Well said Tom and Oliver.
I think it is very interesting to examine how most people divide their time and what they do with it. We all prevaricate a little about how much TV we watch. For some reason we are ashamed of this.
When I was a child there was no TV in my country and I mostly read for much the same reason that I now watch TV. I read all the time. Under the blankets with a torch--while riding my bicycle--in the bus--in the garden--at the beach. Reading books was what I did more than anything else.
Honesty compels me to admit that I now spend much less time reading than I did as a child or adolescent.
When I left school I worked as a nurse's aid in order to earn money to send myself to university. I was so exhausted, mentally and physically that all I could read was poetry. Novels were beyond me. I read poems every day for several months. I had always read a little poetry but only as a variation on other reading. Suddenly only poetry met my needs.
I suspect that poetry may now fulfil this need for an overworked commuting public who have little uninterrupted time and shorter concentration spans. Poetry can work like caffeine. It can give a charge to our batteries, emotionally and intellectually.
I exclude those whose headphones thump audibly. Poetry now competes with audio.
I think that line breaks are important but how anybody is to define that without having read a great deal of prose as well as poetry is beyond me?
I shrink when a line break seems wrong to me. When a thought is broken awkwardly, or, in metric poetry if a meter is weakened which usually weakens the thought anyway. I suspect that only poets who have read a great deal of prose will be able to make a poetic judgement. Poetry is not prose but unless one reads prose the difference will not be noticed.
Oliver, while it's true that short prose pieces with no narrative will not easily find a publisher I still don't think that qualifies it as poetry. If it's worth reading then I'm glad when it is published. I have rarely read such pieces and found them equal to most competent novelists or essayists. If there is an audience for them, that's fine, but I'm not part of it.
What does seem to be increasing is a love for writing poetry. A new thought has crystalised for me during this discussion. Poets must read prose as well as poetry.
Janet
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