Defining the Species...

The poet handles and forms the language as a potter handles and shapes clay, molding language into an art object.  That is to say, poetry ought not to be defined narrowly, in terms of a particular mode such as prose or verse; or in terms of a function, such as singing or prophesying, but rather in terms of intensity of concentration on mode, on language of whatever species, prose or verse....

My remarks to this point may help to explain why poetry, for many people, is so "difficult" to experience.  In our reading we are used to focusing upon narrative or explanations of how to make or do things, or upon arguments, not upon the language itself, not upon language as substance.  We, as readers, are adept at following techniques such as plot and exposition, but not so adept at responding to language as it operates simultaneously on several levels.  Every true poem is a complex (but not necessarily complicated) organism comprised of several interdependent patterns.

— from "What is Poetry" by Lewis Turco

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