[Christopher ONeill]

Good thread, John; it clearly answers a need.

You didn't include this point in your original position: but it seems to have come up en route.

When anyone says to me: 'This isn't poetry, it is just verse.' - I immediately stop taking anything they say seriously.

There is an easy, natural, and useful formal distinction to be made between 'verse' and 'prose' (verse is the stuff with the ragged right;- unless you have seriously narrow paper).

There is no useful genre distinction between 'verse' and 'poetry'. There is great poetry which is written in prose (large amounts of Joyce, large amounts of Ponge); there is also very good verse which it is not helpful to call 'poetry' (Erasmus Darwin, lots of Dissenter hymns).

When someone tells me that a piece of work may be 'verse' but it is not 'poetry', I tend to dismiss them as the sort of reader who only likes poems which are about horses, and won't look at a painting unless it has food in it somewhere.

People who dismiss any piece of work as 'only verse' are so far off my wavelength I'd prefer it if they just went away and caught up on their prerecorded episodes of NCIS.

That wasn't on your original agenda, I know;- but it seems to have come up.