Definition Dilemma
I think we need a new word to define what poetry has evolved into for the majority of poets today.Is it just me, or does anyone else think we need a new word for what poetry has evolved into today?
Don't get me wrong; I love the word pictures painted by people in free verse and poetic prose, but in my mind it just isn't what I think of as poetry. While you can express yourself in single lines of haunting imagery and sharp guttural sound bites of powerful emotion and metaphor, we need a new word for this type of expression.
Maybe I'm a purist at heart but for me, to be called poetry your piece needs a cadence and a metered rhythm; this is most often induced by using rhyming end words in a number of patterns. With or without rhymes, however the poet should work at skillfully crafting images and stories using, at the minimum, a consistent back-beat. It isn't always easy, but neither is sculpting, painting or any other art form.
Not that every great poem uses iambic, or even trochaic flow - but in my opinion, without some kind of rhythmic cadence, it becomes prose not poetry.
The great poets of the past (Wordsworth, Thomas, Poe, Yeats, Frost, Dickinson, Browning and many, many more) understood this cadence building and used it to craft immortal poetry.
I guess I should blame Walt Whitman. I love the texture and emotion unfurled within me by his works, but alas his free-verse entries (like "I Sing The Body Electric") are more like bits of prose, strung on a chain.
Beautiful? Undoubtedly.
Moving? Deeply.
Poetry? Sigh, that is where my dilemma lies.
Anyone have a suggestion for a new label?