Here is an interesting dialogue from the film ‘Bright Star’, which tells of the poet John Keats’ love and life, followed by my response to it.
Fanny Brawne: Can you say something about the craft [of poetry]?
John Keats: Poetic craft is a carcass, poetry a sham. If poetry does not come naturally as leave to a tree, then it better not come at all. A poet is not at all poetical. He is the most unpoetical thing in existence. He has no identity. He’s continually filling in some other body – the sun, the moon…
Fanny Brawne: I still don’t know how to work out a poem.
John Keats: A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out, it is a experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.
Fanny Brawne: I love mystery.
Nothing cryptic
Slightly ‘poetic’?No rules to poetry
No need to rhymeFor love is poetry
As poetry like loveNo rules for love
But only to loveTo have no conditions
Is the only condition
(If Keats sounded somewhat Zenny in the dialogue, well, he was interested in Zen!)
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If poetry has no rules and no need to rhyme, won’t it be just like common sentences? If it’s common sentence, why labeled it as poetry? Even a haiku has its rules.
If poetry needs no rules
Coming and going rhymelessly as one pleases
A senseless migrainous word ride!
:biggrin: