Poetry is an art. It is an Aural art and a Visual art and the primary vehicle used by this artform is line. Using very carefully chosen words arranged in a purposeful order (and/or form) a poet can communicate in a very dense and concrete manner. Dense means that a lot of meaning is packed into a little space. Concrete means that it pertains to the five (very familiar) senses.

Being art, all poetry has something to say. Some truth is behind each and every poem. I've become the type of writer that believes the poem has something to say before its first draft is completed and successive revisions only chisel away excess to attempt to get closer and closer to this truth. Also you've been repeating this throughout the semester so I wonder where I acquired some of my beliefs about this matter :o).

Poetry establishes music. But not in the same way musicians do. Poets use music that is already in the language rather than imposing some system of notes and rhythm upon a set of lyrics. (not that there is anything at all wrong with that... just ask all of those musicians that have so much more in the bank than the many poets that exist). But wait... there's more. This music contributes (or not) to the poem by establishing a flow which can be used to work with the theme of the poem or create tension with it.

Oh yeah.. TENSION. Just saying that word make you feel all out of ease. Tension makes for interesting poetry. Why? Why does the bad guy have to have the upperhand up until the end of the film for most of any stereotypical action movie nowadays? Because we all know that the good guy has to win (statistically speaking). So our knowledge that the good guy usually wins paired with the fact that the bad guy has the upper hand creates tension. It wouldn't make for a very long movie if the good guy won right at the beginning right? Anyway, in a loosely related fashion, tension in poetry is the same.

Argh... ok... back to concretes. Concrete stuff is the lowest common denominator for feelings. It makes sense for this to be a strong medium for people to explain abstract stuff. NO ONE can explain abstract concepts free of context. What is love? HELL IF I KNOW??? Even in a context I have a hard time figuring that one out.

Anyway so imagery is important because of this little thing called the objective correlative which basically boils down to finding the perfect concrete thingy to represent abstract thingy. Easier said than done, especially with all the flack that you get over cliches and hackneyed language and what not.

OK, sumup. It's tough being a contemporary poet. If you're not going to die without writing poetry do without. If not: join the club.