The Shape of Your Words

ars poetica

artist: cowins

author’s note: if you are reading this on your
smart phone, please rotate the
screen to landscape mode

lis-
ten
here
poetry is
like soft porn in that
you know it when you see it
yet it defies straightforward definition

“the perfect words, in the perfect order” a platitude
I’ve seen or heard, somewhere, and I may have thrown up
in my mouth just a little, for let’s face it, we’ve all seen imperfect
poetry, and sloppy poetry, and downright bad poetry — perhaps you’re
looking at some right now — and yet we grudgingly recognise it as poetry
nonetheless, and so the search for an all-encompassing definition continues

“everything that isn’t prose” — clean, reductionist, mathematical, useless

“emphasis on the aesthetic, rhythmic qualities of language, to bring
intensity to the expression of feelings” — we may be onto
something, but to be fair, the same can be said of
well-crafted, tight fiction — ok, here
it comes (spoiler alert):

poetry is when
the shape
of your
words
mat-
ter