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These are elements of genre, any taxonomy of human expression naturally escapes the ability to be concretely defined. You can no more give a succinct, definitiv

These are elements of genre, any taxonomy of human expression naturally escapes the ability to be concretely defined. You can no more give a succinct, definitive differentiation between prose and poetry than you can between Rock&Roll and Pop music, or between Modernist and Expressionist painting. To wit, you'll find there's a large amount of literature about "prose poetry", the most well known form being free verse. The idea being to capture or express some elements of poetry outside merely rhyme and meter. Which elements? How many are required to be considered "real" poetry? I can no more define that than Justice Stewart could define pornography [1]. This obsession with strict taxonomy is itself a shibboleth of the juvenile. What value does strict differentiation provide, if one exists at all? It is a poem because I deign it to be so, and my friends understand what I mean when say this thing I have made is a poem and that thing I have made is a short story. There are a set of characteristics these labels may imply (and such implications make them useful), but none are required, some may even be mutually exclusive. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

milesrout 2y ago
Even if we accept your claim that you can't draw hard boundaries (I actually strongly disagree), you can still draw boundaries. Words have meanings even if those meanings are a bit fuzzy. I don't care about the names of logical fallacies but your argument is fallacious: we can't draw a hard boundary, therefore anything qualifies. There are lots of things that clearly are not poems. Mona Lisa is not a poem. GCC is not a poem. Wikipedia is not a poem. There are also lots of things that clearly are poems. My claim is not that when you draw a hard boundary these things are technically not poems because they sit just outside the line, but that if you have any sort of boundary at all then they aren't even close. You say quite rightly that there are sets of characteristics that a label may imply. You don't need all of them, or any particular one, but you need something. Nothing about these "poems" is poetic. They have nothing in common with poetry. And no "evokes feeling" is not a characteristic of poetry, it is a characteristic of art generally. They might be art, but many written things exist that are not art, like short stories and novels. If I wrote a 70000 word novel and called it a poem, I would obviously be trolling, but by your logic there is no reason it couldn't be. That's just stupid. >It is a poem because I deign it to be so, Because to you deign it to be what? What do you deign it to be? You can't just say poem, I am asking you what you mean when you say the word poem. Circular answers will not be accepted.
- nickelpro 2y ago
  I would accept that medium can be well defined. We can say an oil painting is not a macaroni sculpture with a high degree of certainty. Within the medium though, no I don't think you can make such defining lines in genre, in categories of artistic composition. I would say "evokes feeling" is absolutely a characteristic of a poem. Slam poetry is often characterized by the performance, the visceral experience, more than anything about rhythm, rhyming, or meter. Epics [1] are one of the oldest forms of poetry. A 70000 word narrative can not only be a poem, such works are some of the oldest artistic expressions in human history. > Because to you deign it to be what? A poem. And my friends understand what I mean when I say that. That you don't understand is hardly my concern, like I said I find this amusing, convincing you is not a goal of mine. The purpose of such categories, their only value, is to be understood by the communities which use them. Whether David Bowie's 1980 album Scary Monsters is art rock or post-punk has no real bearing on the album itself, no value beyond being understood by those discussing it. We can take this one step further, and say that the community of milesrouts rejects such labels and has a different understanding of these words, a different set of values they choose to express, and this too is a valuable thing to recognize. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry
  - milesrout 2y ago
    >A poem. Which is what? You cannot define a poem as "a poem" any more than you can define a dog as "a dog" or any other category just as itself. >And my friends understand what I mean when I say that. That you don't understand is hardly my concern, like I said I find this amusing, convincing you is not a goal of mine. The Emperor's subjects understood what he meant too, when he was talking about his new outfit. >The purpose of such categories, their only value, is to be understood by the communities which use them. And the community as a whole is not serviced by people like you pretending that you have the authority to define every category of things in the English language as meaningless. >Whether David Bowie's 1980 album Scary Monsters is art rock or post-punk has no real bearing on the album itself, no value beyond being understood by those discussing it. Once again you miss the point spectacularly. I specifically said "My claim is not that when you draw a hard boundary these things are technically not poems because they sit just outside the line, but that if you have any sort of boundary at all then they aren't even close." We are not talking about things that are right on the boundary of what constitutes poetry. They are as close to poetry as a cup of tea is to a glass of milk. "What exactly is tea anyway, it is all subjective, everything is in the eye of the beholder, how can you draw genre boundaries in the medium of liquids, what even is tea anyway?" Total rubbish, and just the same argument you are making. Epic poetry has specific aspects that make it poetry. It is not ambiguous or difficult to call it poetry. It is clearly poetry. A breathless and stupid rant about politics is not poetry. The fact you claim that a random HN comment could be a Haiku if the author said it was one, and tried to justify that by the fact that the mora and syllable concepts differ a bit between English and Japanese, shows how completely addled your thinking is. You have followed a stupid ideology so far into the extremes that any sensible person would understand that they have proved their assumptions false by contradiction and gone back to reexamine where they went wrong. You are the sort of person to say "okay, a/b is both in most reduced form and not, at the same time, how wondefully avant garde!"
taeric 2y ago
Then let me respond with a haiku. You'll surely accept my deigning of this post as one, as why not? And sure, some elements of a category can be shared across examples. But there are pretty strong markers, too? And having already a term that describes a type of work, why muddy it by expanding a subset to be descriptive of the whole? Are all humans children? Not just child like, but actual children. All birds are hawks. Book stores are all poetry stores. So again, what distinguishes poetry from just text? I'm assuming it still has to have a rythm? For that matter, as my sibling said, must it be text? Any art can be poetry? Can I merely deign this post to be both a poem and a portrait? My guess is you accept that, despite my deigns, this post is none of the things I claimed. But surely I can reject that as fallacy?
- nickelpro 2y ago
  If you want this post to be a haiku, and you publish it in your collection of haikus so labeled, I would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. Fountain [1] is a sculpture because Duchamp placed it a fine art exhibit and labeled it so ("by the artist's act of choice"). Surely, this post is an avante garde example, defying most of the characteristics associated with haikus in form. It can definitively be said to not have the 5-7-5 pattern of traditional Japanese haiku, but in fact all English language haiku deviates from traditional Japanese haiku (a 17 on haiku in Japanese is typically only 12 syllables (note the "typically")). So you're doing something new and experimental with the form. We can debate the artistic merit, the value of such an experiment. We can argue about what you mean by labeling this a haiku, what message you are trying to convey in the experience of the post. We can even question the sincerity of your motives. But I don't think it's totally invalid, I don't think it can be rejected in the same sense we can reject 2+2=5. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
  - taeric 2y ago
    There is a difference between claiming something isn't fine art, versus claiming it is a specific type of an art form, though? I'm open to saying you can defensibly make some claims, but that is a different argument from saying that indefensible claims are acceptable due to the artist's deign. To that end, I would expect an argument against something not being a haiku for having literally no intersection with what it meant for haiku in any language. Not even a seasonal reference. (Though, I confess I did consider throwing one of those in. :D) Rephrased, this isn't a question of whether a shared essay was artistic. The question is if it is a poem. Well, my question is what separates a poem from prose. But, I think those questions have a shared answer here, as I don't think all shared essays are poems. To that end, I'm genuinely curious what sort of criteria you would have here. Note that, just because I don't think something is a poem, doesn't mean I don't see it as art. Creative essays are still creative. And prose can have a poetic feel, still. Back to your examples earlier. Yes, rock-n-roll versus country can have some blurs. I don't think that would stop people from rejecting any random album as a country one, if it doesn't at least have some sort of attributes we associate with country. Now, specifically to your point, I don't necessarily think you should force categories, either. So, if Beyonce doesn't want to say her last album is a country album, I'm fine with that.

milesrout 2y ago

Even if we accept your claim that you can't draw hard boundaries (I actually strongly disagree), you can still draw boundaries. Words have meanings even if those meanings are a bit fuzzy. I don't care about the names of logical fallacies but your argument is fallacious: we can't draw a hard boundary, therefore anything qualifies. There are lots of things that clearly are not poems. Mona Lisa is not a poem. GCC is not a poem. Wikipedia is not a poem. There are also lots of things that clearly are poems. My claim is not that when you draw a hard boundary these things are technically not poems because they sit just outside the line, but that if you have any sort of boundary at all then they aren't even close. You say quite rightly that there are sets of characteristics that a label may imply. You don't need all of them, or any particular one, but you need something. Nothing about these "poems" is poetic. They have nothing in common with poetry. And no "evokes feeling" is not a characteristic of poetry, it is a characteristic of art generally. They might be art, but many written things exist that are not art, like short stories and novels. If I wrote a 70000 word novel and called it a poem, I would obviously be trolling, but by your logic there is no reason it couldn't be. That's just stupid. >It is a poem because I deign it to be so, Because to you deign it to be what? What do you deign it to be? You can't just say poem, I am asking you what you mean when you say the word poem. Circular answers will not be accepted.

nickelpro 2y ago
I would accept that medium can be well defined. We can say an oil painting is not a macaroni sculpture with a high degree of certainty. Within the medium though, no I don't think you can make such defining lines in genre, in categories of artistic composition. I would say "evokes feeling" is absolutely a characteristic of a poem. Slam poetry is often characterized by the performance, the visceral experience, more than anything about rhythm, rhyming, or meter. Epics [1] are one of the oldest forms of poetry. A 70000 word narrative can not only be a poem, such works are some of the oldest artistic expressions in human history. > Because to you deign it to be what? A poem. And my friends understand what I mean when I say that. That you don't understand is hardly my concern, like I said I find this amusing, convincing you is not a goal of mine. The purpose of such categories, their only value, is to be understood by the communities which use them. Whether David Bowie's 1980 album Scary Monsters is art rock or post-punk has no real bearing on the album itself, no value beyond being understood by those discussing it. We can take this one step further, and say that the community of milesrouts rejects such labels and has a different understanding of these words, a different set of values they choose to express, and this too is a valuable thing to recognize. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry
- milesrout 2y ago
  >A poem. Which is what? You cannot define a poem as "a poem" any more than you can define a dog as "a dog" or any other category just as itself. >And my friends understand what I mean when I say that. That you don't understand is hardly my concern, like I said I find this amusing, convincing you is not a goal of mine. The Emperor's subjects understood what he meant too, when he was talking about his new outfit. >The purpose of such categories, their only value, is to be understood by the communities which use them. And the community as a whole is not serviced by people like you pretending that you have the authority to define every category of things in the English language as meaningless. >Whether David Bowie's 1980 album Scary Monsters is art rock or post-punk has no real bearing on the album itself, no value beyond being understood by those discussing it. Once again you miss the point spectacularly. I specifically said "My claim is not that when you draw a hard boundary these things are technically not poems because they sit just outside the line, but that if you have any sort of boundary at all then they aren't even close." We are not talking about things that are right on the boundary of what constitutes poetry. They are as close to poetry as a cup of tea is to a glass of milk. "What exactly is tea anyway, it is all subjective, everything is in the eye of the beholder, how can you draw genre boundaries in the medium of liquids, what even is tea anyway?" Total rubbish, and just the same argument you are making. Epic poetry has specific aspects that make it poetry. It is not ambiguous or difficult to call it poetry. It is clearly poetry. A breathless and stupid rant about politics is not poetry. The fact you claim that a random HN comment could be a Haiku if the author said it was one, and tried to justify that by the fact that the mora and syllable concepts differ a bit between English and Japanese, shows how completely addled your thinking is. You have followed a stupid ideology so far into the extremes that any sensible person would understand that they have proved their assumptions false by contradiction and gone back to reexamine where they went wrong. You are the sort of person to say "okay, a/b is both in most reduced form and not, at the same time, how wondefully avant garde!"

taeric 2y ago

Then let me respond with a haiku. You'll surely accept my deigning of this post as one, as why not? And sure, some elements of a category can be shared across examples. But there are pretty strong markers, too? And having already a term that describes a type of work, why muddy it by expanding a subset to be descriptive of the whole? Are all humans children? Not just child like, but actual children. All birds are hawks. Book stores are all poetry stores. So again, what distinguishes poetry from just text? I'm assuming it still has to have a rythm? For that matter, as my sibling said, must it be text? Any art can be poetry? Can I merely deign this post to be both a poem and a portrait? My guess is you accept that, despite my deigns, this post is none of the things I claimed. But surely I can reject that as fallacy?

nickelpro 2y ago
If you want this post to be a haiku, and you publish it in your collection of haikus so labeled, I would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. Fountain [1] is a sculpture because Duchamp placed it a fine art exhibit and labeled it so ("by the artist's act of choice"). Surely, this post is an avante garde example, defying most of the characteristics associated with haikus in form. It can definitively be said to not have the 5-7-5 pattern of traditional Japanese haiku, but in fact all English language haiku deviates from traditional Japanese haiku (a 17 on haiku in Japanese is typically only 12 syllables (note the "typically")). So you're doing something new and experimental with the form. We can debate the artistic merit, the value of such an experiment. We can argue about what you mean by labeling this a haiku, what message you are trying to convey in the experience of the post. We can even question the sincerity of your motives. But I don't think it's totally invalid, I don't think it can be rejected in the same sense we can reject 2+2=5. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
- taeric 2y ago
  There is a difference between claiming something isn't fine art, versus claiming it is a specific type of an art form, though? I'm open to saying you can defensibly make some claims, but that is a different argument from saying that indefensible claims are acceptable due to the artist's deign. To that end, I would expect an argument against something not being a haiku for having literally no intersection with what it meant for haiku in any language. Not even a seasonal reference. (Though, I confess I did consider throwing one of those in. :D) Rephrased, this isn't a question of whether a shared essay was artistic. The question is if it is a poem. Well, my question is what separates a poem from prose. But, I think those questions have a shared answer here, as I don't think all shared essays are poems. To that end, I'm genuinely curious what sort of criteria you would have here. Note that, just because I don't think something is a poem, doesn't mean I don't see it as art. Creative essays are still creative. And prose can have a poetic feel, still. Back to your examples earlier. Yes, rock-n-roll versus country can have some blurs. I don't think that would stop people from rejecting any random album as a country one, if it doesn't at least have some sort of attributes we associate with country. Now, specifically to your point, I don't necessarily think you should force categories, either. So, if Beyonce doesn't want to say her last album is a country album, I'm fine with that.