Understanding Poetry

[Anonymous No.12739911]

I don't understand the appeal of poetry, what do people see in poetry as opposed to a novel?

[Anonymous No.12740603]

A novel might try to deftly construct a concept over a long period of time illustrated by narrative, characterisation etc
A poem might try the same thing, but usually briefly, and with more prose than narrative, and I'd contrast the sensory techniques in poetry as less intellectual than in a novel due in part to the pace and prosody (i.e. you might begin to imagine a sensory scenario described in a novel like a windy gale blowing on pegged clothes but a poem might emphasis a gust with a change of metric feet, and all this is to say that there is also significant cross-pollination of these sorts of techniques in both novels and poetry but their structural characteristics would lend to their differential use, systematically)

[Anonymous No.12740913]

>>12739911
If you don’t feel anything poetry’s just not for you.

Solitude
BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

[Anonymous No.12740934]

Brevity is the soul of the Wit nigger