Young Writers Society

What is the point in poetry?
I believe poetry is one of the most beautiful things created by man, however I want to know what you think the point of poetry is because I think it means something different to each individual. I would really love some answers!

You're right in that each individual will give answers that fall on an entire world of ideas--not just a spectrum. So my answer is my take on what I hope my poetry accomplishes.

First, you have to look at the purpose of writing in your own eyes. To me, writing has a few realms of intent:

1. Conveyance of information (non-fiction, closed-form writing, basic written word)
2. Evocation of thought (Existentialist fiction [Kafka, Camus, McCarthy], political satire [Wolfe, Carlin, Larson], Critical poetry [Poe, Frost, Buson's haiku {or most haiku, really}] etc.)
3. Evocation of feeling (Most poetry falls under this category, honestly. Think of all the love songs and litanies; [Siken, Angelou, Moon])
4. For the sake of Art (You don't get much writing in this category, but it's important to know that it exists)

So I say most poetry falls under #2 or #3. So with that in mind, my answer is that poetry is written with the purpose of evocation. Facilitating empathy.

That's the short of it. What do you say poetry's purpose is?

Hi. I've got to say what a challenging first post Welcome to YWS! Now, my answer.

Before you try and give an answer, you've got to first define Poetry. For instance, you have the Aristotle's definition (it could apply today, for example to our notion of Art:

Aristotle wrote:From what we have said it will be seen that the poet's function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary. The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse—you might put the work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Source: Aristotle's Poetics - Chapter 9 (at Project Gutenberg)

On a general note, the thematics of this work are akin to the ones the young writer should dwell upon when working with any genre. Aristotle says Poetry is something that adds something else to our notion of the world. It doesn't have to exist in nature, as long as it exists in somebody's mind. And every human being needs it, for each of us has the need to feel and to be felt. It's not something we can put into words, really... (pun unintended)

As for the restriction to verse forms, I'd have to agree with @Lumi here. When you write a piece, your feeling is towards someone who'll read it later. All your efforts are to communicate something (a feeling, a thought, an important event) to that other person. It doesn't have to be thought out for someone specific, and its motif doesn't have to be fully verbalized or explicit. In fact, the greater the ambiguity, the larger the disparity of interpretations.

"Why is poetry so difficult?" one might ask. It happens that you might not get to know where it leads you, or maybe you want only that special person to understand it, like a secret. Poetry as a secret or mystery, it's a bit what Aristotle meant in his definition...

I'm very new to poetry; I've always written fiction, but recently decided to branch out and experiment. To me, poetry is simply a format of expression, and, occasionally, observation of the world that surrounds us.

For me, the point of poetry is to convey your feelings and thoughts. The purpose of delivering these is to give criticism on the world to make it better; in this sense, poets are very much like writers. They focus more on words rather than stories to give the most impact and power on readers.

Another purpose of poetry is simply for the poet to blow off emotional steam in an artistic way. But the same can be said of other art forms which can be used to convey anger, frustration, dissatisfaction. For example the outrage over the crimes committed in Nazi concentration camps have been expressed in the visual arts and in poetry.

sees that original post is from 2015, but it's still a great question!

This question reminds me of being asked, "What is art?" -- it's so difficult to pin down an answer. For me, a huge part of poetry is bringing connection through language (whether that's to connect images, emotion, meaning, or events) from the writer to the reader -- but, I still think that the poetry that sits in my "Re-Write Later" folder and is never seen by another set of human eyes is still poetry even if it's never able to facilitate that connection between me and a reader.

So, I think that the purpose of poetry is to convey some truth that the writer believes in (literally or figuratively, a truth that may be an emotion, an image, a thought, a feeling etc.) but I don't think that poetry needs an audience to be poetry -- because sometimes poet conveys the meaning to the writer themselves.

@Radrook mentions poetry's purpose might be to "blow off emotional steam" and I think another way to say that is poetry can be a useful tool to process emotion. For instance, maybe the author is going through something and don't know how they really feel about it until they read the poem they wrote about their feelings.

Poetry is expression, it is connection, it is thought and emotion becoming word. ... Still, this definition seems too broad because I think almost all literature and speech probably fits into the definition "words that convey thought" but maybe everything is in some ways poetry. And the issues are just defining what is "effective" and "ineffective" about each poetic attempt.