Poetry & its Definition

POETRY

Poetry has been defined differently by various scholars, poets and critics. Some of the definitions are as follows:

•        Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. Samuel Johnson

•        Poetry is the spontaneous outflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquillity. William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, 1802

•        Poetry: the best words in the best order. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

•        Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

•        The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse… the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. Aristotle, On Poetics

So, it may be defined as “Literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm;”

Poetic Licence: The language and syntax of poetry is different from the the language and syntax of Prose. Poets arrange the words in a way to suit their need of rhythm and rhyme. Poets have the liberty to use language in extraordinary way. For example, using a noun as a verb etc. This freedom is called Poetic Licence.