I think I understand poetry now. It is not a marked impact on any particular object or instance; rather it's an impression on time and all time.
According to some existentialists, an infinitesmal instant happens forever. It may be an application of Zeno's paradox, or a suggestive fatalist idea on the circularity of the universal timeline. Regardless, a poem, maybe art in general, is an expected deviation from the destiny of things.
Or maybe poetry is only an empty art that tries to define itself? Who knows, but the beauty behind is the suggestion of a foundational medium that cannot be eliminated, unlike the other arts. In music, sound is deemed unnecessary. In visual arts, there are no rules as to what works.
Poetry needs words, even if they make no sense together. There can be no Jackson Pollock of the words.
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Or maybe poetry is only an empty art that tries to define itself?
Wonderful. I think unlike the visual arts, poetry has a common denominator. And, I know you will probably disagree with me, but I think it's meter. It's language strung together in order to attract a listener. It's to sound good, or interesting, or appealing.
Unlike the visual arts, and unlike the work of say, a chimpanzee spilling a bucket of words across a sidewalk, there must be a certain organization which necessitates an attractive stringing together of language. Remember, the poem is a song with nothing more than language and the human voice which speaks it.
This reminds me a lot of a discussion we had around Thanksgiving between Jeff, Jim, Brian, and myself, about how to define music.
The idea of a monkey spilling a bunch of random words on the sidewalk is much like what we were talking about. As usual, we abstract the discussion beyond and sort of practical use for the definition. If I remember, what I was going on is that music has the property that it is intended to be music. We noted that certain lines, like rap, atonal music, or John Cages 4'33", it is kind of tough to include certain things as music. Brian said something like "So what if someone is baking a cake, but screws something up, and it comes out as a symphony?" This being an exception to the intention rule, would still be considered "music" by most.
By analogy, suppose a monkey spills words out of a bucket, which just happen to fall in such a way that they resemble a great poem. There's still no expression, or a lot of the things most would consider to be properties of poetry, yet I imagine it would still be considered poetry. I ask (mainly to Brian, assuming that he disagrees with what you said, and given that meter would still be in the blob of random words), would this still be poetry?
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