"Poetry is the art of approaching language differently."

The answer to my question written by a very talented poet I saw today, Douglas Kearney.  Simple. Easy. Why can't more people write like that? Why couldn't someone just stick that answer in the dictionary and be done with it? Why spend forty-five minutes reading a two-hundred page novel that has obvious loopholes in the description process?

The sentence above fits poetry perfectly, and explains all poems. Visual poems where shape is important, rhythm poems where beat is important, even free verse where nothing seems to be important all have the key element mentioned above. They all approach language differently. You can even see a clear cut difference, using that sentence, between stories and poems. Stories are somewhat dependent on formula. You can't have a story without conflict. You can't have a story without climax. You probably could have a story without characters, but its so mind-bogglingly hard i use it as a dare for my writing friends. We're still debating what counts as a character.

It doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but it does ease my mind to have a clear cut definition. I could almost like poetry now. Almost.