Poetry here.

[Pluto]

What is Poetry?
Grasping at the Indefinable By Mark Flanagan, About.com Guide

There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;" Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;" and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing."

Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people. Homer's epic,The Oddysey, described the wanderings of the adventurer, Odysseus, and has been called the greatest story ever told. During the English Renaissance, dramatic poets like John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, and of course Shakespeare gave us enough to fill textbooks, lecture halls, and universities. Poems from the romantic period include Goethe's Faust (1808), Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

Shall I go on? Because in order to do so, I would have to continue through 19th century Japanese poetry, early Americans that include Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot, postmodernism, experimentalists, slam...

So what is poetry?

Perhaps the characteristic most central to the definition of poetry is its unwillingness to be defined, labeled, or nailed down. But let's not let that stop us, shall we? It's about time someone wrestled poetry to the ground and slapped a sign on its back reading, "I'm poetry. Kick me here."

Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paint-spattered canvas - but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the canvas is you. Poetic definitions of poetry kind of spiral in on themselves, however, like a dog eating itself from the tail up. Let's get nitty. Let's, in fact, get gritty. I believe we can render an accessible definition of poetry by simply looking at its form and its purpose:

One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page. The poet, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.

How am I doing so far? On to purpose:

One may use prose to narrate, describe, argue, or define. There are equally numerous reasons for writing poetry. But poetry, unlike prose, often has an underlying and over-arching purpose that goes beyond the literal. Poetry is evocative. It typically evokes in the reader an intense emotion: joy, sorrow, anger, catharsis, love... Alternatively, poetry has the ability to surprise the reader with an Ah Ha! Experience -- revelation, insight, further understanding of elemental truth and beauty. Like Keats said:

"Beauty is truth. Truth, beauty.
That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know."

How's that? Do we have a definition yet?

Poetry is artistically rendering words in such a way as to evoke intense emotion or an Ah Ha! experience from the reader.

Pretty unsatisfying, huh? Kind of leaves you feeling cheap, dirty, all hollow and empty inside… like Chinese food.

Don't do this. Don't shackle poetry with your definitions. Poetry is not a frail and cerebral old woman, you know. Poetry is stronger than you think. Poetry is imagination and will break those chains faster than you can say "Harlem Renaissance."

To borrow a phrase, poetry is a riddle wrapped in an enigma swathed in a cardigan sweater… or something like that. It doesn't like your definitions and will shirk them at every turn. If you really want to know what poetry is, read it. Read it carefully. Pay attention. Read it out loud. Now read it again.

There's your definition of poetry. Because defining poetry is like grasping at the wind - once you catch it, it's no longer wind.

[Arising_uk]

]... If you really want to know what poetry is, read it. Read it carefully. Pay attention. Read it out loud. Now read it again. ...

I think its, in the main, read it aloud and then read it aloud again. Carefully following where the poet has put their pauses, etc.

There's your definition of poetry. Because defining poetry is like grasping at the wind - once you catch it, it's no longer wind.

I didn't 'define poetry', just advocated using some of its techniques. Otherwise most of what you've said sounds like a fair amount of hot air to me, as whilst I agree these can be its aims and motivations in essence the chosen medium is words. As such punctuation is a very important part of the symbology as it gives the rhythm and metre of the pieces. You can get away with just structure and form and assumptions about where the reader should breathe but then so can limmericks. If you wish to be a poet then a study of how writing works is pretty much essential to be a good poet and enables one to rouse all those emotions and such like that you talk about. This is why most of the acclaimed poets have done so.

[Pluto]

At the moment I'm not really concerned with punctuation; more with the shape or line created by the length of the poem's lines on its left; and what effect this has on the meaning of what's being said. So in this poem:

Put paint onto the canvas board
see the fibres soak up the paint
drew black lines with a wax crayon
an image will develop sooner or later
light breaks through the window casting
a golden shadow onto the grey painted floor

The line: "light breaks through the window casting" in order that it continues with the idea of each line getting longer has created something called a "window casting" and this I find interesting as it can sometimes point to an idea, sensation, or meaning that doesn't presently exist.

[Pluto]

I guess someone forgot to tell e e cummings

the hours rise up

the hours rise up putting off stars and it is
dawn
into the street of the sky light walks scattering poems

on earth a candle is
extinguished the city
wakes
with a song upon her
mouth having death in her eyes

and it is dawn
the world
goes forth to murder dreams….

i see in the street where strong
men are digging bread
and i see the brutal faces of
people contented hideous hopeless cruel happy

and it is day,

in the mirror
i see a frail
man
dreaming
dreams
dreams in the mirror

and it
is dusk on earth

a candle is lighted
and it is dark.
the people are in their houses
the frail man is in his bed
the city

sleeps with death upon her mouth having a song in her eyes
the hours descend,
putting on stars….

in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

© E.E. Cummings
Source 'Tulips and Chimneys', Thomas Seltzer N.Y. (1923)

[Arising_uk]

if I should sleep with a lady called death
get another man with firmer lips
to take your new mouth in his teeth
(hips pumping pleasure into hips).

Seeing how the limp huddling string
of your smile over his body squirms
kissingly, I will bring you every spring
handfuls of little normal worms.

Dress deftly your flesh in stupid stuffs,
phrase the immense weapon of your hair.
Understanding why his eye laughs,
I will bring you every year

something which is worth the whole,
an inch of nothing for your soul.

e.e. cummings

See how the punctuation works, try it sometime. Poetry is not just visual art.

[Pluto]

See how the punctuation works,

Yes, and I find it somewhat provincial and restrictive in how it's used in most poems I've read.

try it sometime.

Thank you I will, oh poem lord.

Poetry is not just visual art.

Yes you're correct, it is much more than that.

[bus2bondi]

( )

[bus2bondi]

painting over his-tory

painting over memories

painting

painting

[Arising_uk]

p.s.
Apologies my last post should have ended,

"Hear how the punctuation works, try it sometime. Poetry is not just visual art."

[Arising_uk]

Yes, and I find it somewhat provincial and restrictive in how it's used in most poems I've read. ...

Really! So most of those the poets call the greatest poets were "somewhat provincial and restrictive".

Tell you what, I'll believe you have a right to this claim when you can first demonstrate these 'provincial and restrictive' skills and techniques in your poems.

Thank you I will, oh poem lord.

I look forward to it.

Yes you're correct, it is much more than that.

I'm not sure its 'much more' just not mainly as its voice not sight that is its essence.

[attofishpi]

A star
from afar
or so close
this one i boast
does power my car
i run afar
places never guilt
now its coated in silt
aeons of fury
nature my judge and jury
but i feel so fine
its running all the time
to take me nowhere
why should i care
noone ever does
whats all the fuzz
fuck it any way
the Earth can suck it all day
millenia of energy
stored up and exhaled
in a spliff of a century
someone said to me
take your foot of the peddle
with the balance you've meddled
but we say back
fuck nature, fuck that
fuck everything we're a new breed
im human i need
oh planet?
we never planned it!

GREED IS OUR POWER NOW

[bus2bondi]

[attofishpi]

????
Shit! You again!

Mmm, bout the best i could do mate (Arising_uk)

Should the stars reflect the anti-matter of time...
such that now I can see them and feel the caress of a distant warmth,
and shudder from the cold of some colossal nothing.
I embrace the ambience of distant vibrations in the ether,
that allow me to reflect its own existence,
which is all that I am and
as insignificant as I am,
somehow my reflection contributes
some importance,
thus to constitute and command
its own existence...
to it…
whatever it
is…?
the anti-universe of something
that is not quite nothing.

[attofishpi]

If i am as i thought you were,
then should i think you any less than that which is?
...than that which is not,
than which is what you were when you were that?
...and i was not.

[attofishpi]

A CYBERPUNK POEM
===============
ASHES TO LACES

Along the streets
I feel
The scanners, cameras
they peel
me and my liberty
Baseball bat
to technology
Sets me free
for another ten
paces
Crouch down
do up my
laces
looking back i see them
following me
they want whats in my
head
they'll scan me,
slit my throat and im
dead
they'll have what was mine
ripped warm
from my mind
now turned to cold
ill rot back down
to the core
and the system will
take me, back to the
ore
ready to repeat
ill be back on
my feet
walking the paces
one day
to crouch down
do up my laces.