What Constitutes Poetry
I’m used to poetry being written as regular sentences randomly split up and people claiming it changed their lives, and even ending with the classic line, ”Now read this backwards.” I’m lying, don’t do that. Because I don’t want to either, I wouldn’t make you do that. In actuality, I don’t have the burning hatred and disdain I normally see in my peers when poetry is brought up. I like it sometimes, actually. In a book I read, Circe by Madeline Miller, the classification is fantasy and historical fiction. Yet every time I try to describe the book, I’m drawn towards the word “poetic.” The book is written in sections of Circe’s life, every few chapters a new few hundred years (because this is Greek mythology so gods and their children live forever). The way each section ended was not absolute, but gave a different, more universal and sentimental outlook to the situation. To me, that broadened perspective, that satisfying ending that resembles the feeling of a fairytale book g...