2. Poetry’s areas of authority and application

Abstract

‘Poetry’s areas of authority and application’ first considers the distinction between poetry and prose, which then raises the question of the prose-poem. What is the effect of claiming the status of poetry for something that seems to be structured according to the rules of its syntactic antitype, in prose? In using the words that everyone uses for communication and the expression of emotion, poetry can achieve an explicitness that music in itself or other formal arts, despite their regularity, cannot match. But what are poets good at and what are their obligations? Areas in which poetry seems to have particular authority and aptness are love, death, and nature.