POETRY VERSUS PROSE

Hoping those who I have quoted don't mind, its from a conversation on a site, I thought it might interest you here, even if its a bit late for the workshop we had stan. :)

"The point is that poets, like all writers, make choices, and they are complelled to stand by the choices they have made. Readers are free to like or dislike whatever pleases them, but there should never be hard and fast conventions when it comes the art of creative writing. Poets, like all writers, have the free will and creative imperative to follow the muses of their choice"

"bardic is certainly a word and bards certainly composed their songs or sagas or poems according to bardic conventions for the sake of remembering the material more easily - and I think that it is probable, though I have not read it anywhere, that the conventions also allowed them to be able compose praise poems for their patrons on the spot. "

"As an editor, I can say that this stuff jumps right off the page as NOT begin poetry. What is lacking is a sense of musicality and an underlying awareness of rhythm. A piece of writing ("poem") needs not tell a tale (narrative poetry does do this) or be rhymed, but it needs to be driven by a mechanism that is entirely different from prose. It is an economy of ideas that expands itself through image and poetic device. Poetry and prose play a differing language game: prose plays the language game of "about-ness" while poetry plays the language game of "is-ness.""

"Poetry is, in part at least, verbal music, and there's no reason why there shouldn't be at least as much variety. The best free verse moves with an organic grace that sings to these ears, at least."

" There are those who write humorously in poetic phrases; there are those who write poetry that reaches into our very souls; there are those who write to impress others with their knowledge or ability. What really matters is that what you write means something to you; hang what others think."

" I can recognize his voice regardless of the form of the poem. Voice is what is unique to the individual."

"In fact if a poet has not read Lorca's essay on "Duende." they ought to do themselves a favor and read it. He wrote it and delivered in Cuba and Buenos Aires in 1934, and it is still pertinent today. This is the innate passion about poetry and the poet from a very unique poet. ...That goes without question, but it's Lorca's essay that slits the barley sack wide open to watch the seeds bleed out onto the floor. I had a student once that had the experience change her writing from that day forward after reading his essay."

"When Mozart was asked what the most important element in music was, he said, "the rests.""

"There is so much more to poetry than rhythm and poetic devices."

BOOKS:_
A Poet's Craft, by Annie Finch.
Beaudelaire's "Poemes en Prose"