another answer to the unanswerable question: 'What is poetry?'

[novapsyche]

Good words from Vulgata:

Poetry is a means of exploring the intimate relationships between form and content. A poem that is in the form of raw inspiration dropped out onto a page with line breaks is a very good beginning, but it [is] like an uncut diamond: it is not yet a poem. The process of crafting this raw material into a work is difficult. The inspiration must be carefully cropped and pruned, without killing it. Bad poetry errs in three ways: it is uninspired, it is inspired but not crafted, or it is inspired, and then wrought to death. The great thing to avoid is writing a "poem" that is really just normal prose that has been centered in the middle column of a page; but which has no meter, metaphor, enriched adjectives, etc.