmina figuratum
physicality of words repeats meaning	concrete poetry
fields on page	open field poetry
terminal hiatus/perceptible ending	prose poem (occurs only once per poem, but very predictably; in the absence of any other repeating device I believe it structures a text and hence defines it as a poem)

CONCEPTUAL REPEATING ELEMENTS

intratextual physical operations (add, drop, alter letters,words, etc.)	procedural poem
intratextual meaning operations such as puns	pun poems, etc.
extratextual operations	extra-procedural poem ( " S + 7," etc. )

But there can be repetition in prose, too.

The difference between the so-called formal elements we sometimes see in prose or free verse and actual poetic formal constraints is that the poetic constraints are structural, not decorative. Structural constraints are predictable; breaking them will feel like a violation and everyone will know you have broken them, and where. That is not true of the formal elements in prose; if it were, that passage of the prose would become a poem.

2. Does this mean that all poetry is formal?

Yes. Once you accept that the free-verse line break is a language element that can be repeated, then all free verse poems can be considered formal in the sense that they are structured through repetition. Even prose poems, at the furthest end of the spectrum, can be considered formal and structured through repeition: because of their short length their endings, though repeated only once, have the rhythmic resonance of a repeated element.

3. Doesn't this idea privilege doggerel? A Hallmark verse has structural repetition, but nobody should dignify that by calling it a poem. Only true products of the spirit deserve the name of "poetry"!

Does the existence of hackneyed amateur paintings threaten the definition of the Mona Lisa as a painting? Why should poetry's definition be so fragile compared to the other arts? In my opinion, the idea that the only good poems can be real poems is 1. impossible to uphold; 2. elitist; and 3. a backhanded compliment that actually hurts the dignity of poetry by denying poetry a real existence.

4. Isn't this reductive? What about mystery? What about power?

I feel that this pragmatic and simple definition of poetry actually brings me closer to the true source of poetry's power. Repetition—of the breath, of the seasons, of the heartbeat—is an ancient and sublime path to mystery, predating written language by millenia. Poetry's intimate association with the repeating power of the spell and the chant only enhances its unique powers.

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