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Poetry vs Prose
The Essential Difference
There is a lot of prose these days that is formatted in the same way that poetry would be and is submitted to publishers as poetry, and is sometimes then even published as poetry. (Shudder.)
Formatting does not constitute poetry.
So what does?
I’m putting this in my own words, but the Oxford Dictionary says (more or less) that prose is normal and straightforward utterance, akin to normal speech, while poetry has musicality, rhythm, assonance (which may or may not include rhyme), and figurative or symbolic language.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Now, I am perfectly aware that there are people who disagree with me. I might even be in the minority here. One of the objections I often hear to my point of view is that prose can be musical and poetry can contain normal speech patterns. I agree: both those statements are undeniably true. Nevertheless, I know when I’m writing poetry and I know when I’m writing prose, and they’re not the same thing. For one thing, poetry is immensely harder. (This essay is entirely prose so far, by the way, in case you couldn’t tell.)
Let me give you an example of something that might at first glance appear to be poetry, but isn’t:
