Sheeplike

If we come to believe — either because of intuition or a philosopher’s reasoning — that poetry is distinguished by its emphasis on vehicles of articulation, then we may find ourselves thinking that poetry highlighting extremities of form, sound or typography is more “poetic” than poetry that works differently. And in practice, this is indeed what we often do. For example, a phrase like “Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred” sounds like poetry to most people in a way that a phrase like “Now when I walk around at lunchtime” does not. Yet both lines come from poems (by Wallace Stevens and Frank O’Hara, respectively) and are therefore “poetic” to the same degree. It’s a subtle but important point, and it helps explain why so many debates over the meaning of poetry — in particular, debates over the perceived difficulty or simplicity of poetry — are often really arguments over style.