Too often, when I hear a writer read a “poem,” it sounds just like prose, in which case I say, “Why isn’t it prose?” Why, indeed. Is poetry just prose with weird line breaks?
For me, poetry is a crucible for words, a distillation. You put the prose in and what you get out is the purer thought, the unalloyed idea.
This is not to say I think I’m good at it. I use it as a way to test myself, either to make the idea fit seamlessly into the form, or to exercise my chops in trimming the fat on a verbal image.
You, of course, may disagree.
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