Continuing my Poetry Month posts, I am resharing a version of a post I wrote a couple of years ago.
I discovered back when I was completing my Doctoral thesis, that while most people have opinions about poetry, few people can neatly define what it is. So, I decided, the easiest way for me to define it was with this poem:
A Poem
A poem
is a whole lot of words
a plethora of words
a smattering, a scattering
a shattering of words
thrown on a page
in carefully created
chaos
to make you wonder.
(Copyright Sally Murphy 2016).
Later, when I wrote Poetry for Pleasure and Purpose, I still couldn’t find a better
definition, so I put the poem in there as well, along with a shape poem about how poetry makes me feel. This poem had first appeared here on my blog way back in 2014, looking like this:
Poetree
has lots of branches
goes out on limbs
takes lots of chances.
Leaves you breathless
when you twig
the poet’s skill
(it’s quite a gig!)
It boughs to nature
oftentimes
leaves you marvelling
at its rhymes.
Grows on you
after a while.
Poetree
you make me smile
(Copyright Sally Murphy 2014).
(You’ll be pleased to know that the amateur drawing I did was replaced in the book by a professionally made one).
While these two poems are different, I think they highlight the two things which, for me, are key in good poetry – the ability to make the reader marvel or wonder at something, and the ability to make the reader feel something.