What is poetry?

Writer's notes

Just in case anyone does not have this cultural reference. It was said (I cannot find who by) that 'an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite time would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare' - and by implication write everything else presumably.

Initially I wrote 'churned out' but changed to 'typed out' for clarity. I still prefer churned.

i prefer

Churned as well, are you sure you aren't pointing a finger at lit hahaha

Thanks Todski - particularly re churning

Actually no, I wasn't poking fun at people in lit - except possibly at the more rarified definitions of what poetry is. The monkeys, if they are to have any reference, would most likely be the little monkeys in my brain.

Think I will change it back to the original 'churning', so the poem now is:


Those fucking monkeys keep on churning out
The complete works of Shakespeare
But every time I look I find
Some damned typo and
I have to send it back.

You can have a computer spew out every possible combination of characters, but is that poetry? It's what I ask others, when the talk about clichés starts. And I think I wrote a poem about it, but it's now lost somewhere in the forum, since I deleted all my stuff.

We're human beings, being compelled to write about (mostly) the same things, over and over again. Our poems are apples falling from a tree; some fall far from the trunk, some fall close. But it's all coming from the same tree (the tree of humanity, if you will).

Should I not write about a certain subject, because it has been written about by a hundred thousand others before me? Should I not use the same words? Perhaps I should invent my own words, or a new language, to be completely fresh?

Nonsense. Every person is on a journey, and writing that poem — the one that has been written a thousand times before — is just as important as it was, every other time. If not to others, who read, then at least to the one who writes it.

I would go with churned, too

I know those fucking monkeys very well, Cleardaynow. No matter how much time I put into piece when I re-read it a month later I want to do it over.

this poem is good in posing a serious question.
Tsotha's comments also pose some other serious question/challenge.
I rather agree with him.
Thanks, Cleardaynow, for making us all aware.
5ed.

bah, ha, ha

waxing philospic like, if you can't bowdlerize the Bard, who else is there?
you might want to look up the origin of the word bowdlerize
I don't like the title
But is it Poetry? seems to me to be more of a set-up for the material, which is 5ed, damnit 5ed. damnit 5ed.

Churning the butter.

Churning is better. Tying implies that there's little thought or care, whereas churning implies working to make something, even if, as Tsotha said, its the same damn thing as everyone else is making or trying to make. I got this immediately but with churning it feels internal. Typing seemed more like you were an editor sending it back to someone else. Actually both have their merit... 5'd