Poetics and Poetry Discussion

Emily Dickinson IS not a poet
Australias leading eroticpoert colin leslie dean shows

http://www.scribd.com/doc/75550766/POETRY-OR-PROSE-POETRY-IN-DECLINE-THE-RISE-OF-PROSE-OR-THE-END-OF-POETRY

Emily Dickinson IS not a poet and did not write poetry
You can call her work anything you want but you cant call it poetry as her work is not in metre ie structure which is the definition of poetry the definition of poetry is clear and she did not not write poetry If you dont like the definition of poetry that is just to bad as the definition is clear

read definition of poetry as distinct from prose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28poetry%29
.
”In poetry, metre (meter in American English) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verse_%28poetry%29

“The word " verse" is commonly used in lieu of " poetry" to distinguish it from prose. Where the common unit of poetry, that is, verse, is based on meter or rhyme

A verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition


and Emily Dickenson did not write metre
she wrote prose

just as the early critics saw there is no form-thus her work is not poetry
quote from wiki

Emily Dickinson is not a poet but if one is to be gracious she is a very bad poet as she does not conform to metre-which is the defining element to make something poetry


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson#Structure_and_syntax

Dickinson avoids pentameter, opting more generally for trimeter, tetrameter and, less often, dimeter. Sometimes her use of these meters is regular, but oftentimes it is irregular


Her contemporaries saw this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson#Structure_and_syntax


Andrew Lang, a British writer, dismissed Dickinson's work, stating that " if poetry is to exist at all, it really must have form and grammar, and must rhyme when it professes to rhyme. The wisdom of the ages and the nature of man insist on so much" .[152]


Thomas Bailey Aldrich, a poet and novelist, equally dismissed Dickinson's poetic technique in The Atlantic Monthly in January 1892: " It is plain that Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and grotesque fancy. She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced by the mannerism of Emerson... But the incoherence and formlessness of her — versicles are fatal... an eccentric, dreamy, half-educated recluse in an out-of-the-way New England village (or anywhere else) cannot with impunity set at defiance the laws of gravitation and grammar"

Even her her only critic and literary mentor Higginson noted her lack of metre and saw her poems would have seemed odd, even unacceptable, to her contemporary audience

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/308

" He then immediately advised her against publication. Most likely, Higginson felt that she was unclassifiable within the poetic establishment of the day—departing from traditional forms as well as conventions of language and meter, her poems would have seemed odd, even unacceptable, to her contemporary audience


rules are rules just like the laws of science
you just have to live with them
you cant change the rules just because you dont like them
based on the rules of poetry Emily Dickinson is not a poet-you just have to live with that just like you have to live with the law of gravitation