What is poetry?

Poetry is a genre of literature that gives expression to those feelings and emotions that we feel. It also gives words to those feelings which we feel but do not know and cannot give an outlet to it. It also conveys those thoughts, feelings, and emotions in a variety of ways. Sometimes it takes the form lyrical poetry while in other, a free verse in a drama or narrative story in epic poems.

Poetry represents themes as diverse as life itself. We can learn a lot from poetry as it alludes to historical events, natural phenomena, religious teaching, and life experiences. It also widens one's thoughts and understanding of different hidden aspects of life by exposing us to various mystical and metaphysical worlds by creating and conveying those situations that an ordinary man cannot even think of.

  

Owing to its highly subjective nature, the definitions of poetry are as subjective and various as the poets themselves. According to Mathew Arnold, poetry is "simply the most delightful and perfect form of utterance that human words can reach”; It is, “a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.” 

According to Wordsworth, poetry is, "The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity." 

Sigmund Freud considers poetry and poets as masters of ordinary mind and says "Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in the knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science." He further adds that " everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me"

Paul Engle says that "Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words."

W.H Auden has given a very detailed and significant definition which covers almost different aspects of poetry and tells us about the nature of the poetry. He says, "One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves."

Robert Frost has his own definition of his poetry as he says, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

Another romantic poet  Percy Bysshe Shelley has defined poetry in his peculiar words as, "Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."

Another great romantic writer John Keats considers poetry as "Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject."

So, by studying all these definitions one can easily find the subjective nature of poetry. These definitions of known and great poets made it clear that poetry is as subjective and has a wide domain as life itself. Because poets are inspired by there surrounding nature and circumstances of immediate life.