What is poetry?

I think of this question a lot. I look at a poem and wonder, why is it called poetry? Often when someone knowledgeable talks about it, I learn that the poem is written in a certain kind of poetic form. This happened when I listened Padraig O’Tuama read and reflect on the poem “Miscegenation” by Natasha Trethewey. He says she uses the form of ghazal. Never heard of it. I liked the poem a lot, though. I know little about poetry and its forms and I’m glad to be learning more. When the question of “why is this poetry” occurs to me, I tell myself not to worry about it and just enjoy the words, the way they sound, look, and make me feel. I do like learning things about the poem as poetry, like what happened with “Miscegenation” and Padraig. It’s kind of like an Easter Egg, a hidden surprise inside the poem.

Here’s a definition of poetry from poetry.org, which references Wikipedia as the source.

Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.

and ghazal from poetryfoundation.org:

Ghazal (Pronounciation: “guzzle”) Originally an Arabic verse form dealing with loss and romantic love, medieval Persian poets embraced the ghazal, eventually making it their own. Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase (the radif), and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet). The last couplet includes a proper name, often of the poet’s. In the Persian tradition, each couplet was of the same meter and length, and the subject matter included both erotic longing and religious belief or mysticism.

More simply, Padraig says:

…ghazal is a form written in couplets; there can be five couplets or up to 15 couplets. And each of the couplets’ two lines has to end with the same word…

I looked all this up and started thinking about all this when I read this article with a scathing review of Louise Glück, who won the Nobel Prize for literature. It’s interesting to read how she condemns Louise Glück’s writing, calling it “poetry” in quotes. Her arguments that Glück’s writing is not poetry say quite a bit about how the author defines poetry.

Here’s “Miscegenation.”

Miscegenation

by Natasha Trethewey

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.

They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name
begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi.

A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the same
as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi.

Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name
for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi.

My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.
I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi.

When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year—you’re the same
age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi.

I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name—
though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.