I want to share a definition for poetry from an unlikely but nevertheless incredibly wise source. I had an English teacher whose definition not only crystallised what I had been trying to put into words for years, but also changed how I perceived poetry and how I understood it. He defined poetry as “a condensed, written declaration that has been intensified.” You can imagine how this would confuse a class of English-dreading students but after finishing high school, this definition began to make more sense to me. From my teacher’s proposed definition, three central elements can enable us to view poetry with distinctive properties.
