[David Rosenthal]

Then, of course, there's Lew Turco's distinction: verse means metered, prose means unmetered. Poetry can be metered or unmetered. Unmetered poetry is "prose poetry." Turco says that "free verse" is an oxymoron and that what goes by that name is actually "prose poetry." Verse and prose are modes of writing, poetry is a genre. So the difference between poetry and prose is that one is a gnre, and one is a mode. Apples and oranges, not opposites.

So then, what makes poetry poetic? Well, says Turco, poetry is the art of language, as opposed to, say the art of written narrative (fiction), or the art of theatrical narrative (drama), or the art of written rhetoric (the essay). Poetry can of course use narrative, drama, and rhetoric, but its special feature is a focus on using the elements of language as the material for its artistic achievement. He calls these elements "levels" and enumerates them -- typographical, sonic, sensory, ideational.

So, can blank verse be something other than poetry? According to Turco, "sure." A verse essay or verse story may or may not be poetry depending on the use of language. Which of course begs some big arguments.

I don't know how helpful these distinctions are. If they are presented as sensibly as Turco does in his book, they seem at least arguable. If they are present as he presented them here during his ill-fated visit, thay seem arbitrary and useless.

I personally think if you expand the notion of meter to include syllabics (which Turco does), breath-lengths, phrase or clause lengths, typographical spacing, and other less easily graspable methods of lineation, so that "free verse" is still "verse," Turco's distinctions are useful.

What becomes arguable is whether or not a particular use of language is "poetic." And then we are back to the drawing board on Julie's quesiton. I think the most ecumenical answer has to be something like "you'll know it when you see it." But it isn't much different from the age-old questions about what counts as "art." Those questions are ultimately, necessarily, hashed out culturally.

Wow, did just say all of that?

David R.