WHAT IS POETRY? by John Simon

To the question "What is poetry?" there is, let's face it, no definitive answer. A bad novel is still a novel, a poor story still a story. But an unworthy poem is doggerel or, at best, verse, but not to be dignified as a poem. I suppose that makes poetry a higher form of art, although a great novel or story can equally qualify as art with unflinching pride.Certainly the Romantics proclaimed poetry the supreme literar…

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