how does one describe a poem a genre is a set of creative outputs that fit a given set of criteria genres are useful as a sort of shorthand when describing a thing of art instead of noting for example all of the objects depicted in a still-life that are not people or land-features we call it a still-life and get on to describing how the objects interrelate to each other on the canvas if you ask me what kind of painting i'm working on and i say a still-life you have an expectation of certain elements the painting will contain if you happen to be an agent and try to sell the painting later you'll say to your prospective buyers it is a still-life and whether the buyer is over the phone or standing in the gallery they'll know whether they'll like it or not based on whether they like still-lifes in the same way they can call you up and ask if you have any still-lifes for sale right now and get a simple yes-or-no answer for it this is the first kind of genre and it applies well within separate types of fundamentally-different media such as painting sculpture film or the written word a poem obviously is in this last category and for some reason its designation is hairier than others people refer to all sorts of art or even dispassionate events as poetry dancing is called poetry in motion for example i think the confusion is caused in part by the nature of writing as a medium namely in that it captures thoughts more clearly and communicably than other art forms while a picture can be worth a thousand words as the old clich goes when those words are actually written out they can contain shades of meaning impossible to capture in the picture itself at least as quickly as they can be absorbed in writing it seems as though writing is akin to the fundamental nature of thought or at least of spoken language which our thought is steeped in so we know what writing is what is a poem especially in a world with such forms as prose poetry flash fiction short-shorts lyrical essays lyrical ballads et cetera what makes a poem a poem i read an essay once that lamented the unidimensionality of writing it posited that prose is really just a long wrapped line of text that's bound by time when you read a novel for example you really must start at the beginning and read through to the end in order some newer forms of fiction are changing this such as the choose-your-own-adventure genre in the 1970s and 80s or hyperfiction found online which raises the question for me if these newer forms could be considered on some level to be poetry this is because poetry has more than one dimension due to its linear nature those line breaks are intentional and the poem ca not just fit into any-sized book or web page if prose is a liquid filling any container it is placed in with a constant volume poetry is more like a crystallized form of prose or to put it another way poetry has between one and two dimensions i would not say that poetry has fully two dimensions except for some of the more conceptually visual stuff that i'd call a word-picture anyway because from line to line that unidimensionality of prose remains poetry has a higher dimensionality than prose though because it is crystallized there on the page this fractal-dimensionality of poetry has interesting side effects on the genre itself for one thing poetry is not as bound by time as prose is it can as marianne boruch writes resist narrative sequence or the forward press of time itself due to its repetitions and diversions which are in turn made possible or more apparent by its line breaks it is able to meditate on a subject or expand on it lyrically exploring the emotions connected with the images in the poem or the connections between images through repitition of sounds the poem builds meaning through resonance and rhyming something that's harder to do in prose take for example the first lines of the love song of j alfred prufrock let us go then you and i when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table let us go through certain half-deserted streets the muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question oh do not ask what is it let us go and make our visit and here it is again without line breaks let us go then you and i when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table let us go through certain half-deserted streets the muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question oh do not ask what is it let us go and make our visit the end-rhymes that do so much for the sound of the poem are gone and so part of the meaning of the poem its obsessive self-consciousness its paranoia are gone as well additionally line breaks act as punctuation in the entirety of this fragment without them the meaning becomes obscured in the long first sentence of the poem perhaps due to this dwelling on scene or on all aspects of a single scene at one time poetry tends to be heavy on images or lyrical i think this is what's generally meant when someone describes a dance as poetic or a story or anything else i think they really mean lyrical or maybe beautiful the images form sort of a narrative as the reader moves through them as cesare pavese says that's nevertheless different than a traditional narrative this image narrative jumps from image to image not by a logical progression but by the resonances between the images that run underneath them on almost a subliminal plane almost without noticing the reader of a poem is taken on an emotional journey that's not necessarily connected to the images of the poem themselves poetry is a manipulation of emotion or a communication of it prose has the space the time to describe what's going on even if the author stands by the old adage of show do not tell showing in prose inherently involves more telling than poetry does as poetry communicates a feeling itself this definition may be broad enough to include certain dance performances or paintings but that's okay i'm of the opinion that the more useful genre distinctions are those which describe the thing technically verse for example or lyrical poetry is almost a value judgement and that makes me a little uncomfortable