It’s a bit like generalizing about biological kingdoms
Plants are like this animals that
Ignoring the impossible diversity of paramecium and giraffe
Presumably every culture every language has it
But it’s one of those concepts that elude general definition
And distinctions exclude
But the byproducts of inclusiveness
Include some loose and extensive catalogs
I see no reason to exclude for example
Words set to music
A category to which belong the cheesiest pop tune and the Ode to Joy
And so our question must be
Not what is not poetry
But what is
Nor should we be deflected by the question of quality
None more boring than
Is it art
So to make our church as broad as possible
Something made out of sound is music
Something made out of volume is sculpture
Something made out of color and line
Though these might be unrecognizably muted is painting
And we don’t seek likeness in music
Nor necessarily in painting or sculpture
And something made out of language is poetry
None of the arts need refer
To the actual facts of existence as we know them
And certainly it happens every day
That things get pleasantly muddled
Hence novels are narrative poetry
And plays are dramatic poetry
Regardless of whether they employ the armamentarium
Of inherited convention
And jejune graffiti Kevin loves Alyssa loves Kevin
And in one circumstance music
Is handmaiden to the fine art of dance
Something made out of movement
And sculpture serves the interest of architecture noblest of arts
And though we need not beg just yet
The judgments of taste
We might as well acknowledge
That all poems all works of art
Are made by humans
Mean fallible humans
And no other pleasures match those that nature makes
Sex and clouds
Infants and ditch flowers
Oceans and rocky crags
Predators and herds that graze
Plants that reach the sky or hug the ground
The lovable little recyclers
The splendid array of teasing stars
Nature is completeness all in perfect decorum
We take delight too in the things made by human hands
But the various artforms are subject
To various defects and thus
Poetry tends to be pedantic didactic stilted arrogant and obscure
Not to mention adjectivally insistent
But one particular provision covers a multitude of sins
Namely that announced by saintly Oscar
Namely the provision that all art is useless
And language is the most useful
Of human endowments
Inconceivably the technology by nature made
Hence among its other odious characteristics
Poetry in which things are made out of language
Always tends toward the misuse of language
If we restrict the proper use of language to reference alone
And fal drairdrig pmisti effrent
And yet poetry is among the most innocent
And therefore the most dangerous
Of achievements
And thus like other innocent and dangerous
And therefore thrilling feats
To which humans are addicted
Especially those that imitate nature
In her generative operation
Poetry gives pleasure
And there’s an end to it