Question Home

Position:Home>Poetry> Is there really that much difference between poetry and good, descriptive prose?


Question: Is there really that much difference between poetry and good, descriptive prose!?
Sometimes I wonder!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
It is like distillation and alcohol content!. Dialog is beer, Prose is wine, Poetry is whiskey!. Don't mix all three or else you might throw up!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

There is a fine line separates between the two!.The poet doesn't have to be descriptive in that sense!.I mean he/she doesn't have to be crystal clear!. As a matter of fact, poets use simile & metaphor and oxymoron to express the inexpressible, and yet they feel its not enough, and almost always they keep the real meaning to themselves !.In this case its interpreted difrently from one person to another like any picture ( painting) by Dali, Picasso , and those impressionists!. Prose writers use metaphor to make a nice, and high class clearly perceivable picture, like those of M Angelo and classic painters!.
In sum , the poet use metaphor to simile his feelings, which may or may not get to the reader!.While the other Should evoke he real meaning to the point where it could be used as a cliche, or a proverb!.I 'v always felt that poetry is deeper, and its a natural talent that would be refined by more reading, while the other could be acquired!.The 1st is spontaneous ( and for real) , the latter is worked out (intentional)!. The 1st is poetry, the 2nd is semi-poetry!.However,one when the 1st is flying up, and the second is landing down , they may meat at a certain point!.
Www@QuestionHome@Com

Poetry is the "orange juice concentrate" of language!. Every word, phrase, sentence--every part is packed with meaning and purpose!. Prose, on the other hand, has room to spread out!. To extend the orange juice metaphor, in prose, the water has been added and it dilutes the concentrate!.

Though, some people think that anything can be considered poetry -- just jot some lines down and put them in a vertical shape and it makes a poem!. I disagree with this!. That's just prose set in short lines, or it's just a journal broken up into shorter phrases!. Poetry should follow at least some form, and the form should be purposeful just as each word, phrase and part is purposeful!.

As far as using literary devices, both poetry and prose should incorporate them, otherwise, you got yourself a "how-to" manual or recipe book, or an employee handbook, etc!. However, there is a difference in how to use them!. Poetic use of the devices, by necessity, because of space and size, uses them more explicitly!. Prose (due to the water dilution) has more room for subtlety, and therefore an obligation to be more subtle!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

There are differences, but in the hands of a thoughtful prose writer who also writes poetry the differences all but disappear!. Good prose writing can be symbolically rich and interwoven, can utilize a multitude of rhetorical devices, can span the continuum of trope, and can use language in a figurative manner reminiscent of the finest poetry!. I am reminded of an experience I had several years ago!. I had written what I considered to be a reflective essay on the brevity of life, an essay occasioned by the unexpected passing of two childhood acquaintances; they were not expressly mentioned in the piece but their memory informed every philosophical twist and turn!.
The piece alluded to several Shakespearean sonnets, a few of Montaigne's essays, Hawthorne's "Marble Faun," the lyric poetry of Hugo von Hoffmannsthal (as well as his "Letter of Lord Chandos"), the histories of Livy, and the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson!. It used a dozen or so rhetorical devices, and the consonance of imagery was quite lovely; it was full of the language of inanimate things!. It was written in an hour, and the experience of writing it was not unlike that of writing poetry -- I felt that I was guided by an unseen hand and never consciously struggled to achieve any of the effects!. Rather, I was guided in terms of a stylistic consideration that introduced itself, also automatically, at the end of my opening paragraph: "Indeed, is three score and ten not poignantly balanced as a span scarcely adequate for the fulfillment of our dreams and, at the same moment, as a sentence of unbearable length, choked with contemplative yearning for potential selves lost irretrievably in the mingled scream of weltering tempest and plangent wave!." Throughout the next four or five pages the images introduced to explain life's brevity seemed to reappear periodically, and in vaguely different rearrangements, much as would the detritus washed up by the ebbing and flowing tides!. In short, the prose piece had what I consider all of the central features of poetry, and several of the passages were not only rich in description but were, when I read the piece aloud, precisely metered and dense with assonance and alliterative elements!. I pulled this piece out of my attache one evening at an open mic poetry reading, quite by accident, and strode to the microphone thinking I had one of my sonnets or sestinas in hand!. I improvised by reading the reflective essay, introducing it as a prose poem, but saying that it had not been written with such considerations in mind and that I begged the indulgence of my audience!. That piece received such praise that I have periodically read it at other gatherings of poets, and with the same result!. So when I think of that piece I think of the elderly lady who sat not ten feet from me as I publicly delivered that piece for the first time!. I think of her sobbing, I think of that miraculous spirit that allowed my hand to write such prose for it, and yes, I think of my friends and the brevity of life!. So you see, to the extent that we can dissolve the barrier -- words -- that separates the experiential world from the expressive one, we can dissolve the somewhat contrived barrier between poetry and prose!. Paradoxically, the vehicle for doing this is also words!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I consider wordings can be improved by practice

what you mentioned - metaphor simile, etc are the creativity involved

but a good poetry brings out originality so when i write poetry none of the works of other people would cross my mind,

The best poet - would not create his work from the basis of another!.

thats just me!.
Www@QuestionHome@Com

It is similar though good poetry should convey an emotional subtext to the experience--descriptive prose doesn't always do that!.

That's the difference for me!. Good descriptive prose has poetic elements and phrasing but on a whole is usually less condensed and charged!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Decades ago, during the era of the tape recorder, a professor of musicology was running a tape on fast forward!. He observed that he had not altered the form of the music, just the style in which it was played!. Www@QuestionHome@Com