Epics, anti-war, revolutionary to romantic – the variety in the world of poetry is so much that it is safe to conclude that poetry is life. But obviously, there has to be something common in the various broken lines that we so love, whether they rhyme or don’t.
See what the masters felt in the matter:
Aristotle– Poetry is imitation. Samuel Johnson– It instructs by pleasing. Coleridge– proposes pleasure, not truth. Wordsworth– emotions retold, recalled, recreated. e e cummings– precision, which creates movement. Douglas McGill– marries sound and meaning. Allen Tate– creates a land of experience that we did not have before.
Thus from Aristotle to Tate, we cover the entire spectrum of possible meanings.
I think it would be best to say that poetry is what you want it to be and leave it at that!
I will leave you with these lines from Ezra Pound as a proof that poems are the children of the poets and only the poets can completely understand them-“You are very idle, my songs, I fear you will come to a bad end. You stand about the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus stops, You do next to nothing at all.” ***